Well, dear readers, I believe there is some spice in pumpkin pie that doesn’t play well with my stomach. I kind of felt that last night, but I’m sure feeling it now. I wonder why that is after so many years of having no problems with the ingesting of the pumpkin pie? I suppose that it’s just another mystery of the universe that has no answer and just is. However, the mysteries of the damn universe seem to be multiplying – is this something that happens with age, this mysteries of the universe expanding thing? But here is something that is no mystery: I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to John Williams cherce bit of American pie, The Reivers. Mr. Williams hadn’t quite become a major force in film music yet – that would take a few more years and would begin with The Poseidon Adventure. It’s a wonderful score, filled with wonderful tunes and good feeling. Other than that, it was another night of flipping from thing to thing trying to settle on something to watch, which I finally did but then didn’t have time to finish – I will after I post these here notes. I tried watching the last of the Peter Sellers Pink Panther things, The Trail of the Pink Panther, made a year-and-a-half after Mr. Sellers untimely death. I know that Mr. Blake Edwards meant it as a tribute, but sadly it doesn’t really come off the way he meant. It’s almost completely unfunny, made up of cut sequences from previous Panther movies, along with some replays of scenes we know and love. The cut scenes include several that I saw at the sneak preview of Return of the Pink Panther at the Village Theater. You could feel the excitement in the theater to have a new Clouseau movie and you could then feel that excitement peter away as one unfunny scene after another unfolded. Soon after that preview, they did quite a bit of reshooting and trimming, and the one scene I’ve always remembered had Julie Andrews in a cameo as a maid – and that’s back in in this film. They brought back Capucine, who still looked beautiful, and David Niven, who looked game but very frail. His ALS was just beginning – I didn’t even know that he had ALS. But he was too weak to loop his dialogue – all his scenes were outdoors and so Rich Little did the looping and it’s just horrible. Oh, he tried, but there’s no mistaking David Niven’s voice and manner. I finally had to shut it off. I also watched a bit of the Roberto Bengnini Panther movie, which is an embarrassment from start to finish. Also, it must be noted that all the Panther/Clouseau movies are on Tubi for free and I would recommend watching none of them because every single one has been reformatted for widescreen TVs – these were all scope films, the main titles are presented in scope, and then it zooms in to fill 16×9 TVs – it’s absolutely shameful and I’m sure Mr. Edwards is turning in his grave over such sacrilege.
Mr. Edwards really had a fascinating career if you analyze it. His late 1950s comedies are cute, and you can see him beginning to figure out his visual style – The Perfect Furlough and Operation Petticoat were two of those. Then came what I consider to be the first real Blake Edwards comedy film – High Time. I saw that one at a sneak preview at the Village, too (that was his theater of choice for his previews) – it doesn’t really hold up that well today, but it’s his first film in scope, his mastering of ratio is in full flower, and back in 1960 the film got huge laughs throughout. It’s still one I really like and it’s great it made it to Blu-ray thanks to Twilight Time. Then out of nowhere came Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a stunningly beautiful film visually, wonderfully directed, walking a fine line between hilarious sequences and immensely touching sequences. Yes, he’s criticized for Mickey Rooney’s performance, but back then that sort of thing was done – Marlon Brando in Teahouse of the August Moon being the most obvious example. So, it’s easy in hindsight, but it wasn’t a thing back then, not with the general public. Should it have been? Sure. But it wasn’t.
With High Time, he’d begun his long and amazing collaboration with Henry Mancini, who he’d worked with on his two hit TV shows, Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky. They both kind of hit the big time together. Mancini’s score for Tiffany’s was a huge factor in the various tonal shifts working. And the final seven minutes of the film is one of the most beautiful marriages of film and music ever – a textbook of what film music can and should always do – not today, of course, because no directors seem to understand that anymore. And then, once again threw us all for a loop, especially me, when I attended, yes, a sneak preview at the Village of Experiment in Terror – it was, at the time, pretty terrifying, its visual style very much aligned with the dark style he created for Peter Gunn. And what a score Mancini came up with. And then again, there followed another completely different sort of film, Days of Wine and Roses, a brilliant and devastating film, with great performances and another Mancini score for the ages. That was followed by The Pink Panther, with Edwards back in scope/comedy mode and what an entertainment that was. And one of the co-stars of the film walked away with it – that was, of course, Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. Comedy gold, Edwards and Sellers, with one incredible sight gag after another in scope, like no other director had ever done in that format. Another Clouseau followed, A Shot in the Dark, and while all of it didn’t quite add up, there are many inspired gags, again in scope. Every one of those films were huge hits.
And then came The Great Race, which I saw at the Pantages Theater on the day it opened its reserved seat engagement. What could I possibly not love about a film with that cast, Mancini, and Blake working in scope with an epic comedy. Sadly, there was a lot I didn’t love about it. I know the film has its rabid fans, but I couldn’t get with Jack Lemmon, and that was a first. I did like Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood and loved Peter Falk, and there were some visual gags that were tremendous, but most of it just felt labored to me (I felt similarly about another beloved behemoth comedy, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World), and somewhat endless, running out of steam long before the end credits. Of course, that didn’t stop me from seeing it another five times at that theater. It was a box-office disappointment and I remember it going off reserved seats pretty quickly and then moving over to the Pix pretty quickly.
And then came two box-office flops – What Did You Do in the War, Daddy and Gunn. That was followed by The Party, which I saw at a sneak preview at the Village, and that was a real return to form and again had one great visual gag after another, with Peter Sellers at his best. Still, overall a pretty good batting average. Alas, his next four films were all huge flops and critical disasters, four in a row, until he ran for cover and did Return of the Pink Panther. That did well enough, but as I’ve already said, that and the two that immediately followed didn’t really do it for me – so, for me, that was seven in a row and I just couldn’t understand it, frankly. And then came 10, which I thought was Blake at his absolute best and of course it was a huge hit. Then it was SOB, which was a little too vicious for its own good, but still very good and it wasn’t really a hit. But then he was back with another masterpiece out of nowhere – Victor/Victoria. And that was it. Yes, he made another eleven films, none of which are great. A couple of them are him at his worst, and yet things like Micki and Maude still had great sequences, and Skin Deep had one really funny scene, and some of Switch was okay. But none of them were of the quality of his great films. But when he was on his game, there was no better.
Wow, I just wrote a whole novel about Blake Edwards. So, we’d best move this right along. Where was I? Oh yes, I finally settled on a documentary about the killer nurse, the real-life tale of the film I’d just watched with Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne called, I think, The Good Nurse. The pacing of the documentary is dire, but it’s a very interesting story and the real-life version is more interesting than the film version.
Yesterday was okay. I got a little over nine-and-a-half hours of sleep, answered e-mails, puttered around the house for a bit, then went over to Gelson’s and got stuff to make faux chicken stroganoff. I came home and made it and it was really good, served over white rice. Later, I had a piece of pumpkin pie, which I’m now regretting.
Today, I’ll be up by eleven, I’ll make a show order, I’ll cobble together some commentary, I’ll watch a bunch of videos submitted by parents of talented kids for the January all young people Kritzerland show. I’ll eat something fun, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, have some telephonic conversations, and then I can watch, listen, and relax.
The rest of the week is more of the same.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven, make a show order, write commentary, watch videos, eat, hopefully pick up packages, have conversations, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite films of Blake Edwards? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, mystified by the mysteries of the universe.