Billy Wilder
Non per soldi... ma per denaro

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time".

Here, in a phrase, is the moral of this beautiful comedy by Billy Wilder (has he ever directed a bad one?), written on the slip of paper from a Chinese fortune cookie (hence the original title "The Fortune Cookie"), with the sly lawyer Willie Gingrich (Walter Matthau), who, after throwing it away, utters a laconic "These Chinese. What do they know!", artfully closing one of the sixteen dazzling chapters that make up this film.

A film that, although not among the most cited of Wilder, is important for at least two reasons. First, because it was a box office success that put the Viennese director back on track after the commercial and critical flop (at least in the United States) of "Kiss Me, Stupid". But above all, it launched the fantastic duo Lemmon-Matthau, practically invented by Wilder (who wrote the screenplay, along with trusty I.A.L. Diamond, with the two actors already in mind). A comedy duo that made the history of brilliant cinema. While in "The Odd Couple" and "Buddy Buddy" Lemmon is the manic-depressive troublemaker who torments Matthau, in this film, as well as in "The Front Page", the persecutor is Matthau instead, playing the lawyer Gingrich, who practically forces his naive brother-in-law, cameraman Harry Hinkle (Jack Lemmon) to pretend to be paralyzed to collect insurance compensation after the latter is hit by a player during a football game (a stratagem reminiscent of Walter Neff's insurance scam attempt in "Double Indemnity").

Needless to say, here the two really shine, with Matthau excelling as the volcanic Willie (a guy who "would find a loophole in the Ten Commandments") with his low voice and grim tone, rubber face, and classic slouchy demeanor. An outstanding performance that, among other things, earned Matthau a well-deserved Oscar while also causing him a heart attack two months after filming began, as had already happened to Peter Sellers on the set of "Kiss Me, Stupid". Lemmon, on the other hand, almost always forced by a brace and collar, has fewer opportunities to stand out but still manages to shine in the more reflective moments and be funny, for example, in the scene of the wheelchair ballet or when subjected to the tortures of the "luminaries" who are supposed to ascertain the extent of his disability (the toughest of whom is a neurotic psychiatrist with a Teutonic accent who repeats only and continuously "Simulate!").

If Willie acts towards the weak Harry as a tempter devil, the naive black champion Luther "Boom Boom" Jackson, convinced that he caused the paralysis, is somewhat the mirror of his bad conscience. It's precisely the mutual remorse of the two that helps to characterize the second half of the film with a more melancholic tone of a sad comedy (over which Andre Previn's languid music dominates). It's a beautiful male friendship in which some critics have seen characteristics of homosexual love, considering also the insipidity and meanness of the female characters (Harry's bland sister, the possessive mother in constant crying fits, and above all, the rapacity of ex-wife Sandy (Judi West), with a provocative but vulgar beauty, attracted only by the mirage of money to relaunch her artistic ambitions as a third-rate starlet). It's significant then that Boom Boom's "depression" seems to begin the moment he, accompanying Sandy from the airport to Harry's home, realizes the absolute pettiness of the girl to whom Harry is still desperately attached. Anyway, it seems to me that Wilder didn't intend to emphasize this aspect quite so openly as he has done in other films, such as with the Holmes-Watson friendship in "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes".

As with any respectable "morality tale", the truth eventually comes to light when the shrewd private investigator (Cliff Osmond) hired by the insurance company's lawyers (the three "legal eagles") notices the special friendship between Harry and Boom Boom, and begins to racially slur the black players, provoking an irate reaction from Harry who openly reveals the charade in front of the camera hidden in the house opposite, performing a gymnast's routine in a scene that cannot help but recall, albeit in a more clownish key, the finale of "Sunset Boulevard" (with Harry simultaneously director and star). The film ends with a bittersweet finale similar to that of "The Apartment" (where Bud and Fran ended up playing cards) in which the two outsiders Harry and Boom Boom (as the only characters who still maintain a moral sense in a world dominated by cynicism) exchange the oval ball in the empty football stadium. Like C.C. Baxter, Harry is a hopeless "loser", left without a job, without money, without a woman but with a new great friendship; this is the price paid for having respected the moral law within himself. Not exactly a Happy Ending, perhaps, but certainly the most that Wilder's wholesome cynicism could have granted.