Comedian Joe E. Lewis is best remembered as a precursor of comedians like Rodney Dangerfield and Foster Brooks as well as a pal of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. The common thread was creating one-liners that had something to do with drunks. He is sometimes confused with Joe E. Brown because of his name, though the two had little in common except being in the show business at about the same time. This film starring Frank Sinatra is therefore a kind of personal homage to a friend, one that would hold little interest as a story unless the viewer knew of the connection in advance. In starts sort of nowhere and goes sort of nowhere, relying for its interest on an unusually literate script and some really good direction and camera work. The best scene is one toward the beginning where Sinatra and a radiant Jeanne Crain meet behind a cyclorama in a theater and flirt with each other as the shadowy figures on the other side of the screen are partying. Twenty-first century viewers will find the dialogue, the sets, and the constant smoking and drinking very curious -- sometimes offensive to modern sensibilities. But that is a characteristic common to many films made between the beginning of "talkies" in about 1930 and the introduction of blockbuster mega-films in the late 1950's and early 1960's. The social diameters and definitions of acceptable behavior for women, black people, drunks, so-called burlesque shows, and "cafe society" and the like were either narrower or broader during that time than they are today. This is definitely not a film made from a play or novel requiring attention to literary unities. Still, it hangs together pretty well for anyone patient enough to concentrate on its more dramatic moments. Look for it on Turner Classic Movies.
Review of The Joker Is Wild
