Wie bringt man seine Frau um?

I really love this movie and have little to add to the positive comments posted already.

One question though...

As the cartoonist, Jack Lemmon would always act out the scene first with his butler taking pictures Jack would use to draw the comic strip. He did this for the Bash Brannigan diamond caper at the beginning of the movie.

Then, when Jack decided Bash Brannigan should kill off his wife, Jack walked around the city to get the supplies he (Jack) would need to act it out; a mannequin (because he wasn't going to dump his real wife's body in cement), the pills, and a remote control.

Later, in the comic strip, Brash walks around the city and buys a mannequin, pills and a remote control.

So, wasn't it a mistake in logic to show Bash Brannigan in the comic strip saying he would need a mannequin? Bash was not acting it out. He was killing Mrs. Brannigan. Right?

A delightfully sophisticated farce written and produced by George Axelrod and very nicely directed by Richard Quine, who seemed to have a knack for this sort of thing. Jack Lemmon is the New York cartoonist and a confirmed bachelor who goes to a bachelor dinner one night and wakes up in the morning married to the girl who popped out of the cake. And who could blame him since she's played by the delectable Virna Lisi who is not only gorgeous but a great comedienne as well. The problem is Lemmon doesn't want a wife, even one who looks like Lisi - hence the title.

Axelrod is the man who gave us "The Seven Year Itch" but this is better. It's beautifully designed and has a great supporting cast. Terry-Thomas is the British butler appalled by Lemmon's newly acquired martial status, the great Eddie Mayehoff is his lawyer, (the movies never really used Mayehoff to his full effect), and Claire Trevor is Mayehoff's wife. It's never as black as it ought to be, (indeed, it's highly coloured in the way many American comedies of the period were), but it's consistently funny and enjoyable.

Entertaining and enjoyable comedy which unfortunately is too long for the premise on which it is based, although Lemmon gives his usual faultless comic performance in the lead role of a successful cartoonist who wakes up one morning to find himself married following the previous drunken evening. However, the high point of the movie is undoubtedly Terry-Thomas' pivotal but underwritten performance as Lemmon's gentleman's gentleman whose concern for his employer's changed circumstances is as much as a result of his genuine desire to protect Lemmon's well-being as it is to avoid his own obsolescence.

Jack Lemmon is a cartoonist who figures out "How to Murder Your Wife" in this 1965 film also starring Virna Lisi, Terry-Thomas, Claire Trevor, Eddie Mayehoff, Max Showalter and Sidney Blackmer. Lemmon is Stanley Ford, a successful cartoonist of a dashing James Bond-like figure. Ford leads the perfectly structured life in his gorgeous Manhattan townhouse. He has a man servant (Thomas), his weight his perfect, he works out, and he has a nice social life. One night that all changes. While drunk, a gorgeous blond (Lisi) comes out of a cake at a stag party, and Stanley marries her immediately. It turns out she can't speak a word of Englsh. She's an incredible Italian cook so his weight goes up. Under the influence of the domineering wife (Trevor) of his attorney (Mayehoff), she checks in on him at his club and gets him thrown out; she shops until she drops; she redecorates in chintz; his man servant leaves. His life is a disaster.

What Stanley does, his cartoon character does. His cartoon character was a swinging bachelor who got married when Stanley did. Now it's time for the character to kill his wife and go back to being a swinging bachelor. Stanley always does his sketches from photographs of himself actually performing the various tasks in his cartoon. Now he gets a blond mannequin and has the character kill his wife. Just one problem - Stanley's wife actually leaves with no forwarding address, and Stanley has the pictures to show himself killing her.

This film is totally sexist and misogynistic, but despite the weak ending, the concept is funny, and Lemmon is very good as a man watching his well-oiled life unravel before him. It's all about how a woman takes over a man's life and runs the show, and that does often seem to be true, though it's overstated here for the sake of comedy. The secret of any kind of marital bliss is some sort of compromise here and there, and by the end of the film, the characters are coming around.

I'm not crazy about most of these '60s battle of the sexes comedies, and it's no wonder that Jack Lemmon didn't really like making them. This one has some good scenes, like Lemmon being photographed carrying out different situations (with hired actors) for his cartoon. Terry-Thomas is quite funny, Lisi is beautiful, and Trevor is good in the role of an overbearing wife. Mayehoff makes a good henpecked husband.

Pleasant but not great.

By 1965 Lemmon had already been in "The Apartment" and won critical acclaim for his ability to carry a dramatic comedy, and notably one loaded with difficult scenes - but then Lemmon was a master of comic timing. In "How To Murder Your Wife" the comedy gets broader, the pacing sputters a bit, and there's Virna Lisi (love her or hate her.) This film is dated, but there's two kinds of dated in the movie world: Annoying Dated and Charming Dated. This one falls in the second bracket. Yeah, it's charming, and therefore one can endure the somewhat chauvinistic bachelor theme. Yeah, its leading lady can't speak a lick of English, but Lisi fills the part to the T. There's better Lemmon films out there. But if you have the time between watching "Some Like It Hot" and "The Odd Couple", you should give this one its 118 minutes. You won't regret it.