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Crickets for Wilder's second masterpiece..

I hope people are trying to fit this one in before lists are due rather than ignoring it entirely (clearly enough people have some interest since it was voted in for this film club!) I'll repost my thoughts from the list project thread and see if we can get a discussion going. Thanks to Drucker for doing a writeup, even though it didn't win the first round!

therewillbeblus wrote: Sat Apr 25, 2020 4:56 am

Irma la Douce

This may not be Wilder's most perfect film, but a revisit only reinforces that it is every bit as intelligent, brave, and inspired. The opening minutes incorporate Wilder’s best strengths into a series of eclectic pitch-black gags, from the paradox of playful innocent manipulation, to voiceover narration making dry jokes about suicide as we get a tour of Paris, to a pimp’s violence transitioning indiscriminately across patrons. This sets up a risqué fairy tale that finds comedy and drama interchangeably connected, a challenging blend Wilder has always sought and rarely found with so much consistency. This time out he ups the ante in perversity, and part of the allure is how bold an undertaking it is to not only tackle, but stew in the subject matter, and then turn it into a lengthy opus that fulfills the beats of a 50s era musical drama while unapologetically attacking moral rigidity. Wilder already used daring premises in the past, including his best film, but here he destroys ideology and social norms with a wrecking ball, normalizing the truth beneath these constructed facades, and allowing Lemmon’s protagonist to be the naive square who must open his eyes to the shades of grey in this eye-popping colorful milieu of beautiful artifice.

Speaking of the art design, the film is bursting with color, and carries a vibrancy that - as domino says - appears to be on the brink of breaking into a Minnelli or Demy musical. Of course it was adapted from a French musical, and still has an enchanting score to elevate its spirit into the heavens. Though what makes it fall in suit with the familiar aura is the audacity breathing into every frame of the film, so confident in its execution that it’s challenging to divert attention between the strengths of the mile-a-minute gags and the strengths of the fearlessly stunning content. The momentum is compulsively digestible and exhausting, sometimes carrying several handfuls of diverse ideas at once (for example, the early prostitute roundup scene is like if Hawks directed Tati in a spitfire comedy), and while the film functions as a drama in framework, it’s just as much of a screwball comedy. The second half of the film uses Shakespearean disguise antics that are silly and touching, another example of the familiar theatrical arcs twisted to an eccentric lot that might as well be another planet.

Lemmon and MacLaine are such oddball characters to counter the strikingly normal folks in The Apartment, but Wilder is able to locate similar cores in humanity and illustrate the opportunities in self-actualization through sacrificing judgment and joining in that simple emotional energy. The overarching joke is that, while personal development is nothing new, in this case the flexibility Lemmon must initiate is to disregard socially accepted morals on top of one’s defective ego, with a peripheral expansion landing in a space few feel comfortable going let alone accept as truth! Of course Lemmon is a good guy, but he’s the outlier, and even if having a conscience is celebrated, Wilder sides with the rest of the community that if that conscience comes at the expense of participating in the world as it is you can’t make it any better, or see what it has to give.

This is, above all else, a very sweet film, and mimics The Apartment more than a little in this domain. The tonal balance has never been done better, except maybe in that film, and it really is a marvel that anyone can pull off this many moods, visual ideas, and layered verbal webs of seemingly every emotion flowing throughout a given scene. This is Wilder at his best, and why he’s so beloved, because in the few occasions that he can lock his talents in place, pulsating explosions of all the strengths of cinema are born, die, and are born again, over and over in rapid succession like a reincarnated line of inventions picked up and tossed aside by a genius at work. This film holds this manic process under a tender, cohesive umbrella of atmosphere and compassion to flaunt its wry dialogue, inspired sight gags, lavish setpieces, and dark social unveilings that we must accept along the way.

Early on the bartender tells Lemmon that he’s an honest man in a dishonest world. I think Wilder sees this “dishonest” world as one side of the honesty we need to acknowledge and cope with in order to find the humility necessary to live life on life’s terms. Through self-compromise, empathy, suffering, and a lot of laughter, we can learn to see the colors and the grey, which holds a whole new variety of elevated hues. Wilder sees these colors, and it’s a shame I don’t love him more because we speak the same language, but I’m incredibly grateful that he made at least two movies that I adore so much they soar above most courageous efforts that attempt the same collage of design. After deconstructing norms and allowing his characters to grow, Wilder even rebuilds the walls to accept various ideologies too, suggesting that the key to life isn't any kind of revolutionary nihilism but elasticity in attitude.

How can someone slow their own pandemonium down to access deep insight and sentiment whilst appropriately interrupting such revelations to impulsively drop jokes without feeling forced or unwelcome? I don't know, but I also don't know how he did this in The Apartment, so I'll just continue to admire this massive recontextualization of the musical, silent slapstick, quick-witted screwball, stage drama, romance-adventure epic, a few surprise genres, and moviemaking in general. Hopefully people check this one out and I pray you can see what I do.

I'm mostly curious, for those who do enjoy it, why? Do you feel this is as broad-ranging and bold as I do? Do some parts work more than others (I know, for instance, Drucker didn't love the screwball prostitute round-up)? For those who couldn't see the fairy-tale (or fable) allusions in Ace in the Hole, do you see them here?

Even though I cannot say this is better than The Apartment, for me this is the one instance where Wilder's insane ambitions to have his cake and eat it too were pulled off perfectly. This would not be the first or last time that he audaciously reached for every mood, idea, and satirical target, and proceeded to wring them dry, but in all its scattered logic, a beautiful, wild picture was produced. For those that do not enjoy it, I'm also curious as to why - though I think it's a dangerous gamble and I can appreciate why folks would run the other direction (just as I cannot stand some/most of his other attempts at doing what he does here).

Thematically, I'm interested in how people view Wilder's worldview in the context of this film, which I expressed in my second-to-last paragraph about his exchange with the bartender.

therewillbeblus wrote: Fri May 29, 2020 10:48 pm Crickets for Wilder's second masterpiece..

Irma la Douce was one of the late Wilders I had yet to see prior to this project, and while I didn't like it quite as much as you did — he has three masterpieces as a director, as far as I'm concerned, and this is a tier or two below those — it'll certainly make my list.

While linking Irma to The Apartment is understandable and probably unavoidable given the leads, I actually saw this as more connected to (and a corrective to) Some Like It Hot — which I still regard highly enough, for all of its flaws, to place within a spot or two of this one way or the other on my list.

One of my problems with Hot is that Monroe's character is too naive and unwitting a participant/victim of the male protagonists' deceptions, while most of WIlder's best features put all of his main characters on more or less equal footing — even and especially when they are using that footing to deceive, undermine, and double-cross each other. For all the ways it is more subversive and risqué than its more well-known predecessor, Irma uses a near-identical plot device to invert the somewhat uncomfortable sexual dynamics of Hot into something stranger and sweeter — MacLaine, like Monroe, is deceived by a man adopting an absurd accent and pretending to be extremely wealthy — but instead of unwittingly duping her into sex with the main character, Lemmon's Nestor uses the deception to get her to have less sex (with him and others), and is even willing to pretend he's happy to raise someone else's child! MacLaine's Irma embodies such a strong sense of independence (paradoxically, considering the movie centers around her relationships with her pimps) and her comfort with herself and ownership of her lifestyle stands in contrast to Monroe's constant negging of herself in Hot. There's something that seems less leering about Wilder's treatment of MacLaine — even in shots where she's undressing for customers or posing in a nearly transparent green negligee against afternoon light streaming through a window — than many similar moments with Monroe in the earlier film, keeping the sexual charge in Irma high without letting it take on less pleasant undertones as often.

If I have an issue with Irma, it's that the farcical fantasy of convoluted misunderstandings and layered lies are dragged out to a point that becomes a little frustrating in the demands it places on the characters, as Nestor's refusal to admit to inventing Lord X extends to ultimately being violent with Irma and letting himself be sentenced to prison. But these issues are outweighed by the many delightful elements of the film, particularly the film's montages — Irma inventing life stories to boost her tips and Nestor working himself nearly to death at multiple jobs in the food market — and the script's steady flow of innuendo and wry suggestion.

Thanks for that perspective, DI - I agree that Wilder and MacLaine avoid any condescension of worth by her self-actualized attitude, which I actually think makes those Lemmon/Lord X deceptions work. Similar to how her deadpan confidence milks her customers of their dough, Lemmon's attempts to deceive her fail, and so his predicament is one where he feels he must continue to up the ante and thus burns the candle at both ends. Lemmon's confrontation turning violent is a powerful scene because it shows how emasculated he is from having an honest conversation with the woman he loves (!) and admitting his weakness in financial insecurity is an action too vulnerable for his cushy dream-tinted glasses to allow.

Lemmon's conversation with the barman early on indicates just how little he understands, and therefore does not accept, in this grey world. MacLaine does accept this, and lives life on life's terms. She would engage in this conversation with Lemmon if he was open about his insecurities and shared those raw emotions. Yet because he cannot accept life as a compromise, he fights tooth and nail to keep a color-coated version of it, including playing dress-up and keeping up a fantastical theatric to avoid a conscious contact with that brutal truth, which erupts from him in violence when he cannot keep it down anymore. I think his transformation into completely changing worldviews warrants a long journey, but I think I just read that entire lengthy chapter as one of gradual evolution into realism through fantasy, also mirroring as an absurdist situational 'digging-a-deeper-grave' joke to keep the balance.

On second view, I went from begrudging appreciation to mostly bemused enjoyment. It's a visual delight with some great performances, but some of the comedy is still too broad for my taste—most of the "mec" characters/scenes—and it gets a little off its spin in the last 45 minutes or so. I'm with DI that the convolutions are a little too convoluted: Nestor didn't/couldn't just walk out of the river as Lord X immediately, because he believed the bartender's ploy, because the narrative needed a few months to pass so Irma could show as pregnant, because Nestor had to agree to raise the child that "wasn't his," because jealousy, because, because... but by this point, all of those emotional and moral developments feel academic and I'm just impatient for the happy reunion.

One moment that did strike me this time was when Irma summarily moves Nestor into her apartment, thinking it's clear what that means and what he's agreeing to; as he's settling in he starts talking about getting a job and Irma's face just craters. It's a beautiful and surprising contrast of what's implicit in their wholly distinct moralities, and the movie doesn't get much more poignant, emotionally and morally, than in that moment. But overall, the cinematic and moral and emotional depths it plums don't feel to me as profound as all that—once you're past the sex work, it all feels relatively safe compared to what's going on in Sunset Blvd. or The Apartment, really. The rest of it here feels fairly surface-level. Akin to my reaction to Kiss Me, Stupid, I at least imagine I have a sense of how this all would've played contemporaneously, but what's provocative about it is provoking a morality that is a lot more conservative than mine. While I certainly wouldn't say it's simplistic about the less-common emotional and moral stances it's exploring, its exploration doesn't provoke me the way—to pull two from the air without too much consideration—Baby Face or The Palm Beach Story still can.

And if it's a de-musicaled musical, I'm missing the full tilt into unreality that would come with breaking into song and dance. Which admittedly feels a little absurd to say, because the whole thing is so extremely stylized and the pitch of the disguise plot, especially after the "murder," is certainly in the same ballpark of unreality as breaking out into song and dance. But the lack of that large-scale "alternate reality" aspect kinda means that, for me, it doesn't go far enough to make me want to go along with it as far as it does. I think the paddy wagon ride—which I love—gives a great idea of what it could have done with that kind of energy, but it just whet my appetite for something it didn't and otherwise wasn't trying to deliver.

So, ultimately, I'm happy to move this from the "meh" category to "warm regards," but its reevaluation isn't causing any consternation for my list project.

I think your expectations for comparing this to a musical are oddly rigid, but I guess I see this as a kind of anti-musical and by that I don't mean in the obvious exclusion of song and dance. The expressiveness does not manifest in breaks from reality; but rather the suppression of expressiveness, as I outlined in a previous post, instead causes attention to focus on antics like barfighting, dress-up in corporeal fable role-playing, and even stuff like the paddy-wagon ride. With no safe outlet to express himself, not even a musical- which this film deprives him of- Lemmon turns to other shenanigans that are still colorful explosions of expressiveness existing in between fantasy and reality. Gestures may not depart from 'reality' so much as stew and bubble-up in other spaces, through that block of catharsis from traditional musical outlets, as well as from Lemmon's own inability to break from his worldview to greet his uncomfortable emotions and access them. I always wonder- if he could access a more realistic viewpoint, maybe the film would actually become a musical.

senseabove wrote: Sun May 31, 2020 8:56 pm One moment that did strike me this time was when Irma summarily moves Nestor into her apartment, thinking it's clear what that means and what he's agreeing to; as he's settling in he starts talking about getting a job and Irma's face just craters. It's a beautiful and surprising contrast of what's implicit in their wholly distinct moralities, and the movie doesn't get much more poignant, emotionally and morally, than in that moment. But overall, the cinematic and moral and emotional depths it plums don't feel to me as profound as all that—once you're past the sex work, it all feels relatively safe compared to what's going on in Sunset Blvd. or The Apartment, really. The rest of it here feels fairly surface-level. Akin to my reaction to Kiss Me, Stupid, I at least imagine I have a sense of how this all would've played contemporaneously, but what's provocative about it is provoking a morality that is a lot more conservative than mine. While I certainly wouldn't say it's simplistic about the less-common emotional and moral stances it's exploring, its exploration doesn't provoke me the way—to pull two from the air without too much consideration—Baby Face or The Palm Beach Story still can.

I'm confused by what you mean by these films "provoking a morality that is a lot more conservative than mine"? You may disagree with my reading which argues how this is in no way surface level, but I don't hear a clear explanation for what you see as 'surface level' or conservative, or even an argument to counter that point. I also have no idea what distinctive "morality" either this film or Kiss Me, Stupid is provoking. I see how Irma la Douce is provoking the idea of rigid morality (though it's more ethics and ideology than a moral), but as a vessel for exploring Lemmon's strains with engaging with the world on its grey terms. I can get behind Lemmon's 'traditionalist' worldview as one that is conservative and therefore perhaps unrelatable (I'm -perhaps incorrectly- assuming that's what you're referring to), but the process of abandoning expectations and going to a space that challenges those expectations is a universal human experience, just as is his self-conscious suppression of confrontation that leads to a physical explosion.

Now, I'm not saying that I've ever held feelings in for so long that I've impulsively become violent, but what child, adolescent, and even adult, hasn't kept certain emotions/wants/needs buried away out of fear, only to become reactive in a different way, due to a lack of willingness to engage with them, acceptance of the dissonance between them and the external milieu, and a lack of self-actualization. This isn't something to be ashamed of, but a journey most if not all people engage in by the nature of existing in a world that doesn't play by their innately skewed views, and it's something most people have to work at every day in some way or another. In that sense, I don't see anything conservative about the more general processes being acknowledged here. And, though this is not the thread for it, we must have viewed Kiss Me, Stupid even more differently than I already thought, because the idea that this was provoking a morality is something I cannot see. Again, similar to this and most of Wilder's work, it's preying on a universal human reaction, in this case jealousy and paranoia from comparing oneself to other people - perhaps through disrupting 50s fixed ideological comforts (but then you'd have to throw away melodramas and other sex comedies too) but getting at a human truth that still exists today, and always will.

My impressions of Wilder are that he understands the challenge between human beings' ideological or moral holds (which are, on some level, healthy mechanisms to grasp onto in a world so outside of our control) and surrendering their solipsistic defenses to coexist with humility, two extremes that struggle to find a middle ground, which is his idea of life's joke - and one I can identify with. I think that if I saw Wilder's interests as limited to specific views he would not only be of zero interest to me, but I don't think he would be celebrated the way he is either because all his films would be dated and unrelateable. But just like he digs into human nature in Ace in the Hole in a universal, timeless way, he does the same in his comedies - even if he wisely uses the superficial exteriors of the current era's anxiety to demonstrate his points.

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun May 31, 2020 10:39 pm I think your expectations for comparing this to a musical are oddly rigid, but...

Spoiler

I guess I see this as a kind of anti-musical and by that I don't mean in the obvious exclusion of song and dance. The expressiveness does not manifest in breaks from reality; but rather the suppression of expressiveness, as I outlined in a previous post, instead causes attention to focus on antics like barfighting, dress-up in corporeal fable role-playing, and even stuff like the paddy-wagon ride. With no safe outlet to express himself, not even a musical- which this film deprives him of- Lemmon turns to other shenanigans that are still colorful explosions of expressiveness existing in between fantasy and reality. Gestures may not depart from 'reality' so much as stew and bubble-up in other spaces, through that block of catharsis from traditional musical outlets, as well as from Lemmon's own inability to break from his worldview to greet his uncomfortable emotions and access them. I always wonder- if he could access a more realistic viewpoint, maybe the film would actually become a musical.

I wouldn't say I was expecting it to be a musical. I mostly meant that the suggestion to "watch it like a musical with all the musical parts cut out" in the List thread did make me appreciate it more, in that some elements that were puzzling last watch clicked this time, but it also made it feel like parts of it had been excised, and now I see hints of what it might have looked like with those parts left in, e.g. in the police van sequence, when the prostitutes mock Nestor via song, then sing a quiet, ribbing reprise as he returns to the neighborhood. And...um...if I'm understanding the rest of your point, I already caveated my observation with that point? I said: '[that] admittedly feels a little absurd to say, because the whole thing is so extremely stylized and the pitch of the disguise plot, especially after the "murder," is certainly in the same ballpark of unreality as breaking out into song and dance.' I'm just saying I wanted that full tilt into unreality to be more pervasive than in Jack Lemmon's character (and maybe the rushed climax of the Lord X plot). Sure, it's present in the barfight scene, as well as the heightened stylization, the exaggerated color scheme, etc. but...I guess what you're describing as a suppression of the expressive musical urge and the return of that repressed, wasn't apparent or wasn't successful as a formal or narrative tactic for me.

I'm confused by what you mean by these films "provoking a morality that is a lot more conservative than mine"? You may disagree...

Spoiler

with my reading which argues how this is in no way surface level, but I don't hear a clear explanation for what you see as 'surface level' or conservative, or even an argument to counter that point. I also have no idea what distinctive "morality" either this film or Kiss Me, Stupid is provoking. I see how Irma la Douce is provoking the idea of rigid morality (though it's more ethics and ideology than a moral), but as a vessel for exploring Lemmon's strains with engaging with the world on its grey terms. I can get behind Lemmon's 'traditionalist' worldview as one that is conservative and therefore perhaps unrelatable (I'm -perhaps incorrectly- assuming that's what you're referring to), but the process of abandoning expectations and going to a space that challenges those expectations is a universal human experience, just as is his self-conscious suppression of confrontation that leads to a physical explosion.

Now, I'm not saying that I've ever held feelings in for so long that I've impulsively become violent, but what child, adolescent, and even adult, hasn't kept certain emotions/wants/needs buried away out of fear, only to become reactive in a different way, due to a lack of willingness to engage with them, acceptance of the dissonance between them and the external milieu, and a lack of self-actualization. This isn't something to be ashamed of, but a journey most if not all people engage in by the nature of existing in a world that doesn't play by their innately skewed views, and it's something most people have to work at every day in some way or another. In that sense, I don't see anything conservative about the more general processes being acknowledged here. And, though this is not the thread for it, we must have viewed Kiss Me, Stupid even more differently than I already thought, because the idea that this was provoking a morality is something I cannot see. Again, similar to this and most of Wilder's work, it's preying on a universal human reaction, in this case jealousy and paranoia from comparing oneself to other people - perhaps through disrupting 50s fixed ideological comforts (but then you'd have to throw away melodramas and other sex comedies too) but getting at a human truth that still exists today, and always will.

My impressions of Wilder are that he understands the challenge between human beings' ideological or moral holds (which are, on some level, healthy mechanisms to grasp onto in a world so outside of our control) and surrendering their solipsistic defenses to coexist with humility, two extremes that struggle to find a middle ground, which is his idea of life's joke - and one I can identify with. I think that if I saw Wilder's interests as limited to specific views he would not only be of zero interest to me, but I don't think he would be celebrated the way he is either because all his films would be dated and unrelateable. But just like he digs into human nature in Ace in the Hole in a universal, timeless way, he does the same in his comedies - even if he wisely uses the superficial exteriors of the current era's anxiety to demonstrate his points.

I thiiiink you've misunderstood my use of "provoking"? But I'm not sure I fully understand how you're using it here, either... So I'll put it this way: I don't think Wilder is promoting a conservative morality through the movie. I think he is antagonizing the more prevalent conservative morality of contemporary viewers. And I think that kind of teasing is a fundamental motivation for many elements in both Irma and Kiss Me, Stupid, and for me it's a weak and uninteresting one.

And yes, those things are all, to varying degrees, universally human. That doesn't mean I find every instance of them profound or even interesting, and I don't "have to throw away melodramas" just because sometimes I do find some element compelling and sometimes I don't. The jealousy of Kiss Me, Stupid, for example, is something I find off-puttingly ridiculous. I don't find Orville's jealousy the slightest bit amusing, endearing, entertaining, engaging, interesting, or any other reaction I could construe as a positive experience for me as a viewer. And as a reminder, I'm one of those people who thinks Ace is every single one of Wilder's worst tendencies bundled together and amplified to an ear-piercing volume, so you citing it as "universal" and "timeless" is kinda proving my point here. I feel about Ace the way dom feels about One, Two, Three. For me, the only thing timeless about it has been it's place on my long list for the Auteur thread: dead last (until Buddy Buddy bumped it to second-to-last, at least...).

senseabove wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 12:19 am

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun May 31, 2020 10:39 pm I think your expectations for comparing this to a musical are oddly rigid, but...

Spoiler

I guess I see this as a kind of anti-musical and by that I don't mean in the obvious exclusion of song and dance. The expressiveness does not manifest in breaks from reality; but rather the suppression of expressiveness, as I outlined in a previous post, instead causes attention to focus on antics like barfighting, dress-up in corporeal fable role-playing, and even stuff like the paddy-wagon ride. With no safe outlet to express himself, not even a musical- which this film deprives him of- Lemmon turns to other shenanigans that are still colorful explosions of expressiveness existing in between fantasy and reality. Gestures may not depart from 'reality' so much as stew and bubble-up in other spaces, through that block of catharsis from traditional musical outlets, as well as from Lemmon's own inability to break from his worldview to greet his uncomfortable emotions and access them. I always wonder- if he could access a more realistic viewpoint, maybe the film would actually become a musical.

I wouldn't say I was expecting it to be a musical. I mostly meant that the suggestion to "watch it like a musical with all the musical parts cut out" in the List thread did make me appreciate it more, in that some elements that were puzzling last watch clicked this time, but it also made it feel like parts of it had been excised, and now I see hints of what it might have looked like with those parts left in, e.g. in the police van sequence, when the prostitutes mock Nestor via song, then sing a quiet, ribbing reprise as he returns to the neighborhood. And...um...if I'm understanding the rest of your point, I already caveated my observation with that point? I said: '[that] admittedly feels a little absurd to say, because the whole thing is so extremely stylized and the pitch of the disguise plot, especially after the "murder," is certainly in the same ballpark of unreality as breaking out into song and dance.' I'm just saying I wanted that full tilt into unreality to be more pervasive than in Jack Lemmon's character (and maybe the rushed climax of the Lord X plot). Sure, it's present in the barfight scene, as well as the heightened stylization, the exaggerated color scheme, etc. but...I guess what you're describing as a suppression of the expressive musical urge and the return of that repressed, wasn't apparent or wasn't successful as a formal or narrative tactic for me.

I meant expectations for what a musical is, and therefore how this could be read as a musical without the music, but I did not mean to negate your points. Rather I was trying to initiate a flexibility in a new reading (that I, nor anyone else I don't think, has mentioned) that sees those very points as ways the "suppression of the expressive musical urges" come out, but not in the 'right' places (for either a musical or for there to be harmony between the characters), which would be that of actual, direct self-expression. My post was not intending to invalidate your opinion, but to offer a way where those very points (that I agree with) can be viewed in a different lens of anti-musical than the ones we, myself included, have been. It's a reading I only developed through discussion and continued reflection, so it's not something that was "apparent" or "successful" for me either, but that doesn't mean it's not worth considering in hindsight just because it didn't read that way in the moment..

senseabove wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 12:19 am

I'm confused by what you mean by these films "provoking a morality that is a lot more conservative than mine"? You may disagree...

Spoiler

with my reading which argues how this is in no way surface level, but I don't hear a clear explanation for what you see as 'surface level' or conservative, or even an argument to counter that point. I also have no idea what distinctive "morality" either this film or Kiss Me, Stupid is provoking. I see how Irma la Douce is provoking the idea of rigid morality (though it's more ethics and ideology than a moral), but as a vessel for exploring Lemmon's strains with engaging with the world on its grey terms. I can get behind Lemmon's 'traditionalist' worldview as one that is conservative and therefore perhaps unrelatable (I'm -perhaps incorrectly- assuming that's what you're referring to), but the process of abandoning expectations and going to a space that challenges those expectations is a universal human experience, just as is his self-conscious suppression of confrontation that leads to a physical explosion.

Now, I'm not saying that I've ever held feelings in for so long that I've impulsively become violent, but what child, adolescent, and even adult, hasn't kept certain emotions/wants/needs buried away out of fear, only to become reactive in a different way, due to a lack of willingness to engage with them, acceptance of the dissonance between them and the external milieu, and a lack of self-actualization. This isn't something to be ashamed of, but a journey most if not all people engage in by the nature of existing in a world that doesn't play by their innately skewed views, and it's something most people have to work at every day in some way or another. In that sense, I don't see anything conservative about the more general processes being acknowledged here. And, though this is not the thread for it, we must have viewed Kiss Me, Stupid even more differently than I already thought, because the idea that this was provoking a morality is something I cannot see. Again, similar to this and most of Wilder's work, it's preying on a universal human reaction, in this case jealousy and paranoia from comparing oneself to other people - perhaps through disrupting 50s fixed ideological comforts (but then you'd have to throw away melodramas and other sex comedies too) but getting at a human truth that still exists today, and always will.

My impressions of Wilder are that he understands the challenge between human beings' ideological or moral holds (which are, on some level, healthy mechanisms to grasp onto in a world so outside of our control) and surrendering their solipsistic defenses to coexist with humility, two extremes that struggle to find a middle ground, which is his idea of life's joke - and one I can identify with. I think that if I saw Wilder's interests as limited to specific views he would not only be of zero interest to me, but I don't think he would be celebrated the way he is either because all his films would be dated and unrelateable. But just like he digs into human nature in Ace in the Hole in a universal, timeless way, he does the same in his comedies - even if he wisely uses the superficial exteriors of the current era's anxiety to demonstrate his points.

I thiiiink you've misunderstood my use of "provoking"? But I'm not sure I fully understand how you're using it here, either... So I'll put it this way: I don't think Wilder is promoting a conservative morality through the movie. I think he is antagonizing the more prevalent conservative morality of contemporary viewers. And I think that kind of teasing is a fundamental motivation for many elements in both Irma and Kiss Me, Stupid, and for me it's a weak and uninteresting one.

And yes, those things are all, to varying degrees, universally human. That doesn't mean I find every instance of them profound or even interesting, and I don't "have to throw away melodramas" just because sometimes I do find some element compelling and sometimes I don't. The jealousy of Kiss Me, Stupid, for example, is something I find off-puttingly ridiculous. I don't find Orville's jealousy the slightest bit amusing, endearing, entertaining, engaging, interesting, or any other reaction I could construe as a positive experience for me as a viewer. And as a reminder, I'm one of those people who thinks Ace is every single one of Wilder's worst tendencies bundled together and amplified to an ear-piercing volume, so you citing it as "universal" and "timeless" is kinda proving my point here. I feel about Ace the way dom feels about One, Two, Three. For me, the only thing timeless about it has been it's place on my long list for the Auteur thread: dead last (until Buddy Buddy bumped it to second-to-last, at least...).

I think we just have a different process for prioritization when reading these films, which is why I was confused by your post that seemed to focus on a subjective inability or unwillingness to access Wilder's more universal themes of humans struggling in a social world in favor of the surface-level triggers for dissecting those broadly relatable concepts. No, you don't have to be interested by Orville's jealousy, and we all have different things in movies that disturb our interest in accessing their content. What I was attempting to challenge is not your opinion or right to go unprovoked by Wilder's tactics, but to state that "what's provocative about it is provoking a morality that is a lot more conservative than mine" and stop there, doesn't even attempt to get at the deeper provocations, which I felt was a shallow reading of Wilder's intentions. Your interest might stop by the distaste for what you see, but my point is that "what's provocative" about the film is not definitively to "provoke a morality" focally-driven in worth around your or my own subjective assessment, but as digging through that to a deep, universal area of human behavior and social-emotional processing that is deeply uncomfortable for most people (which validates Walston's and Lemmon's core disturbances). I was questioning (honestly, not vindictively) because it appeared you just wanted to disengage with the film once you became put-off, instead of explore, from a different perspective, how it emerges from the specifically detesting details to universally poignant. Your response doesn't make me think any differently, and I can respect that we each read films in very different ways, with different interests - but since I've defended the film along those lines before without a counter-response to that reading, I felt compelled to express it again as it appeared to be swept under the rug related to Wilder's thematic interest as a whole, which I suppose I'm more interested in acknowledging, and even defending, than focusing on what didn't work.

The way I see it, just because something doesn't work doesn't mean it's not worth reading in a greater context of auteurist appreciation, which explains why I went to lengths to search for (and find) merit in One, Two, Three, as well as The Seven-Year Itch (sadly unsuccessfully) rather than write them off completely, even though I was very put-off by both throughout my respective viewings. I understand that I might give some films more rope than they deserve in the eyes of many people here, just as I don't give other films enough rope when others are more impartially charitable (films about addiction, or mental health, are ones around which I often have strong subjective opinions). This isn't a judgement about the character of the writer, so when I say I thought a reading was "shallow," I am not criticizing the reading as being objectively unfair, so much as professing that there is more to be explored of worth beyond those deterring surface qualities, and then defending why they should not be outright dismissed in an attempt to engage in a discussion (this is how I've come to take second-looks at films before, so I feel an obligation to challenge readings here if I think there's more to the picture- even if it doesn't persuade you it may impact someone later on, just as I have been impacted digging through this forum's history).

I guess I don't see how that "proves your point" on Ace in the Hole, as you seem to be reading the surface of my comments and missing my point. I don't adore Ace either, and agree it's got tons of problems and gets too loud which mute the 'universal' truths for this heavy-breathing cynicism (only RV seems to see what I do, so at least I'm not completely alone here). I did not say that Ace in the Hole is "universal" or "timeless" in the way you seem to be alluding to (people liking it?) but that "he digs into human nature in Ace in the Hole in a universal, timeless way" (italicized emphasis new). For all the loud, angry, fluff on the surface of that film, there is a deeper subtle truth of discomfort that I latch onto, and I view it as the same enigmatic dysregulation in human experience that pervades Walston in Kiss Me, Stupid and Lemmon in Irma la Douce. I fail to see how this conflict between emotions pitted against a changing society is not "universal" or "timeless," or how recognizing Wilder's strengths in meditating in that dangerous, nebulous space is equivalent to calling the film itself universal or timeless in its public appreciation, or related to its other, louder qualities, that I agree with you don't work. To me these are mutually exclusive, just like appreciating a film's core principles without respecting every beat on its path to getting there, so I guess all of these points just touch on how we operate differently in our analytical approaches. We also tend to agree on a fair amount of successes and flaws in films, including these, which is worth noting amidst the disagreements.

I think we just have a different process for prioritization when reading these films, which is why I was confused by your post that seemed to focus on a subjective inability or unwillingness to access Wilder's more universal themes of humans struggling in a social world in favor of the surface-level triggers for dissecting those broadly relatable concepts.

Indeed—I rarely feel compelled to run catch the cart I wasn't interested in jumping on when it passed by, even in an auteur list context. This was just an attempt to put down a few paragraphs since I voted in the poll for this one and have been participating in the Wilder thread. There are enough movies I like that I want to write about and never get around to... I rarely have the time, energy, and patience to write through even those as extensively and as often as you do ones you're less than enthusiastic for—I'm an easily-tired, slow, iterative writer with a short memory and a shorter attention span, and my desire, freedom, and will to write coincide too infrequently.

And I'm afraid tonight's one of those nights where they don't, so I'll just say thanks for the considered response and that, as a case in point, I still intend to one day reply to your response about Sweet Smell in the 50s thread but... I haven't yet and that's for a movie I love.