nightscreamspub-81-600514 The movie Days of Wine and Roses is and always will be a classic. Beautiful movie. But the person who reviewed the movie is nuttier than a jar of Planters, and more crackers than Ritz. The Lost Weekend which earned Ray Milland an academy award is a brilliant movie and by NO MEANS does it have a happy ending. The man was about to kill himself. If his girlfriend hadn't come back he would have blown his brains out. A great realistic portrayal of alcoholism. Fantastic. Otherwise good review.

Kyle Perez Blake Edwards' "Days of Wine and Roses (1962)" is a near perfect film in my opinion. Showing the true horrors and depth of alcoholism in an unapologetically dark manner, Edwards somehow manages to still find the beauty in his characters and their surroundings and does so in such an enchanting way.Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick are absolutely exceptional in their roles - they are majestic through the beginning of their journey and, even amidst their darkest periods, still manage to let their human qualities shine through. Together, they steal the show and elevate this film to something more profound than one might understand. Also excellent in supporting roles are Charles Bickford and Jack Klugman.The black and white cinematography is among some of the best I can recall, evoking a dreamy landscape that heightens the characters dreams, ambitions and dire need of escapism. The musical score by Henry Mancini (which justly won the Academy Award for Best Music) is both haunting and beautiful, perfectly capturing the film's tone.For this film's entire runtime, I was absolutely spellbound by these characters and their story. They evolve so humanly and their tragedy becomes such a part of you - perhaps not since Wilder's "The Lost Weekend (1945)" and Mike Nichols' "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)" has a film about alcoholism affected me so deeply. And the depressing ending (which has become so elusive in movies nowadays) ties the story together in the most natural and seemingly fitting way. Masterpiece.

nzpedals We know what happens to alcoholics if they relapse and start drinking... But this movie portrays everything so starkly, it is awful to watch.Joe (Jack Lemmon) is in public relations. He meets the beautiful Kirsten (Lee Remick) who is the secretary of one of Joe's clients. He tries to get a date, but she ignores him. He tries again, and again. Eventually she goes out with him, they marry, they have a child.But he has got her drinking. Seriously. When she sets the apartment on fire, they both realise they need to do something about it. They go and stay with her father who runs a plant nursery. Everything seems to be going right, until Joe smuggles in bottles to celebrate(!) their cure. Kirsten's father Ennis (Charles Bickford) is great too. I was half expecting him to say he was a recovered alcoholic, but no, he is just a quiet and loving dad.It would be hopeless filming drunken actors, but how does an actor act drunk? Lemmon does, brilliantly. Remick too, but not as often.The best scenes are at the beginning where Joe is talking to Kirsten. She doesn't say "Get lost, mister", doesn't need to, the look says it all, and she walks away. Such subtlety seems to have disappeared from modern American films. Pity, it is so meaningful.One slight negative is that the story has a six or seven year span, but both Joe and Kirsten look exactly the same from start to finish. Could the director got them to alter the hairstyles maybe?

Steffi_P (Spoilers in final paragraph only)Alcoholism is not an easy subject to tackle, especially in a medium where drunken bums tend to be figures of fun. Over the years you can see an evolution in how Hollywood has treated the problem of drink as sensibilities have changed. DW Griffith's The Struggle in 1931 was a nice try but appallingly poor taste, with am unconvincing, comedy drunk act. The Long Weekend (1945) went for harrowing realism and was for the most part effective, but it fell at the last hurdle and ended up being the very thing it tried not to be – a surreal melodrama that was unintentionally comical. Days of Wine and Roses however avoids this trap by being mostly realistic, whilst adding a light a sprinkling of comedy to offset the serious moments and make the tragedy run deeper.Days of Wine and Roses is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, but the first half-hour or so has a light air of irreverence. The JP Miller screenplay gives us dialogue that really sparkles with both wit and familiarity. Take for example the "Corporation x" conversation between Jack Lemmon and Charles Bickford. It's vaguely humorous but also a credible of the kind of talks people have, and gives us a concise and engaging introduction to Bickford's character. It's also important exchanges like this actually have nothing to do with alcoholism, they are just building layers of reality and interest to give the main story its human backdrop.Miller's words are brought to life by a note-perfect cast. Jack Lemmon's performance has a slight comic edge to it, without quite being the comic-relief drunk act. He has a hint of silliness about him even when he is sober and the implication is that he has a rather crazy personality which gets exaggerated when he drinks. It works very well. Co-star Lee Remick matches and if anything surpasses him. Her portrayal of drunkenness is more realistic; appropriate because her story is really the more tragic. Charles Bickford and Jack Klugman give some perspective with two powerful – but very different – performances which are completely sober and serious. In Bickford's case it's one of the last of an incredible career, in Klugman's one of the few opportunities he really got to shine.Director Blake Edwards was a minimalist when it came to style and technique, keeping things simple to focus us on the performances. That's not to say he can't do some clever visual arrangements. One of his trademarks is the party scene, and the example here is realistic, vibrant, but never enough to upstage the characters in the foreground. In most scenes Edwards keeps his camera fixed and pans to follow the actors as they caper about, making the backgrounds a blur but the characters continually in our attention. He often lets the players take their time over a scene, allowing for moments of contemplation or protracted outbursts. The greenhouse scene is a real masterstroke. We know exactly how this one is going to pan out, and we feel powerless as it unfolds before us with painful slowness.Of course, the origin of such powerful moments is JP Miller's screenplay, his structuring and clever little vignettes. Which leads me onto one final point that makes Days of Wine and Roses stand out above its predecessors. This picture takes the step The Lost Weekend didn't dare to. It refuses to give us a happy ending, and instead leaves the story hovering in ambiguity. Why is this so important? Quite simply we could not accept it. We know Joe has already recovered and relapsed several, and his happily-ever-after is not guaranteed. To finish the story happily would seem false, and make everything that went before it just a little pointless. As it is, we are left with a chilling, lingering feeling of doubt.