'Avanti', Billy Wilder's last notable film, is defined by absence. Most obviously so in the case of the central couple, playing out their relationship in the shadow of the dead parents they have come to bury, an absence comically mirrored when their corpses are snatched by the disgruntled peasants on whose farm their car crashed.
It is also the insistent absence of the home Armbruster has temporarily left behind, intruding not only in the phone calls regularly interrupting his burgeoning relationship with Pamela, but in his personality, his worries as an executive and the soul-destroying banality of his marriage resulting in the raging black hole that arrives in Italy, condescending and insulting everything in sight.
The irony of this film is that these two absences cancel each other out, and give Armbruster a definite gain, the return of his humanity. Again, this is comically mirrored in Pamela's desire to lose weight, her gaining pounds in direct proportion to her happiness.
Once again, Wilder is concerned with double lives, that gaping chasm between duty and desire. Cynical as ever, he finds that the only way to reconcile the two, to stay true to yourself, is to deceive; curative adultery. The romance in this romantic comedy is sublime if you are willing to give into it - and I do, every time - but Wilder's vision hasn't softened.
Mr Ambruster Sr.'s month-long trips for extra-marital succour did not make him a better, or more egalitarian human being. The double life for him was what it has always been for successful men where society is based on a rigid code of morality, or bourgeois respectability. He might have been a dear old lover in Italy, but in America he remained a consummate hypocrite, upholding phoney religious ideals, hobnobbing with high-ranking government officials engaged in bombing Asian civilians, running his huge multi-national with Nixonian corruption, treating his Third-World employees like dirt.
The double life celebrated at the end on an ironical wave of sentiment is an ingeniously American, two-faced compartmentalising of duty and desire - instead of repressing one and letting it get out of violent hand, it is pushed somewhere else, indulged in its proper place, and the status quo, so painstakingly defended by hotel director Carlucci, remains static.
This is not to suggest that Armbruster will follow this route; maybe he will become a genuinely more decent person; but the film has been paralleling his move towards to his father to the point where he ritually imitates him (like a ghost?). His first act on reaching America will be a massive act of deceit, burying a Mafia lackey in front of Kissinger, but this subversive act will be known only to three people. There will be no apple carts turned. So the familiar Wilder transformation scene on the plane - where Armbruster changes suits with Dr Fleischmann - and the Wilderean prevalance of mirrors suggest not that Armbruster will transform his personality, but that he will become adept at living two lives, literally wearing two suits.
'Avanti' has always been my favourite Wilder film (although it's now been surpassed by 'Private life of Sherlock Holmes'), but I can understand why people might want to resist it - it is based on a play, and wallows in, rather than trying to transcend, its theatricality, although there is a complex pattern of visual echoes (e.g. opening windows to let in the sun at hotel and morgue). Its mixture of farce, black comedy and romance will not be to every taste, and some may feel the sentimental manipulation too much, although I hope I've showed how Wilder manipulates this. Others might find the usual Wilder trading in stereotypes worrying.
In its defence, I can only offer the non-cinematic virtues of strong characterisation; brilliant acting (Clive Revill as Carlucci is particularly cherishable); a tonal balance rare in Wilder; cleverly worked out situations; and bellyachingly funny dialogue. The less 'relevant' Wilder became, the more he relaxed his need to breathlessly wisecrack, and these late works seem to me much more satisfactory, and have dated much better. Look at the scene where Armbruster and Pamela identify their parents' bodies like a wedding ceremony, a brilliant encapsulation of Wilder's complex art.
It is also the insistent absence of the home Armbruster has temporarily left behind, intruding not only in the phone calls regularly interrupting his burgeoning relationship with Pamela, but in his personality, his worries as an executive and the soul-destroying banality of his marriage resulting in the raging black hole that arrives in Italy, condescending and insulting everything in sight.
The irony of this film is that these two absences cancel each other out, and give Armbruster a definite gain, the return of his humanity. Again, this is comically mirrored in Pamela's desire to lose weight, her gaining pounds in direct proportion to her happiness.
Once again, Wilder is concerned with double lives, that gaping chasm between duty and desire. Cynical as ever, he finds that the only way to reconcile the two, to stay true to yourself, is to deceive; curative adultery. The romance in this romantic comedy is sublime if you are willing to give into it - and I do, every time - but Wilder's vision hasn't softened.
Mr Ambruster Sr.'s month-long trips for extra-marital succour did not make him a better, or more egalitarian human being. The double life for him was what it has always been for successful men where society is based on a rigid code of morality, or bourgeois respectability. He might have been a dear old lover in Italy, but in America he remained a consummate hypocrite, upholding phoney religious ideals, hobnobbing with high-ranking government officials engaged in bombing Asian civilians, running his huge multi-national with Nixonian corruption, treating his Third-World employees like dirt.
The double life celebrated at the end on an ironical wave of sentiment is an ingeniously American, two-faced compartmentalising of duty and desire - instead of repressing one and letting it get out of violent hand, it is pushed somewhere else, indulged in its proper place, and the status quo, so painstakingly defended by hotel director Carlucci, remains static.
This is not to suggest that Armbruster will follow this route; maybe he will become a genuinely more decent person; but the film has been paralleling his move towards to his father to the point where he ritually imitates him (like a ghost?). His first act on reaching America will be a massive act of deceit, burying a Mafia lackey in front of Kissinger, but this subversive act will be known only to three people. There will be no apple carts turned. So the familiar Wilder transformation scene on the plane - where Armbruster changes suits with Dr Fleischmann - and the Wilderean prevalance of mirrors suggest not that Armbruster will transform his personality, but that he will become adept at living two lives, literally wearing two suits.
'Avanti' has always been my favourite Wilder film (although it's now been surpassed by 'Private life of Sherlock Holmes'), but I can understand why people might want to resist it - it is based on a play, and wallows in, rather than trying to transcend, its theatricality, although there is a complex pattern of visual echoes (e.g. opening windows to let in the sun at hotel and morgue). Its mixture of farce, black comedy and romance will not be to every taste, and some may feel the sentimental manipulation too much, although I hope I've showed how Wilder manipulates this. Others might find the usual Wilder trading in stereotypes worrying.
In its defence, I can only offer the non-cinematic virtues of strong characterisation; brilliant acting (Clive Revill as Carlucci is particularly cherishable); a tonal balance rare in Wilder; cleverly worked out situations; and bellyachingly funny dialogue. The less 'relevant' Wilder became, the more he relaxed his need to breathlessly wisecrack, and these late works seem to me much more satisfactory, and have dated much better. Look at the scene where Armbruster and Pamela identify their parents' bodies like a wedding ceremony, a brilliant encapsulation of Wilder's complex art.