|
"Un bon soldat n'oublie jamais ses munitions." A military matter of bodily fluids, as a certain mad general would say, a hundred restless bachelors stationed in the Arctic. (A curving pan surveys the snowbound barracks, where morale is so low that a pinup cutout doubles as a dartboard.) The Pentagon's solution is a lottery for a Gallic sojourn with "the Argentine bombshell" (Linda Cristal), the winner is the slick corporal (Tony Curtis) "whose personnel file reads like a stag movie." Overanxious officer (King Donovan) supervises the trip, splenetic Svengali (Keenan Wynn) and sarcastic secretary (Elaine Stritch) have their own parts to play, to say nothing of the lieutenant-psychiatrist (Janet Leigh) chaperoning the libidinous couple. "When you researched the behavior patterns of the American soldier, how did you leave him out? He's your leading character!" Virtually a rewrite by Blake Edwards of his screenplay for Quine's Operation Mad Ball, a CinemaScope tour of Paris, Universal (as distinct from Lubitsch's Paris, Paramount). The detained horndog flees his hotel room with champagne bottle in pocket, it ejaculates on cue in anticipation of The Pink Panther. Decked out in cobalt bellboy guise, he's called by the manager and falters around the room in an attempt to decipher the word "ampoule," a gag that tickled Godard the young critic. The widescreen streaked with Bastille Day streamers, a giant wine barrel atop a yellow truck navigated by Marcel Dalio, Curtis with curtain over his head and arms crossed while Leigh soaks in a bathtub. (The heroine's switch from uniformed professional to sheet-wrapped dish-washer is a quintessential Fifties metamorphosis.) Comedic staging in martial territory like "the slightest pressure in the right spot," escalated in Operation Petticoat then exploded in What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? With Les Tremayne, Jay Novello, Gordon Jones, Alvy Moore, and Troy Donahue.
--- Fernando F. Croce |