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The opening scene distinguishes the artisan (painting the smoking lips on a gigantic billboard for cigarettes) from the artist (splattering paint on the cops watching on the sidewalk). Dean Martin as the struggling painter embodies the dilemma, his roommate (Jerry Lewis) is a comic-book buff who by day devours the adventures of the Bat Lady and by night dreams of gory sequels starring Vincent the Vulture. Upstairs live the principled cartoonist (Dorothy Malone) and the peppy secretary posing in cape and cowl (Shirley MacLaine), all part of an industry thriving on sensation. The pulp impresario (Eddie Mayehoff) pines for the day when television will show blood ("In spectacular color, free, right in the living room and sponsored by those friendly used-car dealers!"), Freddie the Field Mouse hasn't a chance but horror adventures from the geek's somnambulistic babbling sell like hotcakes. Frank Tashlin's Greenwich Village, where Tamino and Papageno meet their bohemian counterparts. Horoscopes and numerology are alternative addictions, a magenta mushroom cloud emanates from a child's toy-rifle, all of it is surveyed by the government agent who sounds an awful lot like James Stewart in Rear Window—a plangent sketch of Eisenhower-era pop flotsam. The contorted orgy on the chiropractic table and the smooch that brings a water-cooler to a boiling pitch are just a couple of the ribald gags, Eva Gabor as the blonde Mata Hari adduces a note from the director's own Plane Daffy while MacLaine redeems Martin's smarmy "Innamorata" number by converting it into her own plaintive-horny mating call. "Mystery lends enchantment." "Well, if I wanted mystery, I'd watch Dragnet." The "Frenchy kind of art" side turns up in Godard's Made in U.S.A., though nothing beats Jerry's face as simultaneously poster-boy for junk culture and warning-sign against its fallout. With Anita Ekberg, Jack Elam, George Winslow, and Kathleen Freeman.
--- Fernando F. Croce |