Jack Lemmon was the finest American motion-picture actor of the late twentieth century. He is often written off as a comedy star, and certainly some of his efforts in that realm of Hollywood entertainment are forgettable (though more than a few are still very human and very funny). But it is always exciting to see Lemmon unlimber his acting chops and portray the middle-class schlub trying to thrive and then just trying to survive modern life. His portrayal of Harry Stoner in SAVE THE TIGER ranks with his Joe Clay in THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, Ed Horman in MISSING, and Shelley Levene in GLENGARY GLEN ROSS, to mention only his most notable dramatic roles. I'd like to think the Best Actor Oscar that Lemmon received for SAVE THE TIGER (he had been awarded Best Supporting Actor for playing Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver in 1955's MISTER ROBERTS) was the film community's overdue recognition that he could play for sighs and tears as well as for laughs.
Seeing this film recently on TCM through the filter of 35 years, I was still moved by the commitment of Jack Lemmon to Harry Stoner. Unfortunately, SAVE THE TIGER remains an awkward and extremely self-conscious movie, as much so as when I first saw it in a theater in 1973. Steve Shagan's script contains no references to the Watergate scandal that had started the year before; but in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, American popular culture was becoming increasingly obsessed with moral decay. Many novels and films of the 1970s suggested that political corruption and official deceptions had blurred the boundaries of conventional good/bad, black-and-white morality with which most Americans had supposedly been comfortable. (That was the standard they usually saw in the movies, after all.) Viewed from the perspective of the early 21st century, the suggestion that government and corporate wrongdoing could somehow make personal immorality understandable, or even commendable, seems rather quaint -- a sop, perhaps, to a movie-going Baby Boomer generation that was coming of age and groping for its own moral grounding.
There are many problems with this clunky script, not so much in terms of plot as in terms of texture. Harry Stoner's obsession with the joys of his youth -- baseball and big bands -- quickly turns into a heavy-handed exercise in nostalgia, as though Shagan is showing off his knowledge of 1940s popular culture (Shagan was born in 1927). Harry's apparent readiness to hire an arsonist to save his troubled business makes his moral agonizing less involving, though perhaps Shagan meant to enhance the difference between Harry's seeming confidence and the severe misgivings of his partner Phil (Jack Gilford). The big dramatic setpiece of the film -- Harry's speech to the buyers at his firm's fashion show -- is extremely suspicious. Harry strikes me as too much of a professional to start losing it at such a vital moment. Why THAT event for a PTSD flashback? (There's another scene toward the end of the film -- Harry standing alone on a beach, replaying the soundtrack of Anzio in his head -- that's more subtle and more effective.) And then there's Myra, the happy-go-lucky hippie chick with whom, Shagan apparently thought, "the kids" could identify. (With a smile, she offers to have sex with Harry about 47 seconds after they meet. Yeah, I could identify with that.) Myra's seeming innocence and optimism have so little to do with Harry Stoner that she seems not a contrast but an irrelevance.
Shagan's script benefits from the direction of John G. Avildsen. The opening shot of Harry's swimming pool is haunting, and industrial Los Angeles looks appropriately unglamorous. All of the actors (including Laurie Heinemann as Myra) are credible. But the real reason to see SAVE THE TIGER is Jack Lemmon portraying Harry Stoner. If his performance can't rescue the film, it is still compelling -- an exploration of a human heart that will break your own.
Seeing this film recently on TCM through the filter of 35 years, I was still moved by the commitment of Jack Lemmon to Harry Stoner. Unfortunately, SAVE THE TIGER remains an awkward and extremely self-conscious movie, as much so as when I first saw it in a theater in 1973. Steve Shagan's script contains no references to the Watergate scandal that had started the year before; but in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, American popular culture was becoming increasingly obsessed with moral decay. Many novels and films of the 1970s suggested that political corruption and official deceptions had blurred the boundaries of conventional good/bad, black-and-white morality with which most Americans had supposedly been comfortable. (That was the standard they usually saw in the movies, after all.) Viewed from the perspective of the early 21st century, the suggestion that government and corporate wrongdoing could somehow make personal immorality understandable, or even commendable, seems rather quaint -- a sop, perhaps, to a movie-going Baby Boomer generation that was coming of age and groping for its own moral grounding.
There are many problems with this clunky script, not so much in terms of plot as in terms of texture. Harry Stoner's obsession with the joys of his youth -- baseball and big bands -- quickly turns into a heavy-handed exercise in nostalgia, as though Shagan is showing off his knowledge of 1940s popular culture (Shagan was born in 1927). Harry's apparent readiness to hire an arsonist to save his troubled business makes his moral agonizing less involving, though perhaps Shagan meant to enhance the difference between Harry's seeming confidence and the severe misgivings of his partner Phil (Jack Gilford). The big dramatic setpiece of the film -- Harry's speech to the buyers at his firm's fashion show -- is extremely suspicious. Harry strikes me as too much of a professional to start losing it at such a vital moment. Why THAT event for a PTSD flashback? (There's another scene toward the end of the film -- Harry standing alone on a beach, replaying the soundtrack of Anzio in his head -- that's more subtle and more effective.) And then there's Myra, the happy-go-lucky hippie chick with whom, Shagan apparently thought, "the kids" could identify. (With a smile, she offers to have sex with Harry about 47 seconds after they meet. Yeah, I could identify with that.) Myra's seeming innocence and optimism have so little to do with Harry Stoner that she seems not a contrast but an irrelevance.
Shagan's script benefits from the direction of John G. Avildsen. The opening shot of Harry's swimming pool is haunting, and industrial Los Angeles looks appropriately unglamorous. All of the actors (including Laurie Heinemann as Myra) are credible. But the real reason to see SAVE THE TIGER is Jack Lemmon portraying Harry Stoner. If his performance can't rescue the film, it is still compelling -- an exploration of a human heart that will break your own.