This film was one of the worst bombs of the famed director Billy Wilder's career, and exemplifies the problems Wilder had when the censorship system he had fought against for decades vanished. When you define yourself by defiance, and then lose all your boundaries, bad things can happen in the ensuing excess! On many levels, you could successfully argue that Wilder failed without those boundaries to rail against. Also, 'Kiss Me, Stupid' was a black and white film in the colour age of 1964, which can't have helped. Critics hated the movie, and reviled it. 'Is it actually that bad?', we can wonder, while remembering the usually redemptive nature of the Quirky Muffin.
'Kiss Me, Stupid' is a fascinating oddball movie, and a very good one too. Where it fails is in its polarising oddness, as embodied by the lead actor Ray Walston, playing piano teacher and aspiring songwriter Orville Spooner and Kim Novak's jauntily strange Polly the Pistol. The film was originally meant to be for Jack Lemmon, who then transmuted into Peter Sellers, who in turn fell away due to a heart attack. As a result, Walston is performing well out of his comfort zone at very short notice! He pushes Spooner further out into the world of weirdness than he may have wanted to, but it does work, more so as the film progresses. Except for the knitting sequence, which is just plain bizarre.
It's a rather strange story for 1964, adapted from a play and a previous Italian film. The plot breaks down as follows. Spooner and his mechanic friend Barney (Cliff Osmond) are aspiring song makers. Spooner is insanely jealous of his own attractive wife Zelda (Felicia Farr). Singer and actor Dean Martin (Dean Martin) passes through town and is sabotaged by Barney so he will stay over at the Spooners and be sold on some of their songs. Then, in order to lull the famed lothario, they get rid of Zelda and bring in a good time girl called Polly the Pistol from the local bar to pose as Zelda and woo the singer. After that, more things happen that will not be spoilt, but it does culminate in some pairings you wouldn't expect.
Many things could have led to the hatred that awaited this film. It may have been the sheer dislocation from reality that the trio of Walston, Billy Wilder and the ever semi-distant and semi-primal Novak formed. It may have been the subject matter, which the ever-conservative American critics and official society would have denounced at every opportunity, the movie dealing as it did with a double infidelity that actually restored the couple to normality against accepted doctrine. It could have been Dean Martin playing a parody of himself, or at least a caricature. Whatever the combination of factors may have been, the movie failed, and yet it didn't die. People still talk about 'Kiss Me, Stupid', and it is actually rather good. On first watching, I went from wondering what kind of strange disaster it was, to a grudging acceptance, and then a grand appreciation. It's not the equal of Wilder's classic 'The Apartment' by any measure, but it does have charms and a uniqueness all its own, and is saved by the ever unpredictable Kim Novak. Novak's Polly goes from a lost and worldly soul to a wiser woman with some hope by the end. It's a transition in a milder vein but similar to her role in 'Bell, Book and Candle'.
As with lots of films I've talked about here, 'Kiss Me, Stupid' was unfairly thrown into the dustbin of cinematic history. It's a quietly funny caper, a bit on the bawdy side at times, but it does have a heart of gold at its core, and an entirely non-standard ending and story for a Hollywood film. Maybe that was the killing factor? A lack of conformity to everything else being made? It's hard to know without experiencing the era as it was, but it's as good an answer as we will ever have. It deserves to be seen as much as all the other Billy Wilder films, and continues to be rehabilitated as time goes on.
O.
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