Appartement pour homme seul

This is such a wonderful little, "feelgood" film. Terry Thomas is just wonderful and so is Tuesday Weld. All the different characters work so well together. There are about 5 or 6 different storylines, all interwoven. This film is just the sort of film to relax with at the end of a hard workweek. Even the dog has a storyline!! If you are looking for a little film that will have you smiling at the end, I highly recommend this one.

Suave and fastidious British archeology professor "Patterson" (Terry-Thomas) is forever fending off the attentions of his amorous female students, so hopes that the announcement of his engagement to "Helen" (Celeste Holm) might calm things down. He's in for quite a shock though when her daughter "Libby" (Tuesday Weld) shows up having absconded from boarding school. Now he knew nothing of her, nor she him so when she catches him in the shower - well that's just the start of the misunderstandings galore that follow. None of this is helped by his youthful neighbour "Mike" (Richard Beymer) who quickly takes a bit of a shine to her. Poor old "Patterson" is quickly out of his depth as the scenarios become sillier and the intervention of a certain four-legged "Jessica" adds even more mayhem as she fancies a gnaw on his recently arrived ancient dinosaur bone. It starts off quite engagingly but does rather fall into a repetitious frying pan to fire series of predictable scenarios that even the naturally talented Terry-Thomas struggles to rejuvenate after half an hour of romantic, under the bed, semi-slapstick. Beymer and Weld look like they are enjoying themselves though, and the few scenes with Holm make it a watchable enough comedy that epitomises the spirit of the British stiff upper lip contrasted with a good dose of American free love and even a bit of French joie de vivre too! You'll never remember it, but it passes ninety minutes effortlessly.

Critics tend to ignore director Frank Tashlin's films, except for the two starring Jayne Mansfield. When they do review Tashlin's work, they invariably mention that he began as an animator (Warner Brothers' Looney Toons), and that Tashlin's live-action movies tend to feature cartoonish characters and impossible sight gags. 'Bachelor Flat' is unusual for Tashlin, in that the main characters are all plausible human beings. Even more interestingly, 'Bachelor Flat' appears to be Hollywood's attempt to turn Terry-Thomas into a light-comedy romantic lead, rather than a comic villain.

Terry-Thomas here plays a veddy British professor at one of those California colleges where all the students are young, tanned, and impossibly good-looking. Terry-Thomas's character is named Bruce Patterson, which sounds to me more like an Australian name! The dialogue identifies Patterson as an 'archaeologist', but he's clearly a palaeontologist: did they think we wouldn't know what this word means? The movie's premise maintains that Patterson is irresistible to women, due to his English accent and his charming manner.

The young romantic leads are Tuesday Weld (as a flighty teen runaway) and Richard Beymer (as a swot). Weld is supposed to be all cute 'n' adorable, and we're supposed to want to hug her, but I just wanted to slap her and call her an idiot. For one thing, she runs away from boarding school wearing high heels!

What on Earth can explain the brief success of Richard Beymer? This tall handsome non-entity displays no acting talent whatever. In 'The Diary of Anne Frank' he utterly failed to convince me that he was European. In all his romantic roles (including 'Bachelor Flat') he quite fails to convince me that he has any interest in women. Beymer's best-known role is the male lead in 'West Side Story' (however did he get THAT part?), yet his utter blandness was the biggest flaw in that great film.

Tuesday Weld and Celeste Holm are meant to be playing daughter and mother, yet their characters have almost no footage together. I was impressed with one clever transition by Tashlin: a shot of Weld in bed with a photo of Holm, then cutting to a shot of Holm in bed with a photo of Weld.

Celeste Holm and her real-life husband (character actor Wesley Addy) have made generous donations to many charities, and they have been friendly to me personally: Holm has kindly granted me the time to interview her about her early days performing with George M Cohan. I really want to like her on screen ... yet Holm has never given a movie performance that impresses me. She's just dull here, playing an unsympathetic character. Allegedly, she's romantically involved with Terry-Thomas, but their characters have almost no screen time together.

Francesca Bellini (who?) gives one of the worst performances I've ever seen in a Hollywood sound film, and an unbilled American actress in the role of Miss Pilkington attempts an unconvincing English accent. Howard McNear is just as annoying here as he was in Mayberry. Rather a lot of this movie is implausible without being funny. If a tiny dachshund really did steal an immense dinosaur bone, dragging it slowly along inch by inch, would the dog really make TWO circuits round the same sand dune? Not likely.

I laughed heartily at one sight gag involving Terry-Thomas and a Cro-Magnon skull. The gag was reworked from a similar gag with Jules Munshin in 'On the Town', but it's funnier here and more imaginative. The film's prologue, featuring Terry-Thomas as a predatory redcoat in the days of Paul Revere, is amusing ... but it unfortunately sets the wrong tone for everything that follows. I liked the views of early 1960s California, although (based on this movie) there doesn't seem to be anyone in the entire state who isn't white. 'Bachelor Flat' features impressive production values, but there's really very little of interest here. I'll rate this movie just 4 out of 10.

British archaeology professor at a Southern California university, living at the home of his fiancée--a world traveler who is currently away--finds himself saddled with a young chippie who claims to be an escapee from reform school; turns out she's the 17-year-old daughter of his future wife, who somehow failed to mention she was the mother of a teenager. Budd Grossman adapted his play along with the film's director, Frank Tashlin, yet neither seems able to tell the difference between shrill one-liners and clever repartee. The cast is manic and cartoonish, dashing in and out of the professor's pad on the beach as if this were a "Carry On" farce from the 1950s. Terry-Thomas isn't as offensive as the younger players, but working strenuously at a piece of fluff is ultimately disastrous for the picture and the star. Farce doesn't seem to be Tuesday Weld's strong suit (she's metallic and grating instead of charming), while Richard Beymer as a smitten law student is merely a hole in the screen. Not much headway from 1954's "Susan Slept Here", which Tashlin also directed, although this one at least has a cute dachshund with a fetish for dinosaur bones. *1/2 from ****

The very British talents of Terry-Thomas and the American comic genius of director Frank Tashlin produced a rather indifferent comedy in Bachelor Flat. Only in the last 10 minutes of the film do we see Terry-Thomas in his usual rakish, devilish character.

As his neighbor Richard Beymer says he's got a problem that every American male would like to have, he has to beat women off with a stick. Even though he's engaged to Celeste Holm who is in Paris and has rented him, her beach house the women just keep coming on to him. Especially the coeds at the college where he teaches paleontology.

One thing that Holm forgot to tell him is that she has a teenage daughter of her own from a previous marriage. And when Tuesday Weld drops in to the beach house for an unexpected visit that sets in motion a whole chain of events.

Bachelor Flat scored well at the box office due to current teen favorites Weld and Beymer. But Tashlin and Terry-Thomas have both done far better work. Even the good sight gag of a large dinosaur bone that Beymer's dachshund keeps trying to steal and bury worked a whole lot better in Bringing Up Baby. The film is all right, but everybody in the cast has done better work.