There are many names that flash through your mind when the 70s are evoked. Jack Nicholson. Cher. Van Halen. Mary Tyler Moore. Limit it to directors and you can list Frances Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in quick succession.
I would, however, place a significant bet that next to no one says Billy Wilder When you think of the 1970s. Wilder’s most famous work is likely “Sunset Boulevard,” The frightening, precautionary story about Hollywood has gone wrong – defined by its release date from 1950. “The apartment” is another seminal work, Thag One placed Fixed 1960 Corporate America. “Some like the hot”, “The Lost Weekend”, “Stalag 17”, hell, even “The Fortune Cookie” each took into the marrow’s popular culture and broke through the narrow Zeitgeist to represent something tangible about their respective decades.
The work that Wilder did in the 70s was greeted with much less success and continues to be seen as less relevant to the story of the era that his previous films were to his own but his most interesting film From the time period – comedy from 1972 ”Avanti!” – deserves to be recognized as a clear crystallization of the socio -economic and sexual custom of his day. In a new conversion with IndieWire,” Avanti! “Consulting Juliet Mills Discussed to make the film and how its themes and messages reflect something unique about the culture.
“When it came out, it was panned by the critics,” Mills said. “Who knows why, really? But you know, sometimes they suddenly have a while on people who are as successful (like Wilder).” I remember that Billy was very, very disappointed with the reception of the movie. “
The film follows American businessman Wendell Armstrong, Jr. (Jack Lemmon) When traveling to Italy to recover the body to his business mogulfader. There he discovers that his father had had a decade long deal with a British woman, and that the couple died together in a crash while “Hello, Dolly” played on their car radio. The woman’s daughter, Pamela Piggott (Mills), has also come to demand her mother’s body. Pamela is a self -release free spirit whose honesty and abandonment throw an enchantment at the embitrated Wendall. Through a series of misunderstandings and mishaps, the couple charmingly begins their own business.
Wilder had written the part with Mills in mind. “He called my agents and said he wanted to meet me. So I went over to his office, and (co -author) Ial Diamond was there, and he told me he got this script, and he had always wanted to see me in that part. And, you know, was I interested? Well, I mean, for God’s Sakes, I fell. “But in fact we had met many years earlier. I was in a game in London – he came to meet me and he was very free. And he told me:” One day we will work together. “And of course I thought,” Oh, it’s one of the Hollywood promises. “But in fact it became real.”
However, a special element in the plot was not an exact match with Mills – and it is an element that has not aged so well: Pamela is probably overweight, to the point that Wendell is forced to call her a “bold ass” in a moment played to be funny. Mills do not seem overweight in the movie of any standard, and Wilder movies her with a loving eye. As such, the script’s comments on her weight take a completely different meaning, which can generously be seen as a criticism of impossible beauty standards.
“He said to me:” Take the script home, but there is a catch: you have to put on 35 pounds, “told Mills. She decided it was worth the challenge.” I had three months preparing for it – it was quite difficult, harder than I thought it would be. I was pretty narrow during these days, and it’s pretty much weight for someone who is five feet two. “
Mills said she liked to wait – up to a point, when she “got a kind of firm” and still had to turn on 10 kilos. “I remember staying in London on my way to Rome to see with my parents, and I told my father,” you know, he will weigh me and I’m still not up to 35 pounds. “So Dad said to me:“ We’ll fix it.
Nevertheless, her father John Mills – the famous British actor – thought the whole performance a little stupid. “My father had always said,” It’s ridiculous. It is only for one “fat ass” joke that he has made you put on all that weight, “said Mills.” (Wilder) wanted it to be a very offbeat love story, one that was not about the obvious type of beautiful girl on the Riviera. She was a malpractice. She was not the obvious choice for a man like him, an American executive who came to Italy. It was not obvious that he would fall for someone like her. And I think it really was his idea … (but) I wasn’t really fat for the whole joke. “
Filmed on site at the famous Italian studio Cinecittà, in addition to various other places in the country, the exotic shooting was far from the Hollywood-bound sets where Wilder had spent much of his career. Mill and lemon also (tasty) have naked scenes and pronounce some elections here and there. In these senses, “avanti!” is very much a movie in the 70s compared to the director’s former work – a real place with real people that real people speak, albeit much smarter (that’s Billy Wilderafter all).
“(We had to be) letter perfectly,” Mills said. “Nothing Added. No Improvisation. In Mean (Down) to the punctuation. He was so precise with his dialogue, it was so beautifully writ, and he expected you to just know it and say it. And he was not not dictorial about it, but it accepted Tampered with in any way.
Mills recalled what she called a happy production and described Wilder and Lemon as two of the most delightful, funny people to work with – she would continue to form close friendship with both of them. She said that Wilder believed in creating a mood on the set, so that he even used music to get his artists in the right main space. “One of the interesting things that I have never experienced on any other movie was that he used music as the silent films on the set. He would sometimes have music that played what kind of set tone, as it was, for a scene. And I thought it is extremely helpful. Of course it is not just a mood, it is also true.
The work paid off. In retrospect, the film’s relationships and its story very much in common with Wilder’s more beloved works, especially romantic comedy dramas “The apartment” and “Sabrina.” The procedure simply happens to be less naive – Wilder had not changed, but The Times had, and if something the film reflects that schism too well, especially to the extent “Avanti!” reflected the site -realistic trend that showed from drama such as “The Godfather” and “Cabaret” while retreating from their polished barley. While the film received a healthy number of Golden Globe nominations (which was announced when it was released in December 1972), it had been on the side of the audience and critics when Oscars came around a few months later.
“I don’t really remember that you read reviews or something, but I guess I did,” Mills said. “I don’t remember, really, if they were good or bad. I guess they were not good, because it really flopped, as they say, as far as making money, but for years to follow it has been recognized as one of his best movies … (Wilder) said:” We will make another movie together. “Well, of course we didn’t.” I saw “Avanti!” Recently on the big screen because there was a Jack Lemmon festival in New York -it was his 100th birthday this year so I went to it.
You can read our full retrospective interview Juliet Mills – which will show up on Cinecon Film Festival August 29-September-September- here.
“Avanti!” is currently available to flow on Pipe. Take a watch and decide if the audience in 1972 was unfair to (what I think) is an adorable, heartwarming, funny movie about love and sadness.
Indieviews’70s presented by Bleecker Street ”RELAY. “Riz Ahmed plays a” fixer “in world -class that specializes in brokers lucrative payments between corrupt companies and the individuals who threaten their ruin.RELAY“” Sharp, funny and smart entertaining from his first scene to his last twist, ‘Relay’ is a modern paranoid thriller as Harkens back to the genre’s 70s heyday. “From director David Mackenzie (” Hell or High Water “) and also in the lead role Lily James, in theaters August 22.
