Addict Recommends: (Film) Days of Wine and Roses (1962)

Director: Blake Edwards

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Jack Klugman

One of the first great addiction movies, (following 1945’s The Lost Weekend) this was a breakout film for Jack Lemmon, presaging by many decades his legendary late life portrayal of the pathetic salesman Shelley Levene in David Mamet’s film Glengarry Glen Ross.

Lemmon plays Joe Clay, a heavy social drinker and classic functioning specimen. From the beginning, we see Joe at the bar exhorting the bartender to “hit me again.” Before he takes a drink he says to himself – a phrase he repeats more than once in the film – “magic time.” But Joe manages his drinking, has what appears to be a good job and actually uses his habit to advantage in a world where a three martini lunch and getting hammered with a client late at night is considered good form and basic socializing among men. (One cannot help but think of the television series Mad Men when watching this movie.)

Shortly into the film, Joe meets Kirsten, played very well by the lovely Lee Remick. As they begin dating, Kirsten tells Joe that she doesn’t like alcohol, but that she has a heavy fixation for chocolate. So he mixes her a brandy Alexander, which appeases her sweet tooth and provides Joe with a much needed female drinking companion. As their relationship grows we see that each needs the other in a desperate love where something amorphous and indefinable is clearly missing. But for the moment, anyway, their love is an island of refuge in a turbulent sea.

The couple marry and the problems begin in earnest. Joe, frustrated at work, where he is often required to perform tasks which challenge his somewhat vague morality, comes home drunk or needing to drink every night. He is clearly losing control of his habit. He complains that Kirsten won’t drink with him enough, that he needs her to join in his nightly ritual. Finally, she relents and falls down a rabbit hole of her own, one that, ultimately, goes even deeper than her husband’s.

Jack Klugman does an excellent job of portraying Jim Hungerford, Joe’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor who gives good advice and displays unending patience and understanding for his charge, who loses jobs, friends and familial ties because of his addiction. Jim is always there when Joe falls off the wagon and is also there to help him get back on when the time is right. But things are not so simple for Kirsten, who doesn’t buy into the AA worldview.

The movie is a little preachy at times and a bit too bent on the concept that Alcoholics Anonymous is the only savior of the problem drunk. However, we need to remember when watching this film that it was made in 1962, and was way ahead of its time. The subject matter is well presented and very well acted, especially by Lemmon. This may be one of the top two or three performances of his amazing career.