The Odd Couple (1968, Gene Saks)

Even when The Odd Couple plods, it never feels stagey, which is impressive since it’s from a stage play (Neil Simon adapted his own play), it mostly takes place in the same location, and many of those sequences are just stars Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon following each other around and bickering. The one thing director Saks can do—the one thing he can reliably do—is not make the movie stagey.

Thank goodness.

While Saks doesn’t bring much to the film, his hands-off direction isn’t really a problem. Couple just doesn’t have a story. It’s got a setup—the film opens with a suicidal Lemmon roaming the streets of New York, trying to work up the courage to kill himself. He then ends up at poker bestie Matthau’s Friday night game, where all the fellows (Matthau, John Fielder, Herb Edelman, David Sheiner, Larry Haines) know Lemmon’s marriage has broken up, and he’s at least told the wife he’s going to kill himself. So it’s a lengthy first act, with lots of laughs (once we’re in the apartment, anyway).

Matthau offers to take Lemmon in, and we’ve got a movie. Matthau is a slob with a broken refrigerator and mold, while Lemmon is a neat freak who loves to cook. They’re perfect for one another. Then, they spend the movie getting on one another’s nerves.

Sort of.

Lemmon gets on Matthau’s nerves, and we hear in exposition about how Matthau gets on Lemmon’s nerves, but it’s not until Lemmon screws up Matthau’s double date night things start getting really bad. The film ostensibly takes place over three weeks, starting with the opening night, except all the days in the second and third acts are consecutive. And they’re not a week. Also there seem to be two Fridays very close to one another (the poker game is every Friday).

Since Lemmon’s the nuisance in the film, even with his top-billing, Matthau’s the star. They share the scenes together well, but Matthau’s the one who wants to meet girls (Monica Evans and Carole Shelley are two British divorcees who just happen to like much older American men), has work subplots, divorced dad subplots. Lemmon just cooks, cleans, and whines. His estranged wife and children don’t appear, though (especially given some details in the second act) they should; he doesn’t go to work (we don’t even find out his job until late second act). Lemmon’s just there to set up jokes and gags. At times, Matthau seems overwhelmed and frustrated to be the only one with anything to do—even when he’s processing his separation, Lemmon’s just got bits, no substance. Simon isn’t doing a character study or juxtaposition of divorced late-sixties men; he’s doing a situation comedy without many situations.

The acting’s all more than solid. Matthau’s got some great moments, Lemmon some good ones (then others where he hits the ceiling on how far Simon’s taking the character development), and the supporting cast is fun. Fiedler, in particular.

Technically, it’s also solid. Robert B. Hauser’s photography is competent without ever being particularly impressive—though Odd Couple’s got a wide Panavision aspect ratio so Saks can fit all the actors in a full shot, which should make it stagey, but, again, never does. Maybe it’s Hauser.

Great theme from Neal Hefti.

The Odd Couple’s funny, charming, and only terribly dated a couple times. It just doesn’t really go anywhere.

This post is part of the Mismatched Couples Blogathon hosted by Barry of Cinematic Catharsis and Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews.

A Tattered Web (1971, Paul Wendkos)

For its sub-genre of TV movie, A Tattered Web is pretty great. It’s a dirty cop story, only the dirty cop—Lloyd Bridges—is only a dirty cop because he’s trying to protect himself from a murder change and he’s only trying to protect himself from a murder charge so he doesn’t upset his daughter (Sallie Shockley). See, Bridges only killed this woman Anne Helm because Helm was sleeping with Shockley’s husband, Frank Converse. And Bridges didn’t even mean to kill her, he was just shoving her against the wall and, boom, somehow killed her. It was an accident. And Bridges was really about to call it in before he realized he didn’t want to go to prison; even if he got a jury sympathetic to the manslaughter nature of it… Bridges was there to harass Helm for sleeping with Converse. He was abusing his authority big time. And Web is from the early seventies so theoretically he might get in trouble for it.

So the movie is Bridges trying to stay ahead of his partner, a better than his material Murray Hamilton, while trying to convince Converse there’s another murderer—because the cops are after Converse because he’s the lover—and trying to make sure Shockley doesn’t find out about Converse and Helm. There’s always a lot going on in Tattered Web; it’s got a great pace.

It’s also got a rather strong script. There are a lot of narrative shortcuts and whatnot—it’s a seventy-some minute TV movie, after all—but writer Art Wallace still takes the time to have Bridges, now fully conspiring with Converse and framing an innocent man (Broderick Crawford), there’s still this scene where Bridges just gleefully watches Converse get his ass kicked. Even though the subplot doesn’t do much for the story, Web does have this one about Bridges becoming a violence junkie. It’s not great, writing or acting, but it’s weird and imaginative and you can cut it some slack. It’s nice Wallace cares enough to do character development, which isn’t just for Bridges.

Though Bridges also has this great one about the self-loathing his cover-up is causing. There’s visible pain in Bridges’s face when he manipulates Crawford. It’s often a good performance; Bridges isn’t phoning it in. He gets carried away but only slightly. If he doesn’t rein it in himself, it’s like the film’s Converse standing by to pull Bridges back.

Converse gives the best performance. It takes him a while to get going—as he’s doing more dick things at the beginning—but then he starts getting actually good. Shockley you wish was better because she’s clearly capable of it (she pulls off the weird infantilizing interrogation scene she has with Hamilton), but she gets abandoned for the end.

The end is a drag down fist fight on cliffs overlooking the Pacific. There’s no room for girls there, just the men who have to prove themselves. It’s a poorly done action scene—Bridges’s stunt man has brown hair versus blond—but it’s a great idea in the narrative.

A Tattered Web is all right.