Sex and the Single Girl (1964)

(On Cable TV, January 2020) The sex comedy subgenre of the early-to-mid-1960s has not aged well at all, and yet it remains curiously irresistible. I could watch several of those films one after the other—the only thing stopping me is that I would run out of them too quickly. So it is that Sex and the Single Girl has both a prime-era Tony Curtis and a spectacular stockings-clad Natalie Wood battling it out romantically against the dual backgrounds of psychiatry and Manhattan magazine publishing. (I strongly suspect that this was one of the main sources of inspiration for 2003’s pastiche Down with Love.) Having Henry Fonda and a gorgeous Lauren Bacall in supporting roles really doesn’t hurt either, even if their roles are underwritten. While the film itself does miss several comic opportunities and could have been more sharply written, there’s a lot of fun to be had simply plunging into the film’s atmosphere, rediscovering relics from another time (gags from coin-operated devices?) and enjoying the naughty-but-not-vulgar style of that era’s guiltless sex comedies. Pure wholesome fun is the special glue holding these films together despite their specific weaknesses. Wood’s Audrey-Hepburnesque qualities are in full display here, and Curtis is at his most Curtisesque all the way to a reference to Some Like it Hot. While the film could have been written more carefully, there’s a deliberate approach to its idiot-plot structure, with misunderstandings and misdirection between characters growing bigger and wilder every minute, climaxing with a consciously self-aware highway climax that’s a pack-and-a-half of logistics to juggle. By the time the characters are all chomping down on pretzels, it’s all non-stop joy that ends remarkably well. I could certainly go for another film much like Sex and the Single Girl right now. A shame they’re not making them like this any more, even with the disappointing writing.