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"The days of wine and roses are not long. From the mist of a dream, our path suddenly appears and then is lost in the dream." Kirsten
Hollywood, early 60s, Jack Lemmon directed by Blake Edwards, a beautiful blonde as co-star, and a soundtrack by Henry Mancini: all this would guarantee a high-class comedy and sure success, but "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is now behind us, and the themes and tones of this film are very different. The story indeed tells a love story, but one haunted by the specter of alcohol, which gradually destroys the lives of the two protagonists.
Joe works in public relations, and between one work party and another, he often drinks heavily, coming home drunk every time. One day, he meets Kirsten (Lee Remick) at the office, they fall in love, and marry. Soon, he passes on the drinking habit to her, and their evenings fly by with cocktails, spirits, bottles, and massive drinking sprees until Kirsten decides to stop because she is pregnant. Her sobriety doesn't last long, and the couple is relentlessly drawn to the abyss. Despite both trying to escape the shackles of the bottle, it always prevails, causing increasing problems at home, in daily life, and even in Joe's work. Realizing his condition, he finally decides to turn to Alcoholics Anonymous for more concrete help.
Edwards delves into the couple's intimacy and realistically describes the journey that transforms two "normal" people into alcoholics, trying to grasp the crucial dynamics of a carefree game that becomes a nightmare with no way out. The comedy tones, suggested in the film's first half-hour, give way to increasingly pressing dramatic and tense moments. The great merit of "Days of Wine and Roses" lies in tackling a sensitive and unfortunately very current topic without slipping into the easy rhetoric typical of American-made positivism, which permeates Hollywood filmmaking to its highest spheres; luckily, we are spared the moral lesson "anyone can make mistakes, but with willpower and elbow grease, everything gets fixed!" (which is repeated more than ever nowadays!), and alcoholism is considered, rightly, a subtle, invisible enemy that's very difficult to face and defeat. The film progresses in “stages”: each sequence represents a step towards the inferno, and each time the viewer is led to believe, “come on, this is the good time, maybe something has really changed”: this exactly mirrors an alcoholic's good intentions who is only deluding themselves into thinking they have escaped the tunnel. The two protagonists progressively lose control over their lives, and alcohol becomes the center of their universe. Among the most intense and memorable scenes, especially I recall the sequence set in the greenhouse and the one in the motel towards the end. Very interesting is the dual vision of life (drunk and sober) experienced on the protagonists' skin and the irreconcilability of these two ways of living, each incapable of understanding or justifying the other, each wanting to drag the other and convert them into themselves. The underlying bitterness is generated particularly by the sense of helplessness and the impossibility of truly repairing the damage done, because the experience of drinking is never completely overcome, at best it leaves a deep mark on the soul.
On the topic of alcohol (and addictions in general) we discover hot water, true, so I won't dwell too much. Without too much talk, it is worth admiring the beauty of a film, with extraordinary black and white photography, which shows how it's possible to succumb to the terrible charm of self-destruction and how repentance alone is not enough to solve all troubles. Jack Lemmon, excellent, finds the right balance to represent a completely plausible story and to make the character believable, avoiding creating a stereotype. In my opinion, one of the best films on alcoholism along with, with due distances, "The Lost Weekend" (B. Wilder 1945) and "Leaving Las Vegas" (M. Figgis 1995).
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