Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

[Mr Sausage]

The Apartment

Isn't that the way. Laying in bed, waiting to nap, my thoughts on this film coalesced into a sustained, satisfying argument that now, an hour of sleep later, I can't quite seem to recall. My post is an unsatisfying reconstruction. A recovered draft.

The film is not as dark or toxic, nor its leads quite as debased, as I've heard some argue (here and elsewhere). Like many comedies, there's a lot of negative things both on and under the surface of the plot. But I understood our leads as two decent people who channel their decency into unrewarding paths. While they are compromised, they are not utterly compromised, ie. debased, robbed of an identity. Their compromise has real limits. Mostly they've compromised themselves by staying true to themselves and their values, just doing so in poorly chosen situations where their values and identities produce negative rather than positive outcomes. They are ethically compromised, yet arrive there by staying true to their own ethics. Context corrupts, really. The basic situation as I read it is two people who compromise themselves in pursuit of things they believed to've been in line with their own sense of themselves and their values only to realise, finally, that those things weren't, that they were hollow. But their identities and values remain solid.

Take Bud. Bud wants to get ahead in the corporate world; he's a schemer. But look at his name--Bud, everyone's friend. His scheming is utterly accidental; he fell into his apartment deal sheerly through his need to help people when they need him, even when it's a major inconvenience. He wants to please, he wants to help, he wants to be there for people. He's just not there for the right people. I mean, they're not egregiously bad people; they hold up their end of the bargain and show no desire to use him up and spit him out. But they have no respect for him, either, and use his nickname with ironic condescension. They'll do right by him in their transaction, but they view his side of it as compliance rather than good nature. Even Bud's middle-manager corporate values are permutations of his need to please and help: he values above all his efficiency, and what else is corporate efficiency but the desire to give the company every bit of effort one's time allows. It is as helpful and self-sacrificing as one can be while playing the corporate game. Bud values his generosity and deep down wants to be rewarded for that, whether it's corporate efficiency or helping the lads out in their need. He doesn't realize no one else sees things that way because the context doesn't allow for it.

Fran's a bit simpler. Her compromise is dating a married man, yet it's the sentimental version of that where she allows herself to be sold on the idea that this unethical situation will eventually be made ethical if she's just patient. She wants love, a husband, and a home, and she has no interest in being someone's side chick, but she allows herself to be wooed back time and again through the naive idea that compromised situations can be made right. Her values are alright, she just refuses to see that her situation could never allow for the proper expression of those values.

The key evidence that both characters are compromised on a surface level only is that the ending doesn't require them to change anything fundamental about themselves, their values, or their pursuits. It just needs them to redirect their focus. Bud doesn't need to stop being a caring, thoughtful person who's ready to help, he just needs to choose the objects of his affection better. And the ending allows him to do that, first letting him helpfully give his neighbour ice and even offer champagne for the party (helpful to the end, but here at the service of a relationship founded on love and affection rather than transaction), then of course continuing to be there for Fran. Fran, well, she chases in Bud the exact thing she was chasing in Sheldrake, just this time she's picked someone willing to give it back.

So, yeah, not that dark of a movie. Mostly a movie about people whose good qualities in the wrong contexts gets them into all sorts of trouble, mostly by learning their relationships are a lot more transactional than they either suspected or are comfortable with. But their hearts and their values are in the right place, and things mostly work out with that unchanged.

[domino harvey]

I think it’s rightly seen as a “dark” romantic comedy for featuring

SpoilerShow

a sincere suicide attempt from the female lead and both taking the threat seriously and still finding wonderfully acidic jokes (Lemmon ditching the razor blades from his bathroom) to execute. Not to spoil it, but this isn’t the only Wilder romantic comedy to hinge on a suicide attempt, either...

I don’t think a film being dark means it can’t be generous to its leads or that they should be unlikable. Indeed, MacLaine’s character’s entrance in the film should be taught in screenwriting classes (if it’s not already) as the perfect way to both introduce and immediately endear a character to an audience

[Mr Sausage]

I was trying to qualify the darkness, not say the movie had none. It’s different from the internal rot of either Ace in the Hole or Double Indemnity, basically. Obviously did a poor job of communicating that.

[therewillbeblus]

Definitely different than those, and more like the optimal example of how WIlder can layer moods together to create effortless tonal blending. He does this perfectly in a few other movies (Sabrina and Irma la Douce) but The Apartment is the one where these shifts occur most tightly together. I don't know if I've seen a film that more succinctly finds comedy and drama intertwined for its entire runtime.

Spoiler for SabrinaShow

I think it’s rightly seen as a “dark” romantic comedy for featuring a sincere suicide attempt from the female lead and both taking the threat seriously and still finding wonderfully acidic jokes (Lemmon ditching the razor blades from his bathroom) to execute. Not to spoil it, but this isn’t the only Wilder romantic comedy to hinge on a suicide attempt, either...

As I mentioned somewhere earlier, I prefer Hepburn telling the car alarms to "Sh" when she's trying to kill herself in the garage, which is maybe the best example of dark comedy ever - especially since it's the first funny moment in the film after nearly a half-hour of dramatic-fantasy tragedy, and serves as the trigger to snap us back into our familiar world with the biting humor. Lemmon's actions around MacLaine's suicide are right in step with that caustic execution though.

[therewillbeblus]

Re: Fedora's deleted scenes, I wish they had kept in the final one which shows

SpoilerShow

the Countess recalling the intention to do the "right thing" followed by the flashback to discovering the bloody rag and blood all over the mirror in the empty room, and then the crew running down the hall to look for the daughter with the camera showing the Countess' back, powerless and small in her wheelchair, immobilized and still.

I found this to be pretty stunning and powerful in the way it was constructed. I forget what parts of it were kept in the final film if any, but it was effective when viewed as an isolated scene.

[Rayon Vert]

I revisited The Spirit of St. Louis. Without knowing who had made this, I would have a hard time guessing it was Wilder – it could easily have been Ford, for example. It’s definitely not his usual type of material, bereft of any irony or his usual themes. It has none of the artistic ambitions of a film like Sunset Boulevard, but I find this so (and more) enjoyable and well-done for a biopic, a genre with built-in limitations that usually isn’t my favorite, like twbb. It’s an epic-sized film and there isn’t a dull moment. There’s suspense in the early scenes, in the race to get the plane built, in getting the plane to get off the ground, in the entire Atlantic crossing. It also manages to a have light, heartfelt touch, side by side with some of the existentialist peril you have in Only Angels Have Wings. Those flying visuals over varied locales are often very lovely too and sometimes spectacular, as TMDaines has said, and the ending moves me. It definitely makes my list on the basis of sheer enjoyment.

[therewillbeblus]

I finally opened the book(let) accompanying my Arrow copy of The Apartment tonight before a viewing and thought it was pretty spot-on in assessing Wilder’s style. I felt particularly validated when one essay talked about how he makes “fairy tales for adults” which is how I’ve been reading a lot of his oeuvre. Recommended supplementary material for this project since it discusses many of his other films too, though not necessarily groundbreaking either. It never hurts to read another perspective breaking down the genius of his masterpiece though.

[Drucker]

Watched Lost Weekend last night and was a bit disappointed by it. Perhaps mostly because when I first viewed the film from the MOC blu-ray, it knocked me out and I was really really drawn to how dark it was. But a revisit makes that darkness feel rather shallow. Maybe I'm projecting a bit and wanting the movie to be something it's not, but I feel like my favorite film noirs have either 1) some amount of hope that is dashed given the realities of the world or 2) some notion that characters have a goal to escape their unfortunate circumstance. This really doesn't seem to have either of those things. Milland loves boozing and is more concerned with covering it up than getting help in any way. He doesn't want to upset Helen but in no way is that his priority.

Milland is good. His monologuing is often funny, and he reminds me a lot of Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach. I assume the film is attempting to show how "good" he is with words as he regales the story of his love for Helen to his bartender. There's also some good comedic moments, like when the Jewish Pawn store owner tells him it's Yom Kippur, and especially the bit with the coat at the play, and the coatroom employee who talks about the importance of regulations in his coatroom.

But that said, a bit let down by this one. Rayon Vert earlier mentioned that Sunset Boulevard in terms of bouncing around styles, but I think I like when Wilder does that. This thread touches a lot on Wilder's tendency as a comedy writer to hammer notes into the ground, but it feels like he's doing the same thing here, except with darkness instead of comedy. We get it, the guy is an unrepentant boozer...do I need to see a dozen examples of this? Maybe more scenes of him actually trying to do something except boozing would be better, but I guess it wouldn't quite be a Lost Weekend if that was the case.

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

The Apartment

Isn't that the way. Laying in bed, waiting to nap, my thoughts on this film coalesced into a sustained, satisfying argument that now, an hour of sleep later, I can't quite seem to recall. My post is an unsatisfying reconstruction. A recovered draft.

The film is not as dark or toxic, nor its leads quite as debased, as I've heard some argue (here and elsewhere). Like many comedies, there's a lot of negative things both on and under the surface of the plot. But I understood our leads as two decent people who channel their decency into unrewarding paths. While they are compromised, they are not utterly compromised, ie. debased, robbed of an identity. Their compromise has real limits. Mostly they've compromised themselves by staying true to themselves and their values, just doing so in poorly chosen situations where their values and identities produce negative rather than positive outcomes. They are ethically compromised, yet arrive there by staying true to their own ethics. Context corrupts, really. The basic situation as I read it is two people who compromise themselves in pursuit of things they believed to've been in line with their own sense of themselves and their values only to realise, finally, that those things weren't, that they were hollow. But their identities and values remain solid.

Take Bud. Bud wants to get ahead in the corporate world; he's a schemer. But look at his name--Bud, everyone's friend. His scheming is utterly accidental; he fell into his apartment deal sheerly through his need to help people when they need him, even when it's a major inconvenience. He wants to please, he wants to help, he wants to be there for people. He's just not there for the right people. I mean, they're not egregiously bad people; they hold up their end of the bargain and show no desire to use him up and spit him out. But they have no respect for him, either, and use his nickname with ironic condescension. They'll do right by him in their transaction, but they view his side of it as compliance rather than good nature. Even Bud's middle-manager corporate values are permutations of his need to please and help: he values above all his efficiency, and what else is corporate efficiency but the desire to give the company every bit of effort one's time allows. It is as helpful and self-sacrificing as one can be while playing the corporate game. Bud values his generosity and deep down wants to be rewarded for that, whether it's corporate efficiency or helping the lads out in their need. He doesn't realize no one else sees things that way because the context doesn't allow for it.

I was a bit confused upon first reading this post, because I thought––who the hell is Bud? Of course, it's loyal, cooperative, resourceful C.C. Baxter, and Mr. Sausage is correct in calling him "Bud"––after all, Baxter says that everybody calls him that in his opening narration. In fact, in trying to verify that fact, I looked up the script online and, what do you know: the entire script refers to him as "Bud" too. This is, however, the narration of the script––not the dialogue. And, knowing Wilder, and using my memory (having seen the film many times), I'm willing to take it for granted that the script is largely repeated verbatim and that the arguments I make will be largely, if not entirely, supported (although I appreciate any corrections that can be made).

Back to the argument. Mr. Sausage uses Baxter's nickname, "Bud," as a sort of indicator of his overall goodness, his friendliness, the virtues of his values. I disagree. In fact, the very fact that Baxter says this, at the beginning of the film, to us is indication enough that he's deluded about the whole enterprise (and, consequently, Baxter's nickname for himself is more ironic and undercutting of this value of being "everyone's friend" than Mr. Sausage argues). In the script, and almost certainly in the film, Baxter is only called "Bud" once or twice––what he's actually called most often is Mr. Baxter or Baxter by his neighbors, landlady, and more formal coworkers like Mr. Sheldrake and Miss Kubelik ("Mr., Miss, such politeness!" as Dr. Dreyfuss remarks), and not "Bud" but "Buddy-boy" by the coworkers who readily and indiscreetly take advantage of him. Not "Bud" but "Buddy-boy": this is a diminutive name, said with "ironic condescension", and suggests not a friend but a pushover. I qualifiedly agree with Mr. Sausage on some points about him: his scheming is "largely accidental," but it becomes incredibly, consciously efficient, and negligent of the morality of the situation, and, as becomes the case with Miss Kubelik, actively complicit in something worse.

The darkness of the film is not always visible. Agree to disgaree, Mr. Sausage, I think this is a very dark film. Wilder, like his master Lubitsch, made films that gesture to more than what they depict, and although Lubitsch's influence on Wilder has by this point been subsumed and transformed into something else (and complicated by the partnership with I.A.L. Diamond), I still view The Apartment as largely gestural, largely suggestive, wrapping up a very dark, very cruel, very dismal film in romantic comedy trappings––like a Christmas present that turns out to be a suicide case, as someone puts it in the film. Am I overreading? The film's moral center, Dr. Dreyfuss, calls on Baxter to "be a mensch-–you know what that means? A human being." For me, that is what is at stake in this film: the humanity of the characters. (To be frank, I can't help but see this all tied up with a post-Holocaust reckoning, a distrust in bureaucracy, efficiency, etc., in the same way Cheyenne Autumn will be four years later, but this extends outside the realm of argument and thus I won't attempt it.)

Fran's a bit simpler. Her compromise is dating a married man, yet it's the sentimental version of that where she allows herself to be sold on the idea that this unethical situation will eventually be made ethical if she's just patient. She wants love, a husband, and a home, and she has no interest in being someone's side chick, but she allows herself to be wooed back time and again through the naive idea that compromised situations can be made right. Her values are alright, she just refuses to see that her situation could never allow for the proper expression of those values.

I assume that saying "Fran's a bit simpler" means that her case is a bit simpler, not the character herself. The description is true enough, but it's the description of an efficiency report: it ignores the details. After all, in case we all forgot, after the Christmas party that sparks the mid-film turmoil, Fran didn't get thoroughly smashed and hook-up with a stranger like Baxter did––she tried to kill herself. Fran does have no interest in being someone's side chick––and yet she has been, repeatedly and thoroughly, subjected herself to that degrading role. I don't know if anyone here has ever been a "side chick," but, when it's for someone you truly believe you love, it's an utterly degrading, debasing experience. It is a battle of delusions of grandeur and self-effacement (they love me and we will be together; they don't love me at all or they'd be with me, they want someone more than me, I'm not worth it for them). And I don't think I'm projecting onto this film unduly, that is, more than the film invites (although I also believe it is valid to bring our own experiences to a film to color our emotional reactions): two of my favorite lines in cinema belong to Fran: first, upon Baxter remarking that her mirror is broken, she says, "I like it that way––makes me look the way I feel." This is a classic bitter Wilder joke, witty but caustic, but nothing, simply nothing about the surrounding scene indicates that it's actually very funny at all. Fran says it with disturbing coolness that she never tries to qualify with a subsequent laugh. (And, indeed, the film indicts Baxter in this remark too, but having him look in the mirror: he too is broken.) Later on, post-suicide attempt, Baxter dissuades Fran from writing a letter to Sheldrake's wife, saying she'll "hate herself for it"––to which she responds, "fighting back tears" as the script phrases it (and as MacLaine does perfectly), "I don't like myself very much anyway." I believe her, frankly. Compare the flippant "hate yourself" that Baxter says, that figure of speech that we all have used at one time or another, and then compare it to the flat, confessional, "I don't like myself very much anyway." I believe she means it. Her meeting at the apartment earlier in the night with Sheldrake certainly works to give us a hint into the nature of her feelings for him; she wants to be a wife, perhaps, yes, but she's a mistress, and she feels like a prostitute with him.

That's the way with Sheldrake; I'd say he makes people feel cheap, but Fran remarks that a hundred dollars isn't cheap, and "you must be paying somebody something for the use of the apartment." This is a bitter irony, though, because, he isn't paying Baxter for the apartment, he's using employment opportunities as repayment, and for Sheldrake, a hundred dollars is cheap: Sheldrake's wealth, certainly not Bezos-level, is certainly considerable, and he can afford to do whatever he wants so long as the others around him depend on him––hence my initial characterization of Fran and Baxter as debased. Fran doesn't want money––she wants love, and it doesn't matter how much or how little money she gets, it will always make her feel, and pardon the laxity of expression, feel like shit. And clearly this has been going on far too long where she's been letting Sheldrake treat her like shit, and make her feel like shit; and letter other men treat her like shit (she describes herself as a bad insurance risk, and remarks that her first kiss "threw her over" for a drum majorette) and deceiving a wife and kids, and working a debasing job where she gets sexually harassed (on a daily basis? near daily?) by presumptuous men, that doesn't go anywhere (compare Baxter's literal rise to the top with Fran's elevator gig, which returns over and over and over and over and over again to the bottom floor), and lives with her married sister and husband, and doesn't think of herself as intelligent, and wonders whether anyone would care if she killed herself, and doesn't like herself very much anyway. This is not a character "compromised on a surface level only," no matter how much the finale of the film wants to convince us otherwise. This is a character bent towards self-annihilation, who sees herself as broken and would rather not exist, as her remarks on the phone to Sheldrake point: "Of course I'm not here––because the whole thing never happened––I never took those pills––I never loved you––we never even met––isn't that the way you want it?" which remind me greatly of Jane Fonda's line in Klute: "I just want to be bodiless, and faceless, and left alone."
[I know that everyone on this forum takes old movies seriously, and movies of all genres seriously, but I just want to make explicit the sort of challenge that films made during the code, and that films of more "trivial" genres, pose to the viewer; although many naysayers that I've had the displeasure of meeting, simplistically, say that movies from the 70s on are better because they can deal with more mature subject matter, this is certainly not true but so many older films keep the darkness below the surface, not quite visible. I'm a great admirer of Mr. Sausage's writings generally on this forum and don't wish to seem that I'm excessively responding to him, but the way his description of the film comes off seems insufficient to what I see the film to be. The problem of analyzing movies (art in general) is the problem of under- or overanalyzing, and I don't want anyone who disagrees with my arguments and conclusions to think I'm not self-conscious of the extent to which I am certainly extending the qualities of the movie. I have Nabokov and Fassbinder on my mind as I write this, trying at once to apply Nabokov's rigor to details, structure, etc., as well as Fassbinder's (in his notes on Sirk) passionate, vulgar intensity to the emotional lives of the characters on screen, even if they do seem like cartoons depicted by real people, as golden age Hollywood sometimes tends to.]

And Baxter, through his middle-management, finds himself complicit in the treatment that Fran, and other women, receive. Sure, his heart is in the right place, but there's a reason why Wilder lets Dr. Dreyfuss take him down a peg when he comes to help Fran. Jack Kruschen's performance here is remarkably good, and his sharp, cutting movements and vocal tone when he calls Baxter "a real cutie-pie" and then slaps Fran tell us a lot, a lot more than most comedies ever dare to go. Sure, we know that Baxter isn't directly responsible, but then why the violence of Dr. Dreyfuss's response? Wilder can pass by a suicide attempt with swifter levity, as we've seen in Sabrina. But Wilder is making a bigger point (one that, I think, connects to my overreaching argument that I mentioned earlier)––Baxter takes on the guilt of the men he protects, both literally and figuratively, as his neighbors continually think that what goes on in his apartment is his fault––and isn't it, to an extent? Fran says that some people are takers, and some people get took––the other men take Baxter's apartment, and Baxter takes the blame. He even tries to be like them himself, when he brings Mrs. MacDougal to the apartment. This is why he is debased (and, arguably, although less so, why he is debasing; it can be argued that he is on his way to being like them when Fran's suicide stops him). Not simply because they call him "Buddy-boy."

So, yeah, not that dark of a movie. Mostly a movie about people whose good qualities in the wrong contexts gets them into all sorts of trouble, mostly by learning their relationships are a lot more transactional than they either suspected or are comfortable with. But their hearts and their values are in the right place, and things mostly work out with that unchanged.

I could write more, but this post is getting unwieldy. But obviously I disagree strongly with the assessment that it's "not that dark of a movie," as well as with much of the rest of this summary of the film. But I also seem to take a very different view on the actual virtue of efficiency and helpfulness; those virtues corrode if not put in the right place. "Be a mensch," is the heart of the film. I think it a very serious one.

[domino harvey]

Great defense, thanks for sharing!

[therewillbeblus]

Watched Lost Weekend last night and was a bit disappointed by it. Perhaps mostly because when I first viewed the film from the MOC blu-ray, it knocked me out and I was really really drawn to how dark it was. But a revisit makes that darkness feel rather shallow. Maybe I'm projecting a bit and wanting the movie to be something it's not, but I feel like my favorite film noirs have either 1) some amount of hope that is dashed given the realities of the world or 2) some notion that characters have a goal to escape their unfortunate circumstance. This really doesn't seem to have either of those things. Milland loves boozing and is more concerned with covering it up than getting help in any way. He doesn't want to upset Helen but in no way is that his priority.

Milland is good. His monologuing is often funny, and he reminds me a lot of Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach. I assume the film is attempting to show how "good" he is with words as he regales the story of his love for Helen to his bartender. There's also some good comedic moments, like when the Jewish Pawn store owner tells him it's Yom Kippur, and especially the bit with the coat at the play, and the coatroom employee who talks about the importance of regulations in his coatroom.

But that said, a bit let down by this one. Rayon Vert earlier mentioned that Sunset Boulevard in terms of bouncing around styles, but I think I like when Wilder does that. This thread touches a lot on Wilder's tendency as a comedy writer to hammer notes into the ground, but it feels like he's doing the same thing here, except with darkness instead of comedy. We get it, the guy is an unrepentant boozer...do I need to see a dozen examples of this? Maybe more scenes of him actually trying to do something except boozing would be better, but I guess it wouldn't quite be a Lost Weekend if that was the case.

It sounds like you wanted not only a different movie but a movie about something different? If the darkness feels shallow it’s because it’s a film about an alcoholic who is powerless over alcohol and thus spiritually compromised hitting his bottom. I don’t think it’s fair to say he “loves” boozing (because he clearly doesn’t, and is drinking without his own permission, painfully) or that he’s “more concerned” with drinking over other people, unless you mean that his disease is manifesting in a way where his will power can not overcome addiction to look at the people he’s hurting for very long- but Wilder goes to great lengths to show he is perpetually concerned.

Prioritization assumes that alcoholism is a choice, which fits with pre-1964 diagnostics and moral model theorizing. Also, alcoholics aren’t going to do much else than drink in “a dozen examples” when at their zenith or crisis... I think he would love to be doing “something else” too! I also don’t see how in any way this is a comedy. There are noirish expressions to play with the emotional fatalism Milland feels but that’s about as far as that goes. It’s a drama about alcoholism, which is either not how you read it, or if you did read it that way I think your post is quite problematic (and a bit offensive), but it seems like the former.

I don’t think the film is a masterpiece either, though it gets a lot right about the experience it’s trying to expose, which admittedly is not Fun material for a movie.

[Rayon Vert]

To me The Lost Weekend is powerful (and on my list!) precisely because every time you think he's gonna turn a corner, he doesn't. It just gets darker and darker, and I appreciate that realism. Not really a noir, I'd say - it's a social problem drama, with some marked expressionistic/noirish stylistic elements.

[therewillbeblus]

The realism is so spot on it’s scary, and countless films have been made since that fail to understand what Wilder’s film shows to be destructive powerlessness within the (at the time, very progressive) disease model of addiction.

It’s a lock for my list too.

[Rayon Vert]

Blake Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses treats alcoholism in as harrowing a manner as this film does (but adding an alcoholic couple and the extra dimensions and agony of that situation), but I think that the later film is painted in somewhat overly broad strokes, with powerful scenes alternating with others that feel more old-fashioned relative to this film. (Speaking of Wine and Roses and Wilder, in its rather sweet beginnings the Edwards film seems to be more than a little inspired by the elevator scenes in The Apartment!).

I've seen a resource book for psychological/social worker clinicians that added recommended non-clinical books and movies to each chapter (devoted to a psychological issue) for potential use by clients, and unless memory is failing me both these films were included and positively rated.

[therewillbeblus]

Blake Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses treats alcoholism in as harrowing a manner as this film does (but adding an alcoholic couple and the extra dimensions and agony of that situation), but I think that the later film is painted in somewhat overly broad strokes, with powerful scenes alternating with others that feel more old-fashioned relative to his film. (Speaking of Wine and Roses and Wilder, in its rather sweet beginnings the Edwards film seems to be more than a little inspired by the elevator scenes in The Apartment!).

I've seen a resource book for psychological/social worker clinicians that added recommended non-clinical books and movies to each chapter (devoted to a psychological issue) for potential use by clients, and unless memory is failing me both these films were included and positively rated.

Yeah I always think of Days of Wine and Roses hand in hand with this one too, though I actually prefer the earlier Frankenheimer Playhouse 90 version because of the surreal jarring camerawork around Piper Laurie's devastating breakdown later in the film.

One day maybe I'll compile a list, and I'm always game for discussing addiction and films about addiction offline, but off the top of my head for modern depictions of the active using it doesn’t get any better than James Ponsoldt‘s first two features, Smashed in particular but also The Spectacular Now which pretends to be a romance and becomes a more tempered version of Roses that speaks to the less visible alcoholism in high school years.

The McQueen Shame is a tough film to like but gets a lot right while remaining perhaps too nebulous for many audiences, Flight has one of the best examples of powerlessness regarding will power and alcoholism at the end in the mini fridge, and while not a great film, many people I know in various recovery groups (though not the one depicted in the film!) cite Thanks For Sharing as a favorite and I’ll admit it does exemplify well the idea of ‘time’ sober being meaningless without practicing a program with Gad’s brand newcomer acting in many ways as more helpful than some of the guys with 15 years clean.

And then there’s Wolf of Wall Street and California Split as two movies which take eccentric and tricky approaches to sucking the life out of the excitement in addiction, with more perversity in the former but adventurous shenanigans in both masking bitter truths about the source of the drives for getting high being in process- or “the chase”- and lack of substance in expected endpoints only revealed in gut-punching desensitization, which shatters the misconception that addicts “had too much fun” or get the rush from the highs in finality that most other people do (while also not invalidating the brief experiential fun that many shy away from acknowledging). California Split is my favorite film on the subject for this (where that ‘finality’ spawns an existential crisis) and too many complex reasons to post here, but I’ll write it up in more detail someday. Anyways, back to Wilder.

[Drucker]

Thank you for the thoughts and it'd be interesting to mull them over and re-watch if I have the time. It would certainly be interesting to re-watch with the above in mind. I certainly never doubted how realistic its portrayal, merely my own enjoyment of watching that play out on screen. Part of what I found less than engaging was that I couldn't find myself suspending disbelief that there may be a corner he was going to turn at any point.

[Rayon Vert]

One day maybe I'll compile a list (...)

Sorry to be off topic again, but Clean and Sober with Michael Keaton I remember as also pretty unrelenting and realistic, and a decent movie, too. (And Siskel and Ebert liked it too.)

[therewillbeblus]

One day maybe I'll compile a list (...)

Sorry to be off topic again, but Clean and Sober with Michael Keaton I remember as also pretty unrelenting and realistic, and a decent movie, too.

It is a very good one, oddly enough my dad showed it to me when I was pretty young and I revisited it a few years ago on the other side of the rainbow and found it quite powerful. While we're derailing, it doesn't get more clear-cut realist than the Safdie's Heaven Knows What, which several of my close friends have said tells "their stories."

A few other less-obvious examples:

Unforgiven has an intense commentary on alcoholism's horrifying unleashing of the animal side of humanity.

I didn't find Her Smell to be about addiction per se but it's a recent exhibition on addiction as a symptom of larger existential and mental health concerns, which is often the case.

Rachel Getting Married is a great film about recovery and coping with one's past in the midst of triggering family dynamics.

Shotgun Stories contains no alcoholism onscreen but shows the effects of the disease passed on to a new generation of innocents, implementing naturalistic thriller vibes into a sobering drama.

Naked is the best film about destructive behavior that contains no alcohol. So not about addiction, but more apt to the hostage-taking harm than most exhibitions that are.

I recently argued that Nymphomaniac is about von Trier's own relationship with addiction, and could probably write a book on how his filmography reflects his personal experience coping with mental health/addiction issues.

Colossal, though, might take the cake. Its allegory just works so perfectly, and yet it shouldn't. I've watched this with many people in recovery who have supported that claim that is describes to a T the stewing of resentments, 'hurt people hurt people' theory, unintentional harmful consequences through complacent behavior, and so much more. Hopefully more people discover this one over time. I can't stand Anne Hathaway or Jason Sudeikis but here they both give perfect performances, which should be enough to get anyone to see this.

[knives]

I thought you were referring to the Pedro Costa film though In Vanda's Room would fit better.

[domino harvey]

All these side tracks and not one mention of Time Without Pity

[therewillbeblus]

I thought you were referring to the Pedro Costa film though In Vanda's Room would fit better.

Nah, though I should have clarified the Colossal from 2016 - Nacho Vigalondo's bold attempt at magical realism. The less one knows going into it, the better.

All these side tracks and not one mention of Time Without Pity

I thought about mentioning that one, along with a heap of others. It's great, but like many of the ones I didn't mention the addiction is used less as the main topic than as a significant coating, in this case as a grating weight that spreads him even thinner while already desperate and powerless. So yeah it's a great film about that whole 'finite will power' part of sobriety, the stress one carries without necessary support, as well as the pain of trying to reconnect with people you've harmed once sober, but there's enough else happening plotwise to make me think twice about calling it a film "about" addiction (though this is obviously a very fine line). I think I said something of that nature a few times in its dedicated thread.

[domino harvey]

I thought Colossal was a, uh, big swing and a miss. But we can pick that up here if necessary. Now how about that Wilder guy and his addiction to inserting long pauses after his jokes

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

Who's Billy Wilder?

[domino harvey]

That Ryan Reynolds movie about frats

[therewillbeblus]

I'll echo the appreciation for your breakdown of The Apartment, HinkyDinkyTruesmith, and I hope others weigh in on the film, which will undoubtedly be the highlights of this thread (unless someone else happens to gush about his second-best film - though that's a shot in the dark)