The Days of Wine and Roses
Alcoholism is a deeply boring subject for a movie. It's not permitted to act as a metaphor, because its meaning must be militated: it is not a personal failing, it is a disease; it is not the effect of society's corruption, it is a disease. In The Apartment, Jack Lemmon plays a similar character: C.C. Baxter is a decent guy who wants to get along in the gray-flannel business world, but his decency winds up monkey-wrenching the corrupt scheme in which he finds himself, namely allowing execs to use his apartment for assignations with Shirley MacLaine, disposable to them but bright light to Baxter. In The Days of Wine and Roses, Lemmon's Joe Clay's decency is even further up front, but the conflicts that puts him in (he refuses to pander for a client) is easily resolved; he gets canned for drinking. Lee Remick dissolves into a boozy puddle fearlessly, and the movie has that crisp and sharply contrasted high-modern 60s cinematography, but there's no real story to tell except the AA narrative. (Jack Klugman is a very natty sponsor).At first I thought that the movie was pre-AA, because no one mentions "getting help" to Joe until well into the second half of the movie, after he's gone through the D.T.'s in a straitjacket. But the AA story is the third act, and the movie is set neither before nor after AA (perhaps I should compare 28 Days?) but rather at the moment of its introduction. I have no idea how long AA had been around for, but the ideal audience seems to be one for whom AA would be new. Unfortunately, by giving itself the task of explaining AA, The Days of Wine and Roses becomes a glorified health film.
posted by Josh K-sky at
12:29 PM
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