The Tiger and the Pussycat tells the sad tale of forty-five year-old businessman, Vittorio Gassman. He’s just become a grandfather. His college-age son wants to have long hair. All of his wife’s friends are abandoned women; their husbands have run off with younger women. Gassman is dissatisfied. Upon finding his son attempting suicide over a girl (Ann-Margret), Gassman lets the girl seduce him. Him Gassman, not the son.
Hilarity ensues.
Or not.
Mostly it’s just Gassman being a different kind of jerk to people. Initially, he’s a successful jerk–The Tiger–but once Ann-Margret shows up, he’s putty.
The Tiger and the Pussycat runs just over one hundred minutes. It’s never particularly good, never promising. Even though Alessandro D’Eva’s photography is fine, spectacular on occasion, and Marcello Malvestito’s editing is nice, director Risi is so boring there’s never anything to get excited about. Except maybe in comparing how Risi’s male gaze on either tightly or scantily clad Ann-Margret has less enthusiasm than his male gaze on Eleanor Parker (as Gassman’s suffering wife) and her similarly aged friends. At one point, Ann-Margret’s mother has to console Gassman and the film had the closest flirtation with chemistry ever.
But no. Because while Gassman is a caricature, he’s at least an active one. He has some unfortunate slapstick attempts, but otherwise it’s a perfectly fine performance. He’s trapped by the lame script and lame composition, just like the viewer.
Ann-Margret’s bad. Parker’s okay; her part’s terrible, but she’s okay. Fiorenzo Fiorentini is cute as Gassman’s sidekick (the film barely has a supporting cast–Gassman’s the whole show). He carried on with a young woman and ruined his life. The script’s constantly setting up comical examples of why Gassman ought to get serious. That aforementioned “hilarity” ensues after he doesn’t acknowledge any of them.
The film gets a little bit worse at the end, which is sort of too bad because if it had just not gone on and on and on and on in the second half, it might have at least been tolerable. Instead, it’s Risi wasting his cast, Gassman giving a decent enough performance will suffocated by a bad script and a disinterested director, Parker not even having enough material to turn her part into a role, and Ann-Margret being annoying. Yes, the script fails her too–and Risi’s direction of her–but she’s still not good in Tiger and the Pussycat. She’s just not.
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CREDITS
Directed by Dino Risi; screenplay by John O. Douglas, Agnore Incrocci, and Furio Scarpelli, based on a story by Risi, Incrocci, and Scarpelli; director of photography, Alessandro D’Eva; edited by Marcello Malvestito; music by Fred Bongusto; production designer, Luciano Ricceri; produced by Mario Cecchi Gori; released by Titanus.
Starring Vittorio Gassman (Francesco Vincenzini), Ann-Margret (Carolina), Eleanor Parker (Esperia Vincenzini), Fiorenzo Fiorentini (Tazio), Antonella Steni (Pinella), and Luigi Vannucchi (Company president).
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