Divorce American Style

A very great film on its subject, Lear’s prose meets Yorkin’s poetry in an ideal combination.

It is not revealed until just before the end that the major considerations of the film are McCarey’s The Awful Truth and Lubitsch’s The Marriage Circle.

The fond belief foisted by critics was that Penn was strictly from the Nouvelle Vague, Truffaut is very much the point here (Baisers volés).

Variety and Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times) were wowed, neither Bosley Crowther of the New York Times nor Tom Milne (Time Out Film Guide) understood it in the slightest, it made fun of a serious thing in their view. Halliwell’s Film Guide takes the middle road, neither here nor there.

Inspector Clouseau

Thirteen Clouseaus empty thirteen Zurich banks simultaneously for security reasons, the cash is then repackaged as bars of Lindt chocolate and sent by barge to Rotterdam.

The operation is financed with proceeds from the Great Train Robbery.

Clouseau’s face serves as the model for each crook’s mask after he’s rendered insensible by two ladies in nightgowns at the Tudor Arms.

He has been sent to Britain on special assignment in the expectation of just such an extraordinary crime. The robbers have a man in the English police married to a stout Scotswoman with an au pair from the Sûreté.

Start The Revolution Without Me

Eventually this is Magna Carta manqué and the romance of Mimi Montage, the Man in the Iron Mask has the last word over the Corsican brothers De Sisi and the peasant brothers Coupé.

“Starts like a house afire,” says TV Guide, “then simply burns down.”

Halliwell’s Film Guide thinks it might have been better with Abbott and Costello.

The Thief Who Came To Dinner

A most complicated, beautiful, abstruse prize laid before the public.

Variety thought it “tepid”, Vincent Canby was very worried it might be real, having never seen a Raffles in his life.

Arthur 2
On the Rocks

The “spoiled little shit”, having married the wrong woman, is brought to heel by the right one’s father.

It doesn’t work, and he doesn’t “marry the bitch”.

Yorkin’s superb technique simply floats it along through the masterful rapids of the conclusion as though it were not of the greatest significance.