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"These Americans... They fall in love with their psychiatrists!" The main feint is toward The Three Faces of Eve, Jerry Lewis as the Paris-bound artiste (Mondrian closets and all) whose subconscious splits for the diligent shrink (Janet Leigh). Their marriage is halted by a trio of patients who faint at the idea of her leaving, the medical chum (James Best) detects man trouble and advises man solution, "off the couch and back in circulation." Secretly Jerry dons disguises to woo each cutie into a breakthrough: Fitness nut for the athlete (Mary Ann Mobley), cigar-gnawing rancher for the cowboy buff (Gila Golan), butterfly net-wielding wallflower for the zoologist (Leslie Parrish). (The Southern matron drag-act is a Freudian bonus.) "My, isn't that spreading yourself thin?" Boeing Boeing by way of The Family Jewels, a terse, splendidly disconcerting therapy. Lassoed at the rodeo, busted at the dojo, unhip to the integrity of insects, the ruse that throws a light on a relationship. The structure calls for expressive mise en scène and gets it, the fiancée's serene mind at work like colored lights for the office's white walls, a gorgeous long take dollying across the dance floor, the back of Lewis' pomaded head offset by Leigh's lovestruck eyes. (A pratfall follows the moment of beauty in a characteristic Lewisian whiplash.) By contrast, the psyche of the artist on the verge of being unmasked is a teeming party with guests endlessly spilling out of the elevator, somewhere between Breakfast at Tiffany's and Portnoy's Complaint—a slurred toast by Kathleen Freeman and a monumental double-take by Buddy Lester, the great manipulator meanwhile shivering behind a potted plant. Resolution comes at the dock, a hearty guffaw after the threat of suicide. "No diagnosis on your honeymoon!" With Renzo Cesana, Jesslyn Fax, Renie Riano, and Fritz Feld.
--- Fernando F. Croce |