Word: wildered
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Directed by BILLY WILDER...
Screenplay by BILLY WILDER and I.A.L. DIAMOND...
...Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond (who have collaborated on Some Like It Hot and The Apartment) give a friendly nod to Hecht's ghost by having Hildy speak of the time "Ben Hecht was leaving for Hollywood." But neither Hecht nor MacArthur could be expected to countenance what has been done to their original. Dialogue that should crackle like a telegraph has been slowed to the listless deliberation of a traffic cop writing out a ticket. Jack Lemmon makes a curiously enervated Hildy, and Walter Matthau's Burns is a shambling cynic too similar to his Odd Couple...
Fearful Crime. The Wilder-Diamond adaptation consists mostly of frequent, unfortunate embellishments. Wilder and Diamond conjure up, for instance, an Oriental cathouse that is never seen but frequently talked about, generally with such references as "I sure could use a little of that sweet and sour right now." They also create a sequence hi which Burns visits Hildy's fiancee (played with popeyed persistence by Susan Sarandon) and passes himself off as Johnson's probation officer. This kicks off a scene of lengthy anxiety about Hildy's fearful (but imaginary) crime, which turns out to be flashing...
...during that early scene or it may be shortly after, when Hildy spits out a bit of Wilder-Diamond dialogue and Carol Burnett goes into a strident impersonation of a cut-rate hooker, that the movie curdles. But the thought occurs very early on that the latest The Front Page is an odd place to find Billy Wilder. The sap and the snap are gone...