Wilder for Run-Up to Christmas

Comedy and Serio, or Serio and Comedy?

Holiday picks at random, Witness for the Prosecution and The Apartment, years since seeing either occasion to view both different. Here’s charm of films I adjudge best, none writ better than Billy at his best. The pair can please those not necessarily fans of Wilder, but open to what is well-constructed and entertaining. How many were/are genuinely surprised by outcome of Witness for the Prosecution? I’d guess every mystery trick possible has been played on those who stream “Brit Box” and other dispensaries, no who-done device new to them. Once tipped to solution, encore depends on elements other than where guilt lies and why. Wilder makes returning worthwhile for stars and wit they apply to A. Christie situations he’d enhance, Witness for the Prosecution now more a question of whether Charles Laughton’s Sir Wilfrid Robarts, already hobbled by a recent heart attack, can survive his defense of accused Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power). Everything the barrister does defies medical warning as issued by nurse and constant accompany Elsa Lanchester as “Miss Plimsoll,” a vessel for comedy, but right in all effort to keep this fragile man alive. I hadn’t before paid such mind to that aspect of Witness, being impervious (or thought so) to the character’s health risk for its not being my own. Now I’m nervous for Sir Wilfrid when he sneaks brandy instead of cocoa that should be in his thermos, plus cigars he cadges when Miss Plimsoll isn’t present. This is all in fun, and for youth or fit parties that’s what it is, but what of watchers with their own blood pressure issues (Sir Wilfrid’s is 240 over 130, which Ann described as “stroke value”). Witness suspense becomes less acquitting the accused than Sir Wilfrid dropping dead in the courtroom.

For sake of humor too, this poor man is essentially condemned to death. What follows a twist ending is Sir Wilfrid confronting another capitol trial which he must engage immediately, having been an eye witness to the crime and thus more intensely engaged even than before. What’s worse, Miss Plimsoll tosses caution to the wind, cancels his vacation to Bermuda, and all but endorses brandy as continued relaxant, the patient on realist terms sacrificed to fulfilling his high-stress obligation, acceptable because he is Sir Wilfrid and no one can do his job better. How many individuals have we known who ceded their health to duty’s slow drip toward oblivion? So many ignore warnings because after all they have to work, or they enjoy status work confers, whatever makes one value occupation over continued life. I realize Witness for the Prosecution is entertainment, not to be confronted on life’s own terms, so blame Charles Laughton’s brilliant performance for invest of my emotion. I worry for him, knowing he triumphs for now, but what of price he'll pay for embarking upon another high-stress murder trial? Wouldn’t matter but for my knowing plenty who went a bridge too far for hyper-tension not being their hyper-concern. Footnote re ghost at Sir Wilfrid’s banquet: Tyrone Power had heart disease in his line, Power the elder dead at sixty-two in his son’s arms (1931) when young Ty was seventeen. Power’s last was Witness for the Prosecution, him gone with a heart attack a following year on the set of Solomon and Sheba, age forty-four. Ty’s intense performing as Leonard Vole seems basis for worry that the actor should himself slow down. Irony is Power had a check-up, got a clean bill, and did a TV ad for the Heart Association right before reporting for Solomon.

Watching The Apartment again and, like before, I think J.J. Baxter sort of gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop, to quote SLIH’s Sugar Kane. S. MacLaine as Fran Kubelik asks at midpoint why she can never fall in love with nice guys like Baxter, question pointed to him and tip-off she will never really love him, her settling at the end more result of realizing Fred MacMurray's Jeff Sheldrake is a hopeless cause, him no more willing to marry her after separating from his wife than before. Impression is he will return to home, hearth, and children once chill from having been caught wears off. Relationships in The Apartment are transactional, reason why its story shocked many in 1960. Baxter loans his residence for assignations to grease promotion he hopes to get for doing so. But for likeable Jack Lemmon, would audiences have accepted Baxter for a hero and identification figure? (imagine C.C. Baxter played by Ray Danton) Sheldrake is at least honest in his way and does repay Baxter for the apartment key he shares, being sole higher-up who keeps his bargain. If not for Fran to complicate their exchange, the two men would have a mutually beneficial arrangement neither would have reason to regret. I wonder if same sort of negotiating went on between bosses and subordinates in NY’s concrete jungle of the fifties. Sheldrake wants what he wants, sees a way of getting it, and delivers on promises to Baxter. He shares technique for handling women to Baxter which I suspect in real life would bond the pair, only in this instance when he asks, “Is that fair?” with regards a mistress who wants status of a wife, Baxter replies that no it isn’t, “especially to the wife,” a remark most men would not appreciate coming from another man they are confiding to.

For a man of many affairs, Sheldrake makes woeful mistake of keeping a personal secretary around who he earlier (by years) seduced and subsequently jettisoned. This seems to me like hanging onto a hand grenade with the pin loose. Does Jeff not realize “Miss Olsen” will take any opportunity to even up an old score? After she does so by telling Fran of his past indiscretions, Jeff foolishly fires her, and right away she phones his wife to spill the works. And here we were thinking Sheldrake had good sense, at least for keeping a lid on mistresses new and/or discarded, let alone a wife they all would have easy access to. MacLaine as Fran tells Baxter at one point that she will call Mrs. Sheldrake and claim the woman’s errant husband for her own. Amusing is fact MacLaine herself made such contact with Mrs. Robert Mitchum during an affair the actress had with roving-eye Bob. Mrs. Mitchum explained to Shirley what a fool she was to imagine he would leave his family for company so fleeting as hers. Life imitating art. Did Ms. MacLaine note the Apartment parallel? Both Kubelik and Baxter get a kind of comeuppance for ending up together, him in still begging posture (“I absolutely adore you”), her replying he should “shut up and deal,” this to read as happy ending though I do not find it so. If Jack/C.C. has in effect been pimping for married men, at least five within the firm we know of, Fran enabling Sheldrake’s adultery, aren’t they dealing one another a hand that is empty marriage, her with a man now unemployed and without prospect, him with a woman who only scenes ago said she still loved the cad who caused her to attempt suicide? If argument is to be made that Billy Wilder was cynical, then The Apartment might function as Exhibit A to support it.

Much more Witness For the Prosecution, release, promotion, reception, etc. from Greenbriar (9/28/2008) HERE. Also Wilder's winning streak with United Artists HERE.