William Goldman tore into Sam Taylor's Broadway comedy in The Season but Billy Wilder liked it well enough to turn it into a film. Apparently it was changed slightly - the lead adjusted to make a role for Jack Lemmon.
It's an example of low concept high concept - Jack Lemmon is a man who goes to Italy to pick up his father's corpse, dad having died in an accident. He discovered that his father had a mistress and then starts having an affair with the mistress' daughter, Juliet Mills - who has to endure comments about her weight.
Wilder thought the film would've had more kick if the dead father had been having it off with a guy. Maybe. I don't think that's the problem. The issue is more is takes two hours, when the film is almost over, for Lemmon and Mills to hook up - and we never see his wife to complicate things. Maybe if they'd brought in his wife, or her partner, or made their parents secretly alive.
Instead we have all these shenanigans among Italians - vineyard owners, maids, stolen bodies. I didn't care for Lemmon's obnoxious American, whingeing about Italians, bossing them around. He didn't get a satisfying comeuppance or seem to genuinely fall for Mills. We didn't see him get liberated. I mean, maybe if he was henpecked or something. Mills is lovely. Maybe if the film had been from her point of view.
Nice shots of Italy. The nudity livens things up - Mills bares her breasts and Lemmon his backside. Edward Andrews is funny as the ambassador.
But what's at stake? Lemmon's marriage? Who cares? The fate of his father's corpse? Who cares? The new relationship? Who cares? Maybe Mills' chance at happiness...?
The film has its fans.
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