Now this is a vintage classic that’s worth checking out. Blake Edward’s 1962 film Days of Wine and Roses really does hold up after all these years, and now it’s on DVD. Edwards was known primarily for comedy – having directed Peter Sellers is the Pink Panther movies – but this one exception is a dark drama about alcoholism is starkly handled by the director.
Star Jack Lemmon was a light comic actor known for farce (Mister Roberts, the great Some Like It Hot) but this was his diversion into dark drama as well and the result is one of the most uncompromising and gut-wrenching performances of his career. He plays a public relations man that lives only to party and to booze. Beneath the surface his character is a chauvinistic, self-centered and a control freak yet these traits are never pushed for effect. The casual finesse of his rudeness is what’s shocking. Lee Remick plays the woman who marries him, letting the insults and put-downs slide off her back, until she can’t take it anymore. She starts binge drinking with her husband so they can have good times together. What starts as a fun and spontaneous relationship turns into a rocky and dismal marriage.
Together their high-pitch drunk wailing is destructive to their careers and to their family ties. Lemmon goes through five jobs in four years until it gets to the point where no one will hire him. “Look at us. We’re a couple of bums!” Lemmon bawls, in the pivotal moment where he decides that his drinking must stop. His distrusting father-in-law lets him and his daughter move home with them so Lemmon can work off some debt and also break his drinking habit. Of course, he can’t make himself stop drinking. Lemmon’s peak moment of out-of-control destructive belligerence takes place in the greenhouse scene. In an attempt to recover a liquor bottle that he smuggled onto his father-in-law’s property, he tears up the entire place trying to find it. The following scene with Lemmon straight-jacketed by the authorities for public indecency is equally potent.
Days of Wine and Roses was one of the first Hollywood films to tackle substance abuse. The Lost Weekend (1945) by Billy Wilder was the first notable film, although it’s more of a visual accomplishment of an alcoholic’s paranoia than a truthful documentation of binge drinking. The Man with a Golden Arm (1955) is an interesting if compromised film about heroin addiction with Frank Sinatra. Days came seven years later and produced a compelling look at alcoholism. More importantly, its depicted truthfulness about the addiction has proven to have enduring merit. There are a couple of overwrought scenes and a little didacticism in the script, especially in the scenes involving the refuge of alcoholic’s anonymous groups, but for what it’s trying to do it does it very well. As you might have guessed, yes, this is one of Lemmon’s best roles. But it would be unjust not to give credit to Remick as well, who is superb in her dramatization of a good girl gone bad who starts to love the bottle more than the man that got her drinking in the first place.
Also note that Lemmon and Remick’s characters have a child that goes mistreated because they spend too much time drinking and not enough time encouraging the child’s development. This is a small poignancy in the film that could have been enhanced a little bit more. The child is mal-nourished and neglected in theory, but the performance by the child in the part is a little too ordinary. Lemmon and Remick were Oscar-nominated for best actor and best actress, respectively, and their performances are on a higher range than the rest of the cast in the film. Special praise to Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer for their Oscar-winning title song that is also memorable.
The DVD is worth renting basically to see the movie and not so much as to view the extras. The extras are not insightful or enhancing to the viewing pleasure, so basically the movie speaks for itself. Blake Edwards attempts recalling memories of shooting a film that he made forty years ago on the commentary track, but he doesn’t seem interested in carrying out this duty. The vintage Jack Lemmon interview is studio marketing propaganda and the trailers, so curiously, make the film look tamer than what it is. Other recommendations for movies about alcoholism are the 1995 masterpiece Leaving Las Vegas (do movies get anymore electrifying and heart-breaking than that one?) and Barfly with its strange and lyrical performance by Mickey Rourke. Out of those mentioned films, Days is probably the second best of the three. OK, The Verdict with Paul Newman playing a boozer lawyer could also get a strong recommendation but that’s more a courtroom movie. Movie: ***1/2 Extras: **
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