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The one about the pink submarine, though not before the credits give an aquatic glimpse of Cary Grant and Tony Curtis as a serene, striped fish and a whiskered, twitchy seal. (A snorting hog in coat and cap later has its part to play, too.) Blake Edwards' recherché allegory of old and new orders in the South Pacific avails itself of They Were Expendable, the war is sketched as a period of wholesale scrounging in the face of a toilet paper shortage. "A periscope sitting on top of a thousand tons of scrap metal," gurgling its way to the Philippines following a blessing from a witch doctor. Grant's veteran commander tries to hold it together, Curtis' wheeler-dealing lieutenant arrives in pristine whites but is more than ready to get black-market grease on his hands. "Tell me, why did you join the Navy?" "I needed a uniform." Narrow passageways tangled in widescreen rectangles, a close-quarters mise en scène complete with the nurses' unmentionables hung to dry in the engine room. The upstart debates pajama tops versus bottoms with the thoughtful blonde (Dina Merrill), the sexist machinist (Arthur O'Connell) has much to learn from the girdle of the major (Virginia Gregg), the bodacious klutz (Joan O'Brien) has quite an effect on torpedo-launching controls. In between air raids there's Curtis in oversized Panama hat lording over an island casino and Gene Evans approving the salty twist given to Hell and High Water's tattoo gag, Edwards keeps it all on an even keel derived from Grant's deadpan. A brassiere floats to the surface to save the day ("The Japanese haven't got anything like that!"), the flag flaps over the rosy U-boat, such are the wonders of the "goddamn Navy," as Altman would say. With Dick Sargent, Robert F. Simon, Robert Gist, Gavin MacLeod, and Marion Ross.
--- Fernando F. Croce |