Days of Wine and Roses (1963)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

As Good As It Gets

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Unique roles for Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, usually they act in comedies but this is a solid drama. Together with Charles Bickford, they give three high-acting performances. Especially Lee Remick, she is unrecognizable as a perpetual drunkard. Simple, convincing, credible, realistic, like in real life. But again, watch out, because it's very sad, specially the ending...

Dear Alcoholics, Days of Wine and Roses (1962) is yet another film that portrays us in really bad light. The moronic ex- alcoholic protagonist (played by the great Jack Lemmon) gives up alcohol and goes back to being a square while his intelligent alcoholic wife (the achingly beautiful Lee Remick) does the right thing and walks out on him to continue being an alcoholic.How predictable right? Whats so great about the world that you need to stay sober? Parties without alcohol are the most boring on earth.Most humans are boring or vicious people.Alcohol on the other hand is a nice person. Alcohol never lets you down. Alcohol is always there. Alcohol does not have bad days. Alcohol does not switch off. Alcohol is my best friend. It can be yours too. Mans best friend - alcohol and not smelly dogs. Though dogs are OK. If you want a friend buy a bottle of JD - Godron Geeko.There aren't enough alcoholics in the world.Movies and religious fools portray alcoholics as people who need help. No. It is the non-alcoholics who need help - you with your stupid agendas and your careers and your religions and your stinking rules.How about prohibiting religion and not alcohol? Alcoholics never flew a plane into a building.Alcoholics never dropped nuclear bombs on anyone.If anything, the world needs more alcohol.Many a life has been rendered dull and meaningless due to lack of alcohol.Those dull and hot nights. Those Monday mornings. Those Sunday evenings.Those boring jobs. Those horrible people. All those bad movies.All of this can be endured with a little alcohol.So repeat after me.Alcohol for the whole of humanity.Coming back to the movie, it is not too bad. They do get some things right. Like how the corrupt jobs that decent people have to do attracts them to the bottle. Lee Remick's short speech at the end also hits the spot.It is definitely a flawed film. There are some serious plot holes. Like what happened to their kid while mom and dad were drinking. Lol! Who brought up that kid? Or did they slip some whiskey into her milk too? Hohoho! They did not show that part.Anyway, I love movies about alcoholics, whatever the message at the end might be.Best Regards, Pimpin.(7/10)

Most of us think of Blake Edwards as a director of comedies. After all, his "Pink Panther" series provided us with some of the funniest movies ever made, and his Dudley Moore comedies ("Micki And Maude," and particularly "10") are classics too. But Edwards was also capable of churning out more serious fare. The best of these films was a hit in 1962, but has long since been forgotten."Days Of Wine And Roses" begins innocently enough, as young public relations director Joe Clay goes on a first date with Kirsten Arnesen. While Kirsten is young and innocent, Joe makes his living in post-war corporate America. When my dad first began his sales career, during this same time period, his best friend warned him he had joined a "drinking fraternity." Sure enough, Joe introduces Kirsten to social drinking, they have lots of fun, get married, and have a daughter.As the Clay's casual drinking descends into a life of full-blown alcoholic despair, both Jack Lemmon (as Joe) and Lee Remick (as Kirsten) turn in the best performances of their careers. Joe eventually loses his top-notch sales position, then bounces around from job to job, before reluctantly going to work in his father-in-law's landscaping business. Joe and Kirsten manage sobriety for a while, but the lure of readily-available alcohol is simply too strong. Joe eventually gets sober through the then fledgling organization Alcoholics Anonymous, while Kirsten (a teetotaler at the film's outset) does not.Simply put, this is a film about alcoholism. Not the "closet" alcoholism portrayed by Ray Milland in "The Lost Weekend," nor the "death wish" alcoholism of Nicholas Cage in "Leaving Las Vegas." No, this is a warning-shot about the fine line between social drinking and disease. This may not sound like entertainment, per se; but consider it a very well-acted and well-written monition. While certain time-and-place aspects of "Days Of Wine And Roses" are dated, its message carries as much heft today as it did over a half-century ago.Lemmon should have won a Best Actor Oscar, if for no other reason than his scene of futile anguish when he breaks into his father-in-law's greenhouse one night for a hidden bottle of alcohol. The personal torment he conveys here is a heartbreaking plea for help – to no one in particular, save for himself and his creator. As a side note, Gregory Peck won that year's Best Actor Oscar for "To Kill A Mockingbird." It was one of those "congratulatory" Oscars, where the academy honors a longtime great, more for his or her body of work than the specific performance in question. Ironically, Lemmon himself would win such an Oscar eleven years later for the less-impressive "Save The Tiger." Screenwriter J.P. Miller adapted "Days Of Wine And Roses" from his own Playhouse 90 teleplay of 1958. Miller added some new material, Jack Lemmon in the title role, and voila! A classic was born.One of the enduring ramifications of this picture was the explosion in popularity of Alcoholics Anonymous. Founded in 1935, AA was still in its germinating state when Blake Edwards released "Days Of Wine And Roses." The timing couldn't have been better. The end of prohibition in 1933, coupled with the return of the often hard-drinking WWII soldiers in 1945, and a new economic and cultural prosperity in America in the 1950s, resulted in an outbreak of alcoholism never before witnessed. Many Americans searched for a cure, yet coveted anonymity due to the social norms of the day. Because of its relevance, and again because of Jack Lemmon's masterful acting accomplishment, I believe "Days Of Wine And Roses" should have won the Best Picture Oscar for 1962 – rather than David Lean's beautiful, yet long and somewhat draggy, "Lawrence Of Arabia." As our local newscasts never tire of reminding us, alcoholism (and drunk driving, in particular) is still a problem over 50 years after the release of "Days Of Wine And Roses." Even if you've seen it before, it certainly deserves another look. And that's why it's this month's Buried Treasure.

We know what happens to alcoholics if they relapse and start drinking... But this movie portrays everything so starkly, it is awful to watch.Joe (Jack Lemmon) is in public relations. He meets the beautiful Kirsten (Lee Remick) who is the secretary of one of Joe's clients. He tries to get a date, but she ignores him. He tries again, and again. Eventually she goes out with him, they marry, they have a child.But he has got her drinking. Seriously. When she sets the apartment on fire, they both realise they need to do something about it. They go and stay with her father who runs a plant nursery. Everything seems to be going right, until Joe smuggles in bottles to celebrate(!) their cure. Kirsten's father Ennis (Charles Bickford) is great too. I was half expecting him to say he was a recovered alcoholic, but no, he is just a quiet and loving dad.It would be hopeless filming drunken actors, but how does an actor act drunk? Lemmon does, brilliantly. Remick too, but not as often.The best scenes are at the beginning where Joe is talking to Kirsten. She doesn't say "Get lost, mister", doesn't need to, the look says it all, and she walks away. Such subtlety seems to have disappeared from modern American films. Pity, it is so meaningful.One slight negative is that the story has a six or seven year span, but both Joe and Kirsten look exactly the same from start to finish. Could the director got them to alter the hairstyles maybe?