Some aspects of "Wine and Roses" haven't aged well. The opening credits are cheesy; the Jack Klugman performance is over the top. The reverential treatment of AA feels slightly silly (although I understand it must have been bold to stage a fictional AA meeting in the early 1960s).
But none of this really matters, because of Jack Lemmon. He plays Joe Clay, a man at war with himself. Joe is paid to recruit young women to make appearances at cocktail parties; this is part of a business enterprise. The women must wear sequins and deep "V" necks. Disgusted with his own life, Joe distracts himself by wooing a young person, Kirsten; he makes it his project to introduce her to alcohol. (She likes Toblerone, so he gives her a chocolate martini.)
Years later, in a codependent, vodka-drenched marriage, Joe tries to save himself. The moments of relapse are almost sickening. The experience of watching the film becomes something like standing near a slow-motion car wreck. Lemmon deserves credit for making himself genuinely ugly; in one scene, he drunkenly destroys his employer's garden store in search of one hidden bottle of gin. The plan was to carry this gin back to Kirsten--but, triumphant, Joe just drinks the entire dosage, then writhes in the dirt.
Watching Jack Lemmon, I was reminded of a Sondheim comment: "Let the content match the form." There are apparently neutral "remarks" in the script that conceal (or half-conceal) Joe's rage. Lemmon lets the rage manifest itself in the way he attacks the consonants; he can't be outwardly violent, so he lets the violence happen inside his lips and tongue. There is also some wonderful detail in his eyes; at one point, his father-in-law offers him a beer, and he silently makes several calculations. ("Can I have one without slipping? Is my father-in-law being generous--or is he laying a trap? Does he want to *show* me how untrustworthy I am? Do I care?") All of this happens without any dialogue.
Happy 100th Birthday to Jack Lemmon, the first person in history to win both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor from the Academy. I'm looking forward to renting "Missing," a Sissy Spacek-Jack Lemmon team-up I would have otherwise missed, had I failed to make a May visit to Film Forum.
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