Gregory Peck can handle a good comedy, even one without covert dramatic intentions. He was fine in the frothy "Roman Holiday." And he was almost as good in "Designing Woman". This comedy in larded with serious incidents and ought to be well within his range. It is, but he and the rest of the cast are undone by a cornball script involving a paternalistic Peck as Captain Newman, in charge of an Air Force psychiatric ward in 1944, and Tony Curtis as the same kind of Jewish scrounger and manipulator that he'd been in "Operation Petticoat."
The film begins with a naive conception of a military psychiatric ward. The patients are out of a comic book. The first one we meet is a jokester who plays around until somebody touches the sailor hat he insists on wearing. At that point, the patient snatches the hat away and shrieks that he shouldn't be in the Air Force; he should be in the Navy, protecting his brother. He breaks down and sobs. It's supposed to be a shocking scene. Zzzzz.
Too many of the supposedly funny scenes are so corny they could have been dreamed up by a high school wit in some tiny rural town, the kind of kid whose Yearbook caption reads, "Yazoo City's Answer to Bob Hope". Curtis stands on a chair and gets the patients to sing "Old MacDonald". (Funny.) He steals a salami for them. He gives himself a surgical scrub before refilling a tubular container of little plastic cups. He steals part of the general's Christmas tree. I busted a gut laughing. Each of these scenes is treated by the director as if it's hilarious. Curtis is a fine comic actor, among the best in the business, but who could grapple with writing like this and come away the winner?
There is one dramatic scene that clicks. It's less because of the way it's written than the juice Bobby Darin injects into it. I won't describe it, but I saw this film in New York when it was released and it's the only resonant scene that has stuck with me, partly because of all the energy. I won't describe it. I clearly remember only one other scene, in which Eddy Albert, as a mad and tormented Army colonel, refers to himself in the third person as "Mister Future" and, in a rare moment of lucidity, asks Peck, with a sideways stare, "Is he -- incurable?" The movie's overall level of sophistication is such that the question actually has meaning within its narrative frame. As if you were "sick" until you were "cured."
Robert Duvall, another skilled actor, has a lesser role and gives a credible performance as a schizophrenic. In a catatonic state, a patient may sit for hours without moving. If the patient is moved into another position, he'll hold that one too, even if it's unusual. It's called waxy flexibility, cerea flexibilitas in the text books, and I assume that's what was being shown in the shot in which Nurse Angie Dickonson unfolds Duvall's fingers and places them in a more relaxed position.
It just occurred to me that Peck and Duvall worked together in "To Kill a Mockingbird", and that Peck and Eddie Albert were pals in "Roman Holiday." Just had to throw that in. Well, while I'm dealing out trivia, more than one of the officers shown in the film are wearing the UN Korea campaign ribbon, not issued until 1950. Here's another glitch. (These non sequiturs are as easy to pitch as bocce balls.) Peck gets fourteen wounded Italian POWs and when he objects the general shouts that "we happen to be at war with Italy!" Of course, we weren't. Italy had overthrown Mussolini and dropped out of the war in 1943.
But who cares about facts when you're desperate for comic situations? One of the comic situations has Curtis teaching the Italians an "ancient Indian song" to sing at the Christmas party -- "Hava Naghila." The movie has too many clichés to count and it's pitched at a low level, but it's not insulting to the viewer and it may be worth a watch.
The film begins with a naive conception of a military psychiatric ward. The patients are out of a comic book. The first one we meet is a jokester who plays around until somebody touches the sailor hat he insists on wearing. At that point, the patient snatches the hat away and shrieks that he shouldn't be in the Air Force; he should be in the Navy, protecting his brother. He breaks down and sobs. It's supposed to be a shocking scene. Zzzzz.
Too many of the supposedly funny scenes are so corny they could have been dreamed up by a high school wit in some tiny rural town, the kind of kid whose Yearbook caption reads, "Yazoo City's Answer to Bob Hope". Curtis stands on a chair and gets the patients to sing "Old MacDonald". (Funny.) He steals a salami for them. He gives himself a surgical scrub before refilling a tubular container of little plastic cups. He steals part of the general's Christmas tree. I busted a gut laughing. Each of these scenes is treated by the director as if it's hilarious. Curtis is a fine comic actor, among the best in the business, but who could grapple with writing like this and come away the winner?
There is one dramatic scene that clicks. It's less because of the way it's written than the juice Bobby Darin injects into it. I won't describe it, but I saw this film in New York when it was released and it's the only resonant scene that has stuck with me, partly because of all the energy. I won't describe it. I clearly remember only one other scene, in which Eddy Albert, as a mad and tormented Army colonel, refers to himself in the third person as "Mister Future" and, in a rare moment of lucidity, asks Peck, with a sideways stare, "Is he -- incurable?" The movie's overall level of sophistication is such that the question actually has meaning within its narrative frame. As if you were "sick" until you were "cured."
Robert Duvall, another skilled actor, has a lesser role and gives a credible performance as a schizophrenic. In a catatonic state, a patient may sit for hours without moving. If the patient is moved into another position, he'll hold that one too, even if it's unusual. It's called waxy flexibility, cerea flexibilitas in the text books, and I assume that's what was being shown in the shot in which Nurse Angie Dickonson unfolds Duvall's fingers and places them in a more relaxed position.
It just occurred to me that Peck and Duvall worked together in "To Kill a Mockingbird", and that Peck and Eddie Albert were pals in "Roman Holiday." Just had to throw that in. Well, while I'm dealing out trivia, more than one of the officers shown in the film are wearing the UN Korea campaign ribbon, not issued until 1950. Here's another glitch. (These non sequiturs are as easy to pitch as bocce balls.) Peck gets fourteen wounded Italian POWs and when he objects the general shouts that "we happen to be at war with Italy!" Of course, we weren't. Italy had overthrown Mussolini and dropped out of the war in 1943.
But who cares about facts when you're desperate for comic situations? One of the comic situations has Curtis teaching the Italians an "ancient Indian song" to sing at the Christmas party -- "Hava Naghila." The movie has too many clichés to count and it's pitched at a low level, but it's not insulting to the viewer and it may be worth a watch.