Kiss Me Stupid [DVD]

Billy Wilder was supremely talented not only as a director but also as screenwriter and producer. He covered the gamut from realism (The Lost Weekend), to melodrama (Sunset Blvd.) to mad-cap comedy (Some Like It Hot). This film falls into the latter category with that touch of Wilder cynicism that made his films so great. The story plays out in Climax, Nevada, a name not lost on the sleazy Vegas entertainer, Dino (played to a tee by sleazy Vegas entertainer, Dean Martin!), who is forced to make a detour to and then a stop-over in this seemingly model small-town USA. Two wannabe song-writers plot to have him hear their tunes and the comedy really begins. As always Wilder's casting is consummate, though surprisingly his first choices weren't available. Ray Walston is hilarious as Orville J. Spooner, the jealous older husband of the town beauty, but this part had originally been meant for Peter Sellers. Polly the Pistol, the ultimate good-time trailer-trash girl was a role intended for Marilyn Monroe, but Kim Novak is sublime in this part and I can't imagine anyone, even Marilyn, filling Novak's shoes (or dress!) here.

The comedy plays out beautifully and the crackling dialogue and soundtrack keep this film moving along, the only thing that stopped it becoming a major hit was the puritanical audience it fell upon when it was released. Way ahead of it's time, America wasn't ready for this in the sixties, and maybe it's still not ready, but this forgotten gem deserves revisitng.

Based on the Italian stage comedy L'Oro della Fantasia (trans: The Hour

Of Fantasy), Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid appeared after a long run

of successes by the director, which culminated with a hat trick on The

Apartment for which he won Oscars for producer, director and

co-screenwriter, respectively. In the years that followed, however,

Wilder's reputation took a battering; he helmed several films then less

favourably received.

Many of these later films have found critical rehabilitation. Kiss Me,

Stupid has found too an increasing number of defenders, a new

generation of viewers discovering its unique tone with delight during

late night TV revivals. In an age when the double entendre can be king,

Wilder's film, stuffed full of visual and verbal sexual innuendo, and

with its ironic irreverence towards traditional values and mores, has

acquired a relevance that it never had before. Times have moved on a

little since the stuffed shirt brigade were shocked by what was seen

then as the leering immorality of Wilder's film, its supposed

vulgarity, with its jaundiced view of fidelity. These days the cynicism

so characteristic of the director and here drawn out the nth degree

appears entertainingly modern, while Dean Martin's central,

self-parodic portrayal of satyriasis ("It's a habit with me. If I skip

one night a week I get such a headache") can be seen as one of his most

memorable performances - probably because it runs closer to home in

contemporary eyes than some of his other, more safely packaged

appearances do now.

Originally Peter Sellers was cast as Orville Spooner, the eternally

jealous and ever-optimistic singer-songwriter, 62 duds in, from the

feverishly named Climax, Nevada. It was one of the great what-if

casting choices, and went as far as shooting some evidently well played

scenes before, for various reasons, the star pulled out. The decision

left the plum role to Ray Walston, thereby allowing that actor his

finest hour on screen.

With hindsight, Wilder's film is an ideal vehicle for postmodernists.

Not only does it start with a clue that it is packed full of signifying

elements (a gigantic, erect crane arm is the first thing the camera

sights after the LAS VEGAS SIGN CO wording), but the films also works

hard to deconstruct celebrities, family life and the value of marriage.

"By way of Warm Springs, Paradise Valley" Climax is a place of

conventional morality, where Spooner just happens to be married to the

prettiest girl in town: Zelda (Felicia Farr, incidentally another

Wilder regular, Jack Lemmon's wife). As designed by Alexander Trauner,

who also worked on such atmospheric films as Jour de Lève, and Othello

(1952) it's a small town where the only real excitement is playing the

piano or watching colour TV in shop windows, unless one heads out to

The Belly Button where apparently, at least as Spooner is assured by a

visiting citizen's committee, "love is for sale." Wilder opposes the

sexual opportunism and the commercial value placed upon relationships,

as epitomised by Dino's predatory libido and Polly's trailer with its

conspicuous 'bang bang!' TV, with the ostensible stability and moral

compacts of home life. But whereas the Spooner household is full of

laughably intense jealousies on the part of the husband, Dino's life is

one of easy come, easy go sex. The rub is, of course, that in Kiss Me,

Stupid the two worlds interact and mix: commercialism enters the home,

while the exploited eventually make a nest for themselves on the

proceeds. One of the ironies is that Spooner and Milsap's song writing

team provide the soundtrack for Martin's debaucheries, just as his song

albums have given Zelda her own romantic fantasies (she was once

president of Dino's fan club) and the married woman melts promptly into

his arms as soon as he serenades her. While there is some sorting out

at the end, with some token disapproval by the wife, it is clear that

the message of the film is not warning about the corruption brought by

show business types, or even the disgraceful willingness of some

ordinary folk to be swayed by the glamour. The greatness and maturity

of Wilder's film is that it shows how both sides can make acceptable

accommodation and get along, and without ever compromising

self-respect. Of course the idea that the ideal thing is to live one's

"live-long day and the long, long night" just as needed, and then to

forgive the inevitable, was something hard to find acceptance in early

1960s' America - let alone the thought that relationships could be put

on hold to improve them.

In the light of this one can see how fortuitous it is that Peter

Sellers did not eventually get to play Orville Spooner. While the

comedian would have had a field day with Spooner's psychopathic

jealousy, as well his various quirks, his real life celebrity would

have obscured the film's focus. Walston is enough of an unknown on

screen to suggest the moral confusion of a non-entity desperate for

success, for an audience, contrasting against the heavyweight allure of

Martin. As 'Dino', a few years out from his other best film (Rio

Bravo), the singer is so much at home in his role that one has to pinch

oneself to be reminded that he was actually playing a part. As Polly

the Pistol, "fastest draw in the west," Kim Novak was an inspired

choice. Showing the depth that Hitchcock saw in the actress when he

cast her in Vertigo a few years before, her performance convincingly

portrays the necessary mixture of wistfulness, self-possession and

deprecation that the tart with a heart role here requires.

Lensed in well composed widescreen black and white, and with an

excellent cheap edition available, albeit without extras worth the name

(the region one edition allegedly contains a couple of deleted scenes),

Kiss Me, Stupid is a film made by artists at the peak of their form,

without a dull scene throughout, and I recommended it unreservedly.

This film is far more provocative and outrageous than any "Clockwork Orange" or "Straw Dogs" etc etc ... But more than being simply controversial, this film is a perfect construction, as brilliant in its conceit as say, Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte." The very fact that Dean Martin agreed to parody himself to the extent he does, makes his legacy even greater in my eyes. This film has been referred to as "Pillow Talk" meets "Psycho". I especially love the irony that Ira Gershwin, that great poetic genius of Tin Pan Alley agreed to write some "dumbed down" lyrics for the two amateurs in Climax, Nevada. To my mind, this film is essentially about the decline and fall of popular culture in America. The cheap sentiments expressed in the mediocre fare served up by Waltson and Osmond only heightens the key moment in the film when the one sincere and deeply felt song, "all the live long day and the long, long night" is taken off the market. In other words, it's personal, so it's not for sale. Kim Novak listens to the song just as the American public did with all the great love songs from bygone eras. This scene is my favourite Wilder scene of all time because it epitomises the paradox at the heart of all his best work. That for all the seeming cruelty and insecurity of people's lives, a single gesture can redeem them almost instantly. I'm thinking of when Fred Macmurray prevents Lola's boyfriend from being framed in Double Indemnity. I'm thinking about when Jack Lemmon returns the executive washroom key in "The Apartment". In "Kiss me Stupid", Ray Waltson redeems himself by telling Dean Martin that no amount of money could buy the song from him. It was written for his wife and that's that. Wilder later disowned his own film, probably because he was embarassed by its failure. But for those of us that know, and there aren't many, this is possibly Wilder's greatest, surpassing even The Apartment, Double Indemnity and Ace in the Hole. And if you don't agree, then you can kiss me stupid ...