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Avanti! (1972)

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21 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
Come In! -- And Enjoy an Enchanting Romantic Comedy!, 4 October 2004

Author: mdm-11 (mdm@thursdays.com) from Liverpool Twp., Ohio

Billy Wilder & Jack Lemmon didn't go straight for the belly laughs in this departure from their usual all-out-crazy comedies. Fans of the masters will be pleasantly surprised by this delightful romantic comedy, which captivates the viewer from the very start. Mezmerizing backdrop music plays as though secretly staged by Cupid standing by to assure that lovebirds will find one another. Lemmon plays the son of a mega-wealthy American business man who had to drop everything to fly to Italy in order to claim the father's remains after a car accident. En route to his late father's "final stop", Lemmon runs in to a persistent young woman, who turns out to be the daughter of the woman with whom the father had had a lengthy affair, and who was found lovingly slung around his neck as they both died in said accident.

The situation seems rather awkward at first, but eventually Lemmon and the young woman begin following into the exact same steps their departed parents had done years earlier. The picture is completed by a brilliant supporting cast of hotel personnel and colorful locals. The performance of the multi-talented and ever-present-minded hotel manager was Oscar worthy.

Listening to the testimony of all people asked, Lemmon learns that his late father and his "friend" were viewed as Royalty, nothing less than figures from a fairy tale. The concluding scenes are the final touches to a most enchanting romantic comedy, one that has few rivals in its category. Billy Wilder has done it again. What he missed in big laughs, he made up in many magic moments and gentle pressures to your tear glands. One of the very best out there. Belissima!

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16 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
A comedy, a romance, a satire, a jewel!, 20 January 2006

Author: hondo551 from United States

Years ago I thought I was familiar with all of Billy Wilder's movies and as I thumbed through what might have been an old copy of Playboy, perhaps a Sex in the Cinema article, I came across a picture of a nude Juliet Mills and Jack Lemmon sitting on the rocks in an unknown Billy Wilder film, and was determined to one day see that film and much more of the Nanny from The Nanny and the Professor. VCRs were just coming on the market, so I had to wait a few years till Cinemax showed it in the early morning. I stayed up most of the night to satisfy my prurient interest and what I ended up with was a film I didn't want to end, a tune that played over and over again in my head for days, and one of my most favorite movies.

Yes, this movie is a comedy, sometimes a very black comedy, and sometimes a satire filled with irony. Yes, it's a romance, all about a wonderful romance that sparks up between two seemingly opposite people in the strangest of places at the strangest of times under the strangest of circumstances, the way romance quite often does. And at times there's sadness and pain to tug at your heart. It's all about discovering who you really are when you've lost your way in all life's confusion, and also about perhaps being better than your parents when you get older and more like them.

Lemmon is the consummate cad, Juliet Mills the most charming Englishwoman to grace a celluloid comedy, Clive Revill is perfect in his most Oscar-deserving role as the hotel manager Carlo Carlucci, the Italian cast members never fail to entertain, and the music is as catchy and memorable as any Bernstein or Tiomkin or Goldsmith score. The movie may be 2-1/2 hours long, but the time passes quickly as Lemmon and Mills rediscover love and youth and passion, and I always find myself wishing that I could see the two lovers returning a year later like their parents.

Billy Wilder may have given us dramatic gems like Stalag 17, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, and Sunset Boulevard, given us comedic gems like Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot, and romantic gems like The Apartment and Irma La Douce, but it wasn't till the end of his career that he could take qualities from all of those and give them a magical, lyrical feel and atmosphere and come up with a jewel like Avanti!

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16 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
beautiful film in a beautiful location, 7 July 2004

Author: Tob147258 from Manchester

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

SPOILERS

There is a general theory in the world today that we will one day evolve into our parents. As one man might become like his father, as might a woman become like her mother. This is perhaps one aspect of the beautiful film that is "Avanti!".

In this film, Wendell Armbuster Junior (the always brilliant Jack Lemmon) has travelled to Italy to pick up the recently deceased body of his father. Running on occasion into an English woman by the name of Pamela Piggott (Juliet Mills), Wendell experiences the beauty of the small Isle Of Ischia as a friendship develops with the neurotic Miss Piggott.

The beauty of "Avanti" is it's simplicity. Jack Lemmon travels to Italy as one man, and leaves another. Learning the truth behind his fathers visits to Ischia, Lemmon slowly begins to emulate his father and fall for his father's lover's daughter. Taught to relax and enjoy life, Lemmon's character develops from a mad, rushing, rude businessman into a friendly romantic with a lust for life. Juliet Mills' Miss Piggott equally changes as she develops from a paranoid, unhappy, diet obsessed, nut into a happy, laid back, beautiful woman with an equal love for life as Lemmon. Together the couple work beautifully together, firstly sparring and later uniting.

This film is wonderful for many reasons. As well as the aforementioned change amongst the starring cast, Clive Revill as the hotel manager Carlo Carlucci is superb and has some of the films funniest lines. Added to the acting abilities, the brilliant direction of Billy Wilder and already looking like a piece of genius.

Ultimately though, as well as the acting and directing, the three things which really make this film stand out are the often hilarious script, the stunning, addictive soundtrack and the picturesque views. After watching "Avanti", the one thing most viewers want is to instantly be transported away from where ever they are, to the beautiful landscapes of the Italian Islands. With glorious sunshine, rocks in the water where you can relax and watch the Sun come up, and classical buildings, the impression is that the people to come out of this film the best were the tourist trade of this beautiful Isle.

Truth be told, there's hardly any criticism which can be given to this film. Starting brilliantly from the offset, there's no slow start, just like there's no awkward ending. The only negative aspect, perhaps, is that it makes us wish we were somewhere else. Even this though is not as much a negative as a frustration. "Avanti" is an amazing film which makes us smile and makes us laugh. It reminds us of the beauty of the world, and it reminds us of how great life can be. This is one for the ages.

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16 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Lovely, autumnal Wilder masterpiece, with afterbite.(possible spoilers), 26 February 2001

Author: Alice Liddel (-darragh@excite.com) from dublin, ireland

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

'Avanti', Billy Wilder's last notable film, is defined by absence. Most obviously so in the case of the central couple, playing out their relationship in the shadow of the dead parents they have come to bury, an absence comically mirrored when their corpses are snatched by the disgruntled peasants on whose farm their car crashed.

It is also the insistent absence of the home Armbruster has temporarily left behind, intruding not only in the phone calls regularly interrupting his burgeoning relationship with Pamela, but in his personality, his worries as an executive and the soul-destroying banality of his marriage resulting in the raging black hole that arrives in Italy, condescending and insulting everything in sight.

The irony of this film is that these two absences cancel each other out, and give Armbruster a definite gain, the return of his humanity. Again, this is comically mirrored in Pamela's desire to lose weight, her gaining pounds in direct proportion to her happiness.

Once again, Wilder is concerned with double lives, that gaping chasm between duty and desire. Cynical as ever, he finds that the only way to reconcile the two, to stay true to yourself, is to deceive; curative adultery. The romance in this romantic comedy is sublime if you are willing to give into it - and I do, every time - but Wilder's vision hasn't softened.

Mr Ambruster Sr.'s month-long trips for extra-marital succour did not make him a better, or more egalitarian human being. The double life for him was what it has always been for successful men where society is based on a rigid code of morality, or bourgeois respectability. He might have been a dear old lover in Italy, but in America he remained a consummate hypocrite, upholding phoney religious ideals, hobnobbing with high-ranking government officials engaged in bombing Asian civilians, running his huge multi-national with Nixonian corruption, treating his Third-World employees like dirt.

The double life celebrated at the end on an ironical wave of sentiment is an ingeniously American, two-faced compartmentalising of duty and desire - instead of repressing one and letting it get out of violent hand, it is pushed somewhere else, indulged in its proper place, and the status quo, so painstakingly defended by hotel director Carlucci, remains static.

This is not to suggest that Armbruster will follow this route; maybe he will become a genuinely more decent person; but the film has been paralleling his move towards to his father to the point where he ritually imitates him (like a ghost?). His first act on reaching America will be a massive act of deceit, burying a Mafia lackey in front of Kissinger, but this subversive act will be known only to three people. There will be no apple carts turned. So the familiar Wilder transformation scene on the plane - where Armbruster changes suits with Dr Fleischmann - and the Wilderean prevalance of mirrors suggest not that Armbruster will transform his personality, but that he will become adept at living two lives, literally wearing two suits.

'Avanti' has always been my favourite Wilder film (although it's now been surpassed by 'Private life of Sherlock Holmes'), but I can understand why people might want to resist it - it is based on a play, and wallows in, rather than trying to transcend, its theatricality, although there is a complex pattern of visual echoes (e.g. opening windows to let in the sun at hotel and morgue). Its mixture of farce, black comedy and romance will not be to every taste, and some may feel the sentimental manipulation too much, although I hope I've showed how Wilder manipulates this. Others might find the usual Wilder trading in stereotypes worrying.

In its defence, I can only offer the non-cinematic virtues of strong characterisation; brilliant acting (Clive Revill as Carlucci is particularly cherishable); a tonal balance rare in Wilder; cleverly worked out situations; and bellyachingly funny dialogue. The less 'relevant' Wilder became, the more he relaxed his need to breathlessly wisecrack, and these late works seem to me much more satisfactory, and have dated much better. Look at the scene where Armbruster and Pamela identify their parents' bodies like a wedding ceremony, a brilliant encapsulation of Wilder's complex art.

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10 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
A lot of sophisticated fun., 11 January 2000
Author: James Wasvary (wasvja1@ibm.net) from Valley Cottage, NY

This movie is somewhat long, especially if you watch it on TV with commercials, but it stays fresh and you never want it to be over. Jack Lemon at first is such a prig you wonder that Juliet Mills will ever have anything to do with him, but of course all ends well, with Lemon providing the comic focus. My favorite line in the movie occurs when the valet Bruno has been attempting to blackmail Lemon with nude pictures of his father. Lemon, not knowing Bruno has just been killed by his mistress complains to the manager, and ends by saying Bruno should be shot. The manager assures him that it has already been taken care of. What Service!

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
outstanding overlooked romantic comedy, 9 August 2002

Author: Robert D. Ruplenas

There is not much to add to the favorable comments contained herein by viewers who have seen this, one of Billy Wilder's most successful, and overlooked, efforts. There are 5 things that make this film click, not necessarily in order of importance 1) the cinematography of the Isle of Ischia 2) Billy Wilder's direction 3) Wilder & Diamond's script 4) Jack Lemmon 5) Clive Revil as the hotel manager. A charming and whimsical movie which one hopes would be seen more often on one of the cable movie channels. My favorite scene: Carlucci introduces Wendell to the Trotta brothers ("That's a lotta Trottas.")

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Lemmon and Wilder take to Europe, 10 August 2001
Author: coverme6 from Allentown, PA

The great team of actor Jack Lemmon and director Billy Wilder create yet another classic in their repetoire of great films. In AVANTI! (which means "forward" in Italian), Lemmon plays Armbruster, a snobby American executive who travels to Italy to reclaim the body of his father after the latter dies of an autowreck. Little did Armbruster

know that his old man had a companion with him, a British lady whose daughter Pamela (Juliet Mills) is also present to claim her body. Though antagonists at first, Armbruster and Pamela are drawn together because of their parents' mutual interest. With a rich Italian

landscape (complete with an awesome view of the Mediterrean Sea), plus a typically great performance by Lemmon and a well-played one by Mills, make this a terrific romance flick.

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12 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
An underrated treasure !, 5 August 1999

Author: Suze-7

Full of wit and warmth, this movie is Billy Wilder's best and one of the most delightful movies ever to have come out of Hollywood! Good Lemmon and Mills, but Clive Revill is absolutely delicious and Edward Andrews does a fine turn too. I never see a daffodil without thinking of this film....

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
A bittersweet masterpiece, 15 May 2007

Author: zebulonguy from United Kingdom

So much has been said about the plot of Avanti it seems pointless to go over the synopsis again- but I can say although I am a lover of Horror films, Thrillers and Westerns- it is Avanti that is my favourite film of all time.Avanti is gorgeous to look at and features a beautiful music score. How I wish I could obtain a soundtrack of this delightful score. The scene when Pamela Pigott ( Juliet Mills ) tours the city on a horse drawn carriage and later running from her new found admirers is beautiful with the music so perfect.Also when Pamela and Wendell ( Jack Lemmon ) have their evening meal together , it is again a beautiful music score. Jack Lemmon as the bombastic Wendell Armbruster is as always great. Juliet Mills as Pamela Pigott looks far too gorgeous to be ridiculed by Armbruster but she shines in her finest ever role. However for me the film is stolen completely by Clive Revill as the hotel manager- what a sublime performance. Watch his every movement, his every expression, his delivery of every line.It is a captivating performance, totally exquisite. Clive Revill is an actor sorely neglected by the film world.Billy Wilder's film is so very neglected and it's a pity as this is the perfect film. Watch the beautiful, poignant sequence at the mortuary as Pamela and Wendell view the bodies of their mother and father respectively. And again watch Clive Revill alongside Lemmon and Mills- acting with only movement, expression and not a word. The lighting in this scene is so wonderful, it is dark and depressing with the exception of a shaft of sunlight penetrating the smallest of windows. Wilder manages to wring excellent portrayals out of even the most minor of characters. Watch Avanti and savour the acting, the music and the scenery.

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Lovely story, nice to see !, 30 August 1999

Author: Sasa-13 from Hamburg, Germany

At the 70s, people took much more care of the characters than today !! It is not a comedy where you can laugh aloud. But you have a smile on your face all the time you watch this movie ! In a way, this movie makes you happy !! Especially Jack Lemmon is a great actor !!

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