So this is the next up on the AFI list, but also it’s next up on the S&S 2022 new additions list for me. Synergy! (I’m actually a little surprised the timing worked out so well on this that I’m not watching it out-of-order either way.)

This is one of Wilder’s four entries on the AFI list, along with Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, and Double Indemnity. Maybe even more impressively given its global scope, Wilder has three movies in the S&S top 100 (Double Indemnity falls to #196). And usually when there are repeats by the same director, I’m like “enh, get rid of one of them.” But Wilder’s movies are so wildly different — a farce, a noir, a character-driven drama about old Hollywood — that none of them really quite are doing the same thing as the others. I can’t think of another director who combines his range with his talent. I’m actually okay leaving them all on there (well, okay, maybe Double Indemnity could go; there’s surely other noir that’ll work in that slot).

But if you had to grab only one film from Wilder, I think this might be the one to pick. And look, I know this movie is 60+ years old, but I think it’s worth going into without knowing much about it, so I’m going to put a bunch of this behind a spoiler cut just in case you want to stop and go watch it now.

Spoilers

So the thing about this movie is that it starts off as a kind of farcical comedy, right. Jack Lemmon has ended up lending his apartment out to highers-up at his employer (a gigantic insurance company), so they can have affairs without needing to rent hotels. He’s miserable about this (as he basically has to vacate his apartment more days than not, and also they drink all his liquor), but keeps being promised a promotion and threatened with a firing, so he keeps the arrangement going.

And as a comedy, the movie is great; it’s sardonic and witty and genuinely a funny movie. And so I’m all settled in for what is sure to devolve into some kind of Rules of the Game-style farce, when suddenly the movie takes a sharp left turn: One of the execs makes it clear to his mistress that he’s never actually going to leave his wife for her like he’s been promising, and so after he leaves, she tries to kill herself.

Lemmon comes home to find her unconscious next to an empty bottle of sleeping pills, rouses the doctor who lives next door, and the next little bit is a genuinely grim scene of saving her life. The breezy musical soundtrack cuts out, the doctor (who has previously been a comedic neighbor figure) is deadly serious, they induce vomiting, he slaps her face to rouse her, it’s all just absolutely dark as hell. In two minutes, the movie has taken a left turn into serious drama, and at that point you have to throw all your expectations out the window.

The movie is made in 1959, so it’s not exactly making a feminist statement, but it does do a good job giving that woman (Shirley MacLaine) agency: As it’s looking uneasily like Lemmon is going to leverage his caretaking into kind of just cornering her into dating him, the movie puts the kibosh on that: She chooses to leave him and do something else. When she does come back at the end (because of course she does), it’s a decision she makes for herself rather than a situation she got coerced into.

Given that this movie is literally on two separate Top 100 lists, by a director of Wilder’s stature, it is probably not surprising when I say that it’s excellent… but like, legitimately, it’s excellent. The only mystery to me is why it didn’t make the 2012 S&S list, really — maybe just too many other Wilder movies competing with it for those spots. But yeah, highly recommended, obviously.