Retrospective: Wilder, With Lemmon

 A pair of post-peak Billy Wilder pictures:

AVANTI (1972) (A-minus) - Working at a leisurely European summer pace, Billy Wilder riffs for more than two hours, luxuriating not only in the beauty of the island of Ischia but in the banter and natural chemistry between his two stars, Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills, who may have herein invented the modern meet-cute.

Wilder and longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond dampen and space out their usual zingers to dial things down from screwball (see below) to meditative. They unleash the story of a businessman, Wendell Armbruster Jr. (Lemmon), who travels to the small island off the Neapolitan coast to collect the remains of his father, the family company's CEO who died in a car crash during his summer vacation. On the same boat from the mainland is an Englishwoman, Pamela Piggott (Mills), who, coincidentally, is headed to the same luxury hotel to arrange for the return of the body of her mother, who also died in a car crash.

Turns out, his father and her mother had been having an abiding affair and would meet each summer for a month. They had been the toast of the town, beloved by all. Wearing a black armband, the hotel manager, Carlo Carlucci (a fabulous Clive Revill), tends to Wendell's every need and indulgence, as if the son were the father reincarnated. The valet Bruno (Gianfranco Barra) is also quite solicitous, although he has ulterior motives, as he connives to return to America after having gotten kicked out on his first try at immigration.

All of this is elegantly rendered. You will recognize an early template for Wes Anderson (especially "The Grand Budapest Hotel") and Mike White's recent "The White Lotus" -- with their whimsy and banter and fussiness -- but also a profound humanism that echoes the best of Krzysztof Kieslowski's mellow morality plays. It's as if Billy Wilder, in the twilight of his career, has grown downright wistful. He revels in the '70s contrast between hyperactive Americans and the lazy European locals.

Lemmon and Mills are perfectly pitched and matched as the brash rich American and the proper, humble Brit. She has a complex about her weight (barely noticeable to modern audiences), though it's her sweetness that wins him over. They re-create their parents' dinner routine and sunrise swim, and she brings flowers to the morgue when they go identify the bodies. The extended scene at the morgue is a microcosm of all the film's delights. That includes the bureaucrat who stops by to execute the paperwork with the efficiency of a surgeon and the flair of a magician. 

Wendell, as the boorish clod perpetually in a hurry to get back for a funeral in just a few days, is frustrated at every turn, often by someone's extended lunch break. He's the Ugly American at sea in another less accommodating culture. (A running gag has him grimacing every time he sips some muddy coffee.) The plot includes an extortion attempt by the family that owns the vineyard that the car crashed through, causing damages. Wilder is in full command of the remaining plot twists until he has teed up the perfect ending. His stars have charm to burn. And their story, in the end, is quite moving.

IRMA LA DOUCE (1963) (B-minus) - There's screwball and then there's just plain silly. This anachronistic farce from the pre-Beatlemania era is a bizarre throwback to the early days of Hollywood. Billy Wilder re-teams Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine (subbing in after Marilyn Monroe died) from "The Apartment" three years earlier. And while they still have a magical chemistry, this off-key Parisian romp is too nonsensical and too long to survive as any sort of classic.

It also comes with an old-fashioned idiot plot: Lemmon is Nestor, a by-the-book young officer who fails to grasp the art of looking the other way when it comes to gambling and prostitution, and after he predictably loses his job he falls for MacLaine's stylish streetwalker Irma. He then concocts a scheme to keep Irma off the streets by concocting an elaborate disguise as a wealthy Englishman who pays her to be his exclusive consort. Of course, she doesn't recognize him, and wacky hijinks ensue. (Lemmon is a hoot at times as a stereotypical Limey twit.)

Lou Jacobi as a bar owner called Moustache is the ringer here, facilitating Nestor's ruse. (And he is the keeper of the running gag, ending long conversations jags with "But that's another story.") Everything gets jumbled and a little too confusing. Things drag on for nearly two and a half hours. Lemmon and MacLaine are entrancing, as always, but this one dies in a ditch between nostalgia and silliness, between Ziegfeld and the Zucker brothers.

BONUS TRACK

The music from "Avanti" is lovely, with a theme song that calls to mind "You Belong to Me" ("See the pyramids across the isle ..."):