The Notorious Landlady (1962)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

A lot of fun.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Mrs. Carly Hardwicke (Kim Novak) has difficulties renting out a room in her London home. Everybody suspects her of killing her husband although he's only missing. Newly-arrived American diplomat Bill Gridley (Jack Lemmon) knows nothing of her infamy. He rents her room despite her reluctance. She even pretends to be Hildy at first. He is completely taken by her beauty. Ambassador Franklyn Ambruster (Fred Astaire) is his new boss. Police Inspector Oliphant has been observing Hardwicke and suspects her of poisoning her husband. Oliphant convinces Bill to start snooping around.With scriptwriters Blake Edwards and Larry Gelbart, this has moments of good screwball comedy. Jack Lemmon is the man to deliver that. However, the comedy doesn't maintain to the end. There are sections where it drags. There are sections where it gets dark. I get breaking into the bathroom to see a naked Kim Novak in the tub. I don't think Jack Lemmon has to shoot out the door. Fred Astaire isn't as fun. This is fun at times but not all the time.

I watched this through Netflix, being intrigued to see a movie hitherto unknown to me starring Jack Lemmon. With Kim Novak and Fred Astaire on the marquee as well, I was intrigued. But what an awful disappointment. The first half of the flick was fun to watch, especially seeing Fred Astaire put in his classy bit. The cinematography of London was beautiful and the production values were great, but after the first half, the movie just disintegrates into incoherence. The plot complications are too complex to keep track of and after a while one just gives up. One shouldn't have to work so hard to keep track of things in what is supposed to be a frothy comedy. The insertion at the end of outright slapstick seems like an act of desperation. The actors do their best, but the fault ultimately lies with the script. Sad, really to see such talent wasted.

This movie is not bad at all,not one of Lemmon's best by any stretch of the imagination but it has some funny situations and its likable for the most part.Near the ending it gets completely out of hand and instead of comedy-mystery which is the most part,it becomes mad slapstick for no apparent reason.Is like someone told the scriptwriter that a Lemmon movie should be crazier than what they had up to that point.Anyway,its kinda weird this way from that point on but you get to smile and the stars are all likable.Novak is at her sexiest, even in B&W!!Funny role for Astaire who was at his second career by that time,plays a manipulating official at the American Embassy in London with an eye for Novak.

"The Notorious Landlady" exemplifies how all the right ingredients can add up to a failed movie. Jack Lemmon, Kim Novak, and Fred Astaire are megawatt stars. The look of the film is great; high quality, deeply textured black and white film stock records interesting, early sixties sets. The direction is the weak point. The film never comes together. It badly needs to be edited; it should be at least 25 percent shorter. Much of the humor is derived from extended dirty jokes about Kim Novak's spectacular figure. Jack Lemmon leers and gawks and cops feels. Yuch, not yuck. Even Fred Astaire steals a kiss. Sad, undignified, and not funny.The movie is clunky, awkward, and badly pieced together. Parts are leering dirty joke, parts are murder mystery and courtroom drama, parts are attempts at broad humor, and other parts are painfully bad romantic comedy. Jack Lemmon comes across as a very creepy, overbearing, almost stalker-like tenant. At one point he shoots the lock off of his landlady's bathroom and walks in on her as she is bathing. The audience that will find this scene appealing is, one would hope, very small, and certainly deranged and unaware of appropriate courtship behaviors.Sadly, according to IMDb comments, the director, Richard Quine, killed himself because he lacked the skill to make frothy romantic comedies. One can only shake one's head at the irony of that.