Henry Mancini wrote the musical score for this drama about alcoholism. In the days when he was known primarily for his user-friendly treatment of jazz themes, Henry was known as "Hank." Here, in addition to the incidental melancholy of the chords that accompany some of the events, he's built in a sad tune suggestive of love and loss. The song constantly hovers in the background and was turned into a pop song with lyrics suggesting that happiness is ephemeral. You can hum it, whistle it, sing it, and cry to it. (Sob.) Not that Mancini was stuck on melancholia. He did the peppy and funny "Walk of the Elephants" music for "Hatari" too.
It's just about the exact opposite of the scores Bernard Hermann used to write. Hermann, another one of those child prodigies that Hollywood tended to hire, wrote for some very well-known films, including "Citizen Kane," "Vertigo", and a couple of Ray Harryhausen's monster movies. But try to whistle a tune that Hermann wrote. It can't be done. He didn't write songs. He wrote themes that were appropriate to the situation. "Leitmotifs", if you want to get elegant, that vary from one character or mood to another.
Now that I've gotten my assessment of the score out of the way, I'll get back to the movie. What was the movie anyway? Oh, yes. Okay. Thank you.
Jack Lemon is a public relations man in San Francisco, so we know right off the bat that he's troubled. All public relations men are troubled, except those that aren't. He meets the virginal Lee Remick and they are married. Remick takes him down the Peninsula to meet her father, the stern but not unkind Charles Bickford who runs a floral shop and landscaping service. The distressed Lemon begins to drink and is demoted. Remick joins him in boozing.
It goes from bad to worse, and, skipping the details of the plot, Lemon winds up in Alcoholics Anonymous while Remick refuses to believe that she needs help in conquering her demons. The marriage breaks up. Lemon remains sober and one night Remick shows up at his apartment begging for them to start over again. But Lemon knows it's impossible and the last shot is of Lemon staring from his apartment window, down at the rain-wet nighttime street, into which Remick has disappeared. The slick street slopes downhill.
It's a tragic picture about a non-glamorous social problem. Compared to the social and economic cost of alcoholism, being a heroin addict is minor stuff. And that's just the cost to society, not to mention the suffering of the afflicted individuals. People make jokes about pink elephants but delirium tremens is a horrifying experience with a substantial mortality rate. Mark Twain captured some of the symptoms well in "Huckleberry Finn."
It's interesting to compare "Days of Wine and Roses" with "The Lost Weekend," Billy Wilder's 1945 movie starring Ray Milland. "Lost Weekend" begins in medias res. Milland is already a career juice head and the movie takes us through one event-filled weekend into which all the usual stuff associated with alcoholism is packed -- the slight euphoria following the first couple of drinks, the shakes the next day, and a genuinely startling visual hallucination involving a mouse and a bat.
"Days of Wine and Roses" gives us a developmental point of view. Lemon and Remick are seen as relatively normal people who slide insensibly into a state in which alcohol is their primary concern. There are a couple of extensive time lapses but they're not disorienting. Thank God no simple-minded explanation of the condition is offered. Nobody abused Lemon or Remick when they were kids. True, Lemon hates his job, but who doesn't? Nobody is ever described as "in denial." The film ends on a note of realism. Some can pull out of it and some not.
Lemon and Remick are both professionals and they do their jobs well. Lemon is a more believable drunk than Remick, but neither is very convincing, partly because the script doesn't seem to have much of a handle on the behavior of alcoholics. Locked in their room together, the couple go through a two pints and at the end they act like two kids giggling and capering in a sand box. They're not nearly sluggish and slurred enough. It isn't until Lemon exits through the window in pursuit of that third pint that he begins to resemble a real drunk, stumbling, falling into the mud, and so forth. The scene also gives him a chance for a wrenching enactment of a man desperate to find that nepenthe hidden in the greenhouse, whose location he's forgotten. He wrecks the joint.
Blake Edwards, better known for his comedies like "Ten", has effectively directed this spooky tale of chemical dependency and despair, enough to drive anyone to the bottle.
It's just about the exact opposite of the scores Bernard Hermann used to write. Hermann, another one of those child prodigies that Hollywood tended to hire, wrote for some very well-known films, including "Citizen Kane," "Vertigo", and a couple of Ray Harryhausen's monster movies. But try to whistle a tune that Hermann wrote. It can't be done. He didn't write songs. He wrote themes that were appropriate to the situation. "Leitmotifs", if you want to get elegant, that vary from one character or mood to another.
Now that I've gotten my assessment of the score out of the way, I'll get back to the movie. What was the movie anyway? Oh, yes. Okay. Thank you.
Jack Lemon is a public relations man in San Francisco, so we know right off the bat that he's troubled. All public relations men are troubled, except those that aren't. He meets the virginal Lee Remick and they are married. Remick takes him down the Peninsula to meet her father, the stern but not unkind Charles Bickford who runs a floral shop and landscaping service. The distressed Lemon begins to drink and is demoted. Remick joins him in boozing.
It goes from bad to worse, and, skipping the details of the plot, Lemon winds up in Alcoholics Anonymous while Remick refuses to believe that she needs help in conquering her demons. The marriage breaks up. Lemon remains sober and one night Remick shows up at his apartment begging for them to start over again. But Lemon knows it's impossible and the last shot is of Lemon staring from his apartment window, down at the rain-wet nighttime street, into which Remick has disappeared. The slick street slopes downhill.
It's a tragic picture about a non-glamorous social problem. Compared to the social and economic cost of alcoholism, being a heroin addict is minor stuff. And that's just the cost to society, not to mention the suffering of the afflicted individuals. People make jokes about pink elephants but delirium tremens is a horrifying experience with a substantial mortality rate. Mark Twain captured some of the symptoms well in "Huckleberry Finn."
It's interesting to compare "Days of Wine and Roses" with "The Lost Weekend," Billy Wilder's 1945 movie starring Ray Milland. "Lost Weekend" begins in medias res. Milland is already a career juice head and the movie takes us through one event-filled weekend into which all the usual stuff associated with alcoholism is packed -- the slight euphoria following the first couple of drinks, the shakes the next day, and a genuinely startling visual hallucination involving a mouse and a bat.
"Days of Wine and Roses" gives us a developmental point of view. Lemon and Remick are seen as relatively normal people who slide insensibly into a state in which alcohol is their primary concern. There are a couple of extensive time lapses but they're not disorienting. Thank God no simple-minded explanation of the condition is offered. Nobody abused Lemon or Remick when they were kids. True, Lemon hates his job, but who doesn't? Nobody is ever described as "in denial." The film ends on a note of realism. Some can pull out of it and some not.
Lemon and Remick are both professionals and they do their jobs well. Lemon is a more believable drunk than Remick, but neither is very convincing, partly because the script doesn't seem to have much of a handle on the behavior of alcoholics. Locked in their room together, the couple go through a two pints and at the end they act like two kids giggling and capering in a sand box. They're not nearly sluggish and slurred enough. It isn't until Lemon exits through the window in pursuit of that third pint that he begins to resemble a real drunk, stumbling, falling into the mud, and so forth. The scene also gives him a chance for a wrenching enactment of a man desperate to find that nepenthe hidden in the greenhouse, whose location he's forgotten. He wrecks the joint.
Blake Edwards, better known for his comedies like "Ten", has effectively directed this spooky tale of chemical dependency and despair, enough to drive anyone to the bottle.