The Thrill of It All (1963)

(On Cable TV, February 2021) The life of a cinephile can be unpredictable: A few weeks ago, I was surprised to learn that no less serious filmmaker as director Norman Jewison had, early in his career, directed a romantic comedy like Send Me No Flowers. But it wasn’t the only Jewison romcom! Now here we are, taking in its immediate predecessor, the Doris Day/James Garner romantic comedy The Thrill of It All. Curiously enough, it’s a film with some clear social relevance today, as the satirical script (by Carl Reiner) is focused on a housewife who comes to be offered a lucrative contract lending her authenticity to a series of advertisements for a national brand… much to the dismay of her husband. There’s only one small step from there to the influencer lifestyle of today, with tensions within couples where the influencer suddenly becomes more famous than the other partner. While Day and Garner are terrific and often very funny in their roles, the film’s worst moments have to do with the male character demonstrating a mile-wide raw streak of fragile masculinity in the face of a more successful partner, intentionally putting her down in a twisted-logic kind of attention-seeking. This behaviour does make the third quarter of the film more difficult to get through than expected — if you want to skip from the car plunging into the pool to another car getting stuck in traffic, that may be best to avoid the whole unpleasantness. Still, it’s hard to resist Garner’s early-1960s squared-jawed charm, and Day is, as usual, the leading partner when it comes to comic timing. The film’s best satirical material is in wrestling with the nature of television advertisements, while Day proves game to do just about any indignity asked of her. For Jewison, The Thrill of It all is yet another example of his incredible variety as a director in a career that spanned five decades. The result is not entirely likable, but it’s well worth a look.