Walter Matthau

  • I’m Not Rappaport (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2022) The nice thing about older Hollywood stars is that you can take in their complete career at a glance—the early movies are fun, sure, but what about the last few ones? Are the stars still playing to their persona, and is it still working? For Walter Matthau, the overview isn’t like most other cradle-to-grave stars—having made his entrance into showbiz relatively late in life and being blessed with a face that was more bulldog than matinee idol, he played titular Grumpy Old Men throughout his career. I’m Not Rappaport, one of his final film appearances, finds him co-starring with Ossie Davis and being as compelling a presence as in other roles. Here he plays an over-the-top confabulator, an opinionated socialist and rabble-rouser always eager to fast-talk his way through various issues. This exasperates Davis’s character, a more easygoing type who can’t quite get away from Matthau’s verbose hurricane. It doesn’t help that the protagonist keeps inventing grandiose stories that may or most likely are not true. Since director Herb Gardner is adapting his own theatrical play to the screen, you can expect the film to be heavily dialogue-based, with Matthau handling most of it. Various episodes are grafted onto the odd-couple dynamics at play, and they’re not all convincing: While the protagonist’s daughter coming around out of concern for her aging, tall-tale-telling father is interesting, the third-act emphasis on a rescue narrative for an abused woman is less credible—although it does end in a somewhat realistic fashion. Still, the spot light here is on Matthau, as likable and gruff as he’s been throughout most of his career. I’m Not Rappaport is not a great movie (in fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who remembers its twenty-five years later), but it’s a very nice showcase for Matthau and, in a less showy manner, Davis—and a somewhat better vehicle for Matthau than many of the other films he shot in his last two decades. It’s well worth a look if you’re going down Matthau’s filmography.

  • Bigger Than Life (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) Digging into Hollywood’s back catalogue can be weird at times—you can find socially conscious films well before it became acceptable or fashionable to discuss those topics, except that this high-minded intention is often undermined by a sensationalist, less-than credible execution. So it is that Bigger Than Life delves, in 1956, into the topic of painkiller addiction, but then goes on to make its main character an unbalanced murdering psychopath due to a rare interaction between cortisone and his body chemistry. Director Nicholas Ray was doing good work for the time here—even if a modern view on the film will more readily see the melodramatic plotting, overdone drama and naïve treatment of its topic. On the other hand, well, we have Walter Matthau beating up James Mason (even throwing him through stair rails!) to prevent Mason’s character from murdering his wife and child, so that’s something. (Of note for Matthau fans: In Bigger Than Life, his third feature film, he beats up James Mason; in King Creole, his sixth, he gets beaten up by Elvis Presley. I’m sure you didn’t expect that.)  More seriously, though, Ray couldn’t have found a better lead actor than Mason—the English legend’s smooth voice and refined manners allow him to switch from hero to villain on a dime, and that’s what he ends up doing here as the drugs take over. The scene in which he puts down a parent at a PTA meeting is simply delicious, and plays into an overhanging suggestion that the nuclear family was a sham even in the 1950s. Mason is good enough, in fact, that he makes it much easier to ignore the script’s ham-fisted “drugs will make you a psychopath” thrust—if anyone’s going to go crazy, Mason makes it supremely entertaining. The result is… fair, although I suspect that I was interested in Bigger than Life for reasons that didn’t have much to do with Ray’s original intent. But, you know, that’s still a perfectly valid way to enjoy a film.

  • King Creole (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) There are roughly two reasons to see King Creole, and both of them have to do with Elvis Presley. For one thing, it’s one of the most drama-heavy films in Presley’s filmography: Dating from a brief moment in his career when he was still aspiring to dramatic range, it has Presley playing a teenage New Orleans hoodlum who gets involved both with performing and organized crime. All shot in black-and-white by noted veteran director Michael Curtiz. In a sense, it’s the closest Presley ever got to playing in a film noir, or in a substantial teenage rebellion film—it may be a musical vehicle at times (with musical numbers integrated in the narrative), but it’s not as fluffy and meaningless as other films he’d later do. So that’s one reason. The second one is far funnier: if you ever wanted to see a movie scene in which Elvis Presley beats up Walter Matthau in a fist-fight, then this is the film for you. I know, I know—it sounds too good to be true, but the evidence is right there. The fight is not necessarily the reason why King Creole is often mentioned as Presley’s overall best movie, but it certainly drives the point that it remains a tougher, rougher role for him. There are plenty of dramatic complications, romantic choices to be made between a girl-next-door and a gangster moll, a future to be decided between singing and remaining a young thug. Pre-Army Presley deals well with the challenges, although he’s clearly still new at this acting business. Still, the result is honourable, and honourable would prove to be a high bar considering the Elvis films that would later follow. If you have one Elvis film to see, well, make it Viva Las Vegas. But if you’re looking for a second, King Creole is it.

  • Island of Love (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) If ever you find yourself squinting in amazement at a hitherto-unknown film’s cast and wonder why you’ve never heard of it, the answer (depressingly enough) is likely to be the same no matter the circumstances: it’s probably not a good movie. And even if it does begin on a promising note, it will degenerate later on. So it is that the first sequence of Island of Love, even if clunky, does suggest a much better film to come: Here we have Robert Preston playing close to his Music Man persona by incarnating a con man, Tony Randall as his long-suffering writer friend, Walter Matthau playing a crime boss with some kind of curious speech impairment (flanked by four yes-men) and the splendid Betty Bruce as a gangster moll thrust in front of the spotlight. But what initially feels like a clunky but promising showbiz crime comedy unexplainably takes a turn for much duller pastures at the end of the first act. Soon enough, nearly all of our characters find themselves on a small Greek island where the rest of the story plays out in an abundance of dull clichés and contrived coincidences. Preston is rarely less than compelling, and the supporting cast is interesting in many ways – but nothing quite gels, as the film squanders its initial promise and settles for something quite generic. Too bad – but if ever you come across Island of Love and start saying, “Wow, what a cast!” remember why it’s increasingly obscure.

  • Denis the Menace (1993)

    Denis the Menace (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2021) If my calculations are correct, I’m not too far from the age midpoint between Dennis the Menace’s cranky old curmudgeon played by Walter Matthau and the titular young pest played by Mason Gamble. Even so, my sympathies are clearly on the elderly character’s side, as the young boy engages in a systematic campaign of harassment, humiliation and endangerment toward the older man. But this is clearly not a film made for elderly or even middle-aged viewers — this is a petulant child’s fantasy about sticking it to the old people and their unfun ways. It is, in other words, utterly dreadful to watch — Child Protective Services should be called at some point in the narrative to protect society against the child and take him far away. Overmedication of hyperactive boys is a terrible thing in real life, but I’m willing to make an exception in this fictional case. There’s little both-sides sympathy here when Matthau is playing a caricature, only outdone by a criminal character that seems custom-made to send every suburban mom in barely repressed panic about the homeless. Dennis the Menace is frankly a chore to sit through the moment you discover girls, caffeine and rock-and-roll — even if I don’t believe in movies being role models, it’s a borderline reprehensible take on childhood that shows its psychopathic side far too often. There was a slate of those in the 1990s (Home Alone and Problem Child also come to mind), but those did have something going for them beyond the hellion angle.

  • The Front Page (1974)

    The Front Page (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) On the one hand, I’m happy they remade the classic 1920s newspaper comedy The Front Page in the 1970s, and that they got talents such as Billy Wilder, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon to take part in it — it’s a slick update to a good movie, and it’s far more accessible to modern audiences. It’s an easier way to experience the story by virtue of being in colour, with a clean soundtrack and mature camerawork, more familiar actors, etc. The skill though which Wilder and often-unrecognized co-writer I.A.L. Diamond retools the story is a case study in subtlety and appropriateness — executed up to the 1970s standards (with a few additions), it generally feels like the original, while sanding away a number of the rougher edges that weren’t as acceptable fifty years later. It’s decently amusing, especially as an affectionate look at the rough-and-tumble world of city journalism in the 1920s. On the other hand, I have deliberately avoided comparing 1970s The Front page to 1930s His Girl Friday, because there really isn’t any comparison: Wilder/Matthau/Lemmon are fantastic but not trying for the same thing as Hawks/Grant/Russell were going for, and the 1934 film is probably (still!) faster-paced than the later film. The gender flip that brought so much romantic tension to the story is not there, as it reverts to the original premise, and you can see the repercussions of that decision nearly everywhere in the result. In other words, The Front Page remake is good, while His Girl Friday remains terrific. You could ask if merely remaking a film was the best use of Wilder/Matthau/Lemmon’s talents, especially at that late stage of Wilder’s career, but second-guessing veteran directors looking to scratch an itch (Wilder having been a newspaperman early in his career) isn’t always useful. The result does have a few misfires — Carole Burnett isn’t up to her usual standards here in a role that remains atonally troublesome even with the Wilder/Diamond sanding of its rough edges. Still, I’d probably screen this version of the story as appetizer to anyone not used to classic films but interested in watching His Girl Friday — it’s a good basic presentation of the story, and it can ease viewers into progressively older material. I’m still glad that it exists and it may have been the best film that Wilder could have done at the time. Still, I can’t help but wonder what other films Wilder could have done instead.

  • The Fortune Cookie (1966)

    The Fortune Cookie (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) One of the reasons why Billy Wilder’s films have endured better than many of his contemporaries is the clever wit with which they’re built. Uncommonly smart at working within the confines of the Hays Code, Wilder’s movies still speak to us through their cynicism, imperfect characters and atypical narratives. The same goes for The Fortune Cookie. To be fair, I don’t think that the idea of a man being manipulated by their wily lawyer into faking an injury for insurance purposes is as fresh today as it must have been in 1966 — it’s the kind of thing that has become a cliché. But the way Wilder goes about it remains entertaining and compelling. It does help that he can benefit from some solid actors in the lead roles: The Fortune Cookie is perhaps best known for being the first of many on-screen pairings of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Here, Lemmon plays the injured party encouraged to remain bedridden, while Matthau plays the slimy lawyer going after an insurance settlement. (Matthau suffered a heart attack during the film’s production, returning to set weeks later and thirty pounds lighter — he won an Oscar for his troubles.)  The result is a comedy that’s not particularly heavy on the laughs, but still maintains a lighthearted touch throughout. It even ends with a certain moral fortitude while allowing all characters to keep their heads high. Unexplainably shot in black-and-white at the close of that format’s relevance in Hollywood, The Fortune Cookie remains a solid film, clearly showing the Wilder touch as a filmmaker who continues to impress cinephiles.

  • The Sunshine Boys (1975)

    The Sunshine Boys (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) In movie history, The Sunshine Boys is famous for reviving the career of George Allen, a vaudeville veteran whose first film career ended in 1939 before making a comeback decades later as (what else?) an elderly vaudeville veteran. He’s paired with Walter Matthau as the other half of a legendary duo now unable to even stand the sight of each other. After eleven years, a TV special appearance orchestrated by a well-meaning agent/nephew brings them together again, but it’s not a given that they’ll make it out of rehearsals. As with most movies directed by Neil Simon, there’s a powerful sense of place and time in The Sunshine Boys: Here we are in mid-1970s Manhattan in the universe of Jewish comedians (named deli sandwiches included), but always harkening back to the glory days of vaudeville. I’m fascinated by the history of American comedy, and The Sunshine Boys certainly delivers when it comes to showing how a declining elderly comedian lives his last years. Matthau has played some curmudgeonly characters during his career, but few are as spectacularly ornery as here—he effortlessly plays a character twenty years older than him, and oozes the kind of unrestrained crankiness that some old men develop. The beginning of the film can be trying if you’re not in-tune to the atmosphere—both elderly characters seem borderline senile, unable to deal with any normal social situation any more. It’s only when they come together that their minds sharpen up, even if it’s to trade insults. Allen is remarkable as the other half of the duo, with good comic timing and canny instincts: the sketch sequence does have its share of honest laughs, and the Oscar he won for the role wasn’t merely a reflection of a comeback story for the ages. (Allen would then go on to outlast several other actors by maintaining an active movie career until 1994, and keeping up appearances until shortly before his death as a centenarian in 2001—I’m old enough to remember when his name was synonymous with any joke having to do with elderly celebrities who would never die.) In the hands of a veteran playwright like Simon, The Sunshine Boys also slowly trade off jokes and insults for honest affection for the characters. There’s a point in the third act where the film seems to derail and get locked in a single room, but it eventually claws its way back to comedy and, happily, a bit of heart.

  • A Guide for the Married Man (1967)

    A Guide for the Married Man (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2020) One of the most fundamental questions in filmmaking, for filmmakers and critics alike, is “why this film?” Why would someone of Gene Kelly’s stature, for instance, decide to direct A Guide for the Married Man? I strongly suspect that the answer boiled down to money, specifically how Gene Kelly’s musical comedies were a thing of the past and mid-1960s audiences paid to see sex comedies. The premise of the film is blatantly immoral (the titular “guide” is to instruct men in adultery) but don’t worry—as with most 1960s sex comedies, it doesn’t lead anywhere particularly shocking. But “not shocking” doesn’t quite mean “innocuous”—the male gaze of A Guide for the Married Man is overwhelming enough to think that in-between the lecherous camera’s habit of focusing on naked backs and long legs, it couldn’t be remade today. Executed as a series of vignettes featuring an ensemble cast alongside leads Walter Matthau and Robert Morse, the film is uneven almost by design, even if there are a few comic gems here and there. Matthau is quite good as the protagonist, while Morse looks a bit like a naughty Mark Hamill. Meanwhile, director Kelly has a sure eye for comic material and his bright and colourful portrait of the ongoing sexual revolution is nice and naughty enough to fit with the other 1960s sex comedies. The ending is all wholesome, which is what was needed for the playful tone of A Guide for the Married Man. Still, I can’t help but think—why accept this project at all?

  • Hopscotch (1980)

    Hopscotch (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) Sure, you’ve seen spy comedies—but how about a retired spy comedy? In the surprisingly satisfying Hopscotch, Walter Matthau plays a CIA spy with a head full of secrets and fingers itching to dance on a typewriter—he retires out of spite and then, to get even with a bad boss, threatens to spill everything he knows in his autobiography. Knowingly baiting the CIA in a globetrotting cat-and-mouse game, he sends clues and “falls” for traps, except that he’s skilled enough to be the cat and spring counter-traps on whatever the CIA tries. Hopscotch is not necessarily rip-roaringly funny, but it is amusing, clever, compelling and somewhat more pleasant than most espionage thrillers of the era. Matthau has a role that suits him well, and he never misses an opportunity for the kind of rumpled-face sly-dog humour that best characterized his screen persona. My biggest problem with Hopscotch is Glenda Jackson’s helmet-like hairstyle, but her character is likable and well-written—like much of the script in general. (Adapted from a novel by novelist Brian Garfield himself, the film is more literate than most of the subgenre.) Hopscotch is a treat for Matthau fans, a welcome antidote for glum 1970s spy thriller fans, and a happy little victory for all cinephiles.

  • Cactus Flower (1969)

    Cactus Flower (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) The one thing that holds together the somewhat bland romantic comedy Cactus Flower is a fascinating trio of actors from very different eras of cinema—Ingrid Bergman, Walter Matthau, and Goldie Hawn in her first big-screen lead role. It’s quite a cast, and the film around them never quite reaches the potential of that trio. The story is a bit of a jumble, but largely about a dentist (Matthau) who keeps pretending he has a wife to avoid commitment in his affairs, except when he falls for a record-store clerk (Hawn) and has to find a pretend wife (Bergman) in a hurry to keep control over the affair. While the cast is amazing, the casting is more disputable—Matthau as a playboy is something I’ll shrug over, while Bergman may not be the most obvious pick as a screwball lead. Hawn does very well, though (she won an Oscar for it), fully capturing the hip 1969 Manhattan vibe that the film is aiming for—the extended sequence in a music store will delight who considers movies to be a fanciful time-travelling device. While often blander than expected, Cactus Flower does get a few smiles along the way, plus a jazzy take on the song “I’m a Believer.” It ends exactly how we expect it to, but the fun is in getting there. Plus, if you’re looking for a linchpin in your “Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game, it’s a film that effortlessly takes you from the 1990s to the 1940s thanks to Hawn and Bergman.

  • Grumpy Old Men (1993)

    Grumpy Old Men (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) As its stars age past retirement, Hollywood also developed its subgenre of victory-lap movies—one last chance for actors with recognizable screen persona to strut their stuff once more, and run on memories of past performances. Grumpy Old Men is a classic example of the form: It once again features Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as a bickering pair of lifelong elderly friends in wintry Minnesota, with none other than Ann-Margret looking amazing as the middle-aged temptress driving a further wedge between them. (It’s acceptable to have mixed feelings about this trio—While it’s rare and welcome to have a female romantic interest older than 30, there was still a 16-to-21 years difference between Ann-Margret—aged 52 at the time of the film’s release—and the Matthau/Lemmon duo—aged 73 and 68 at the film’s release.) Still, the point of the film isn’t to add thirty years to the usual Hollywood age difference, but to allow Lemmon and Matthau one more chance (which ended up being four more chances) to bicker on-screen decades after The Odd Couple. Anyone watching the film for the marquee names certainly knows what they’ll get: biting repartee and petty pranks are what keep those two characters bonded, and it’s not a September-November romance that’s going to get between them. It’s a romantic comedy, after all, and it even has a B-couple made up of the protagonist’s children. (Ann-Margret looks better than Darryl Hannah, but it’s a close thing.) There’s an adequate mixture of jokes, romance, jokes about romance and a bit of heart-driven drama toward the end to put everything in perspective. The ending fake-out won’t fool anyone. In those movies, the biggest measure of success isn’t about the plotting complexity or the quality of the filmmaking but whether the stars got a chance to remind audiences of what made them famous. On that criterion, Grumpy Old Men achieves its objective: Ann-Margret looks fantastic with red hair (at least this time nobody thinks it’s a natural red), Matthau is grumpy, Lemmon is funny and anyone even remotely familiar with 1960s cinema has also been driven once more around the lap.

  • A Face in the Crowd (1957)

    A Face in the Crowd (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) The more I dig into 1950s cinema, the more I realize that there was much more to the decade than the epic movies and MGM musicals that often pop up as representative of the time. It’s possible to assemble a very nice corpus of audacious satires and warnings about the nascent medium of television, not merely as a competitor to cinema but also as a force affecting civil society (paralleling 2010s concerns about social media). In 1957 alone, you can take a look at Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? for a comic take, Sweet Smell of Success for a darker tale of runaway media personalities, or to A Face in the Crowd for a full-bore dystopian vision of a demagogue made unstoppable by the power of media. As amazing as it can seem from 2019’s realization that there’s a significant portion of the American populace that will embrace a tinpot authoritarian for comfort, there’s long been a streak of Hollywood movies warning against the dangers of fascism, and A Face in the Crowd turns out to be a character study of what happens when someone with mean authoritarian instincts can put up a false populist front. Andy Griffith (of all people!) turns in a dark and memorable performance as “Lonesome Rhoades,” a folksy guitar player who is discovered by a radio journalist and takes to radio like a natural. Before long, his folksy manners and willingness to say things that people want to hear propel him to greater and greater success, all the way to a national TV show from New York. But Rhoades is not the person he broadcasts himself to be: egomaniac, womanizer, abuser, he becomes all too aware of his own power and plans for much, much bigger. As the radio journalist contemplates the monster she has created, the question becomes: Can he be stopped? Griffith is wonderfully evil here, as Patricia Neal plays the conscience of the film and Walter Matthau plays a terrific part as a highly cynical writer. (His verbal takedown of Rhoades at the very end of the film is an exceptionally efficient piece of writing allowing the story to end in mid-flight yet reassure us that it’s over.)  As a piece of entertainment, A Face in the Crowd touches upon dark topics with success. But it’s as a media critique that the film becomes more and more relevant each year—the medium may change, but people like Rhoades are adept at exploiting them and had more people heeded the film, the American political leadership may not be in such a sorry state at the moment. I’m not sure that A Face in the Crowd can be called a hidden classic as it regularly gets unearthed and highlighted as being worthy of modern attention—but it’s a great movie and it shows us modern viewers that the 1950s weren’t necessarily the quaint quiet calm period often portrayed to be.

  • The Survivors (1983)

    The Survivors (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) You would think that a Robin Williams/Walter Matthau pairing would be comedy heaven, but the truth as proven by The Survivors (for this is the only such pairing) is that it just ends up being a mess. The roots of the problem go back to a meandering script with poor tonal control and what seems like few ideas about where it’s going. Williams doesn’t get a chance to work in his best comic range, although Matthau does a bit better in a role suited to his persona—some of the film’s best and funniest sequences are those in which his characters use his experience and hidden skills to try to control the excesses of his younger co-star. Still, there are plenty of missteps along the way, including a wholly unsatisfying redemption arc for the film’s villain that undercuts most of the (thin) emotional involvement of the audience in the film. There’s some material here about survivalists and a jaundiced perception of New York City that still plays well, but it’s really not enough. The lunacy of the script seems scattershot (sometimes featuring an employee-firing parrot, sometimes mired in urban grittiness). Now little known outside being a part of its two co-stars’ filmography, The Survivors isn’t a particularly shining example of early-1980s comedy.

  • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

    The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) Knowing that it was coming from the middle of the bleak 1970s, a time when “urban” was always followed by “decay”, I was frankly expecting the worst from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. How could a movie depicting a hostage taking in the NYC subway be anything but bleak and depressing? Fortunately, this isn’t quite the case: While the film is a slow-burn thriller, it’s not entirely bleak and can even be surprisingly engaging at times. Walter Matthau stars as the city official trying to piece together the elements of a criminal plan before they come to fruition, and the choice of giving this heroic role to an actor like him is indicative of a playful oddball sensitivity that runs through the movie: the characters have colds, are interrupted by visiting Japanese visitors, and one of the hostages stays asleep through much of the excitement. Thanks to director Joseph Sargent, 1970s New York City in this film is grimy but not always bleak and after a relatively tepid first half, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three gets going toward the end with a few good sequences. The musical theme is interesting and complements the interesting period piece atmosphere. I’m always fond of techno-thrillers, and the detail through which the film explains the minutiae of the NYC subway system is absolutely fascinating. In a few words, I had a great time with The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and it’s definitely worth watching today even if you’re familiar with its vastly less remarkable remake.