Como Matar Sua Esposa

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.

A comedy that, if made today, would likely be under attack from every politically correct special interest group you could name. The title alone would bring out the picket signs. That observation aside, "How to Murder Your Wife" is a very funny comedy in which the supporting cast outshine the stars. Jack Lemmon, Virna Lisi, and Terry Thomas are all good, but it is Eddie Mayehoff and Claire Trevor who really make this one memorable. There never was a henpecked bumbler like the great Mayehoff, and no one could match Trevor as a...well, you know, the word that begins with a B.

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.

The comic style of this film is reflected in Jack Lemmon's cartoons; in fact, he creates his comic-strip character, Brash Brannigan, in his own likeness and then tries to influence his own life by changing Brash's. A brilliant narrative trick.

The last time I saw this, adult life lay ahead like a kind of exam. Orange juice in the shower, and beautiful blonds popping out of cakes seemed to be the goal. This film was like a comedic case study in lifestyle management, a blueprint to be stored away - just in case. I liked all the ideas here: the perfect bachelor life, waking up and finding yourself married, the club where you can't be reached - and it's still likable.

Lemmon shows terrific timing with his rapid use of language and gesture that has an amazing flexibility to it - as a technique that is surely unique to him. Terry-Thomas is splendid and quite solid in contrast. Of course we scoff at the idea of a cartoonist living in a townhouse in the middle of Manhatten with a butler, but that's a metaphor for the end of the old days.

The Brash Brannigan shenanigans at the beginning were a little overdone though, and the courtroom scene near the end is more than preposterous - it's post-posterous; the whole murder trial device is weakened by the fact that we know what actually happened - much better if there'd been some doubt in our minds also as to whether he had killed his wife - hard to understand how George Axelrod's script missed that obvious point.

Still, the humour tootles along nicely: the gloppita-gloppita machine; the goofballs that make your wife dance on the table - Brrrrrrrrrrp! - and then collapse - Blapppp!; delicious Virna Lisi; and those in-your-dreams lifestyle tips - it's like re-reading an old favourite comic strip.

I really want to recommend this movie to you.

Sure, it has a weak third act which pounds a particularly misogynistic message. And the end is so formulaic it hurts. But up until then, it classifies as among the best of comedies.

I have a particular admiration for it as what I think is the first example of a cartoonist whose drawings interweave with his life. Its a clever idea at root but handled with extra sophistication here.

The setup is that our hero (Jack Lemmon) is a cartoonist who draws himself in his strip as a sort of James Bond character. But before he draws each strip, he actually acts it out as movies that we see in the movie within the movie. (How he hires the actors and arranges the locations is a detail left unexplained.)

Thus, strip and life have a relationship within the story proper. Much is made of conflating the movie, the life depicted in the movie, the strip, and the movies within.

He ends up with an unwanted (well, sort of) wife and acts out her murder. Since she left in a huff, he has no defense when his readership (the whole country it seems) accuses him of real murder.

The pinnacle of this confabulation comes when his butler comes to the realization that the murder has actually been real with the enactment an alibi. Things go downhill from there. But until that point, this is sublime, a comic "Draughtsman's Contract."

See it.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.