What makes it different from others?

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

For audiences 56 years ago, this film packed a real punch. A drama which purported to survey the effects of alcoholism. And the picture presented was not pretty: binging, powerlessness, insanity... In other words, every myth codified by Bill Wilson and AA.So, what you get are stereotypes. There are no real people. Lemmon and Remick fulfill the moral of the story. No shadings of characterization...full-blown drunks. Problem is, that's Bill Wilson's take, which heavily influences the film. The intervening decades have supplied research which has redefined alcoholism, and ushered Wilson's faith healing religious cult out the door.Boiled down to its basics, TDWR suffers from wrongs: wrong director, wrong star, wrong script, wrong advisor.

Blake Edwards, who gave us Breakfast at Tiffany's and Experiment in Terror, has now come up with a movie that, by contrast, is rather dull. But the main trouble doesn't actually lie with Mr. Edwards, but with the writing by J.P. Miller. You'll notice that although the movie won quite a few awards, none of them were for Best Writing! In fact, writing was not even nominated! The screenplay rambles all over the place, starting off with what seems to be a satire at the expense of the publicity and P.R. boys. But then it switches to a romantic comedy. Well and good! But before you can say, "Lee Remick", it's all about alcoholism. The film was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Lee Remick) by both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes and actually won multiple awards in quite a few other famous film festivals. But, as said above, none of these awards were for Writing!

(Spoilers in final paragraph only)Alcoholism is not an easy subject to tackle, especially in a medium where drunken bums tend to be figures of fun. Over the years you can see an evolution in how Hollywood has treated the problem of drink as sensibilities have changed. DW Griffith's The Struggle in 1931 was a nice try but appallingly poor taste, with am unconvincing, comedy drunk act. The Long Weekend (1945) went for harrowing realism and was for the most part effective, but it fell at the last hurdle and ended up being the very thing it tried not to be – a surreal melodrama that was unintentionally comical. Days of Wine and Roses however avoids this trap by being mostly realistic, whilst adding a light a sprinkling of comedy to offset the serious moments and make the tragedy run deeper.Days of Wine and Roses is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, but the first half-hour or so has a light air of irreverence. The JP Miller screenplay gives us dialogue that really sparkles with both wit and familiarity. Take for example the "Corporation x" conversation between Jack Lemmon and Charles Bickford. It's vaguely humorous but also a credible of the kind of talks people have, and gives us a concise and engaging introduction to Bickford's character. It's also important exchanges like this actually have nothing to do with alcoholism, they are just building layers of reality and interest to give the main story its human backdrop.Miller's words are brought to life by a note-perfect cast. Jack Lemmon's performance has a slight comic edge to it, without quite being the comic-relief drunk act. He has a hint of silliness about him even when he is sober and the implication is that he has a rather crazy personality which gets exaggerated when he drinks. It works very well. Co-star Lee Remick matches and if anything surpasses him. Her portrayal of drunkenness is more realistic; appropriate because her story is really the more tragic. Charles Bickford and Jack Klugman give some perspective with two powerful – but very different – performances which are completely sober and serious. In Bickford's case it's one of the last of an incredible career, in Klugman's one of the few opportunities he really got to shine.Director Blake Edwards was a minimalist when it came to style and technique, keeping things simple to focus us on the performances. That's not to say he can't do some clever visual arrangements. One of his trademarks is the party scene, and the example here is realistic, vibrant, but never enough to upstage the characters in the foreground. In most scenes Edwards keeps his camera fixed and pans to follow the actors as they caper about, making the backgrounds a blur but the characters continually in our attention. He often lets the players take their time over a scene, allowing for moments of contemplation or protracted outbursts. The greenhouse scene is a real masterstroke. We know exactly how this one is going to pan out, and we feel powerless as it unfolds before us with painful slowness.Of course, the origin of such powerful moments is JP Miller's screenplay, his structuring and clever little vignettes. Which leads me onto one final point that makes Days of Wine and Roses stand out above its predecessors. This picture takes the step The Lost Weekend didn't dare to. It refuses to give us a happy ending, and instead leaves the story hovering in ambiguity. Why is this so important? Quite simply we could not accept it. We know Joe has already recovered and relapsed several, and his happily-ever-after is not guaranteed. To finish the story happily would seem false, and make everything that went before it just a little pointless. As it is, we are left with a chilling, lingering feeling of doubt.

A very uneven film about the horrors of alcoholism. The problem seems to be Blake Edwards' and Jack Lemmon's penchant for comedy. The story, at its base, is pure tragedy, but it's like Edwards doesn't want it to be too dark, so he cast a clown in the lead. Lemmon sparkles during the scenes where he's supposed to be charming, but he's not very convincing during the more dramatic sequences. Oh, and he can't do a drunk act worth a damn. I guess that's the film's biggest problem, really. No one in the classic era could play a convincing drunk. They always seem to overact terribly, and Lemmon in particular is bad at it. His co-star, Lee Remick, isn't quite as bad, but during her big drunk scene she comes off as not that good, either. In fact, she's pretty bad at it, but does seem fairly excellent in comparison with Lemmon. Remick is actually very good in the non-drunk scenes. The biggest flop of the film is the big, dramatic sequence where, after having been dry for a while at Remick's father's farm, Lemmon sneaks in a couple of bottles which they share. Cut to Lemmon jumping up and down on the bed with the two of them giggling like school children. That's the film's idea of alcoholics: they get goofy like kids and then throw tantrums like kids when they finish up their booze. Jesus, Lemmon's scene in the greenhouse, where he's tearing it to shreds trying to find a bottle he hid and freaking out, it's just embarrassing. Contrast that with the film's final sequence. You can see just how good the film could have been if it didn't go so over-the-top. The ending of the movie is heartbreaking.