Avanti!

All you want to know about Avanti!

This article is about a 1972 film. For the Italian newspaper, see Avanti! (Italian newspaper).
Avanti!

film poster by Sandy Kossin
Directed by Billy Wilder
Produced by Billy Wilder
Written by I.A.L. Diamond
Samuel A. Taylor (play)
Billy Wilder
Starring Jack Lemmon
Juliet Mills
Music by Carlo Rustichelli
Cinematography Luigi Kuveiller
Editing by Ralph E. Winters
Distributed by United Artists
Running time 144 minutes[1]
Country  United States
Language English
IMDb profile

Avanti! is a 1972 comedy directed by Billy Wilder, starring Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills, Clive Revill, Edward Andrews and Gianfranco Barra. It was adapted by I.A.L. Diamond from a 1968 play by Samuel Taylor.

Contents

Plot summary

Wendell Armbruster, Jr. (Lemmon) goes to Italy to pick up his father's body after an automobile accident. He soon finds that his self-righteous father, who for over ten years had been spending four weeks in Ischia for the mud baths, had been also having an affair during those years with a British woman who also died in the accident. The conservative Wendell meets and falls in love with the more open-minded Pamela (Mills), the daughter of the woman, also in town because of the accident.

Pre-production

The film's screenplay was based on a "short-lived, 1968 Broadway farce"[1] set in Rome and written by Samuel Taylor.[2]

Production

Although the story is set in Ischia (a small island in the Gulf of Naples) the movie was mainly made in Sorrento, especially at the Grand Hotel Excelsior. The hydrofoil arrival was at Ischia Harbor. The Church (body viewing) was at the west end of Ischia. The closing helicopter scene was on Capri, near the lighthouse.

Map of the film's location and setting, with Ischia at left and Sorrento at right.

Screenshot of an image from the film, with (left to right) Mills, Lemmon, and Revill(?).

Reception

The New York Times called it "intermittently funny, charming, cute and, unfortunately, over-long" and praising Clive Revill's performance "as the suave, knowledgeable, carefree hotel manager, who's as helpful with cadavers as he is with lovers, bureaucrats, blackmailers and body snatchers."[1] The review in Time magazine also compliments Revill's "deft performance" and notes that "the topical dialogue by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond—Kissinger jokes, Billy Graham jokes, etc.—gives this passingly pleasant movie the sound of a Bob Hope TV special."[3] Roger Ebert called it a "pleasant, civilized comedy" that's "too long by maybe half an hour" that "suffers from the problem that the audience has everything figured out several minutes before" Lemmon's character does.[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Avanti!, Another Billy Wilder Farce, Stars Jack Lemmon, a December 1972 review from The New York Times
  2. ^ Avanti! from the Internet Broadway Database
  3. ^ Quick Cuts, a December 1972 review in Time
  4. ^ Avanti!, a January 1972 review by Roger Ebert

External links


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Films directed by Billy Wilder
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avanti!"

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