Avanti! is a 1972 American/Italian comedy film produced and directed by Billy Wilder. The film starred Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills. The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on the 1968 play of the same title by Samuel Taylor.

Plot[link]

For the past ten years, Baltimore industrialist Wendell Armbruster has been spending the month of August at the Grand Hotel Excelsior in Ischia, allegedly to soak in the therapeutic mud baths for which the resort island is known. When he is killed in an automobile accident, his straitlaced son Wendell, Jr. journeys to Italy to claim his father's body. Upon arrival he discovers his father was not alone in the Fiat he was driving; with him was his British mistress, whose daughter, free-spirited London shop girl Pamela Piggott, also is on the scene, though she clearly knew of their parents' clandestine romance beforehand.

Complications arise when the Trotta family, whose vineyard was damaged when the elder Armbruster's car drove into it, steal the bodies from the morgue and hold them for a two million lire ransom. Trying to assist is United States Ambassador J.J. Blodgett, who hopes to appoint the deceased man to an embassy post posthumously so the government can get involved in the recovery of his body. As their problems with local customs and bureaucratic red tape escalate, Wendell and Pamela find themselves falling in love with the assistance of manager Carlo Carlucci, valet Bruno, and the rest of the hotel staff, who are determined the couple will follow in the romantic path of their parents.

Production[link]

Although Samuel Taylor's play had closed on Broadway after only twenty-one performances in early 1968,^[1] talent agent Charles Feldman, who previously had interested Billy Wilder in filming The Seven Year Itch, had purchased the screen rights and offered the property to Wilder. The director had begun working on The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and it wasn't until that project was completed that he was able to concentrate on Avanti! When longtime screenwriting partner I.A.L. Diamond proved to be unavailable, Wilder collaborated first with Julius Epstein and then Norman Krasna, but he was unhappy with the results. Then Diamond became free, and with the ultimately uncredited assistance of Luciano Vincenzoni, he and Wilder began adapting the Taylor play. Wilder was determined to create "a bittersweet love story, a little like Brief Encounter, which I always admired," he later recalled.^[2]

Early in the writing period, Wilder showed Jack Lemmon some of the completed script, and he agreed to play Wendell Armbruster, Jr. "Knowing pretty early on Jack was going to be in our film made it more comfortable writing his dialogue," said Diamond, who preferred to tailor a screenplay to a specific actor.^[2] Wilder was familiar with Juliet Mills from the television sitcom Nanny and the Professor, and while he was unimpressed with the series he thought she was a good actress with a lot of appeal, so he offered her the role of Pamela Piggott. "I loved Billy Wilder just calling me and asking me to be in his film," the actress recalled, "no lawyer or agent, his voice, not asking for an audition or a screen test."^[2] Wilder told her the role required her to gain twenty-five pounds, and Mills readily agreed. She also agreed to a nude scene, although Diamond was opposed to including one in the film. "I think nudity hurts laughs", he stated. "I mean if you're watching somebody's boobs, you're not listening to the dialogue."^[2]

After viewing a number of Italian films, Wilder selected Luigi Kuveiller as his cinematographer, based on his work on the Elio Petri film A Quiet Place in the Country (1969). Although the story of Avanti is set in Ischia, most of the exteriors were shot in Sorrento, on Capri, and along the Amalfi Coast, and interiors were filmed at the Safa Palatino Studio in Rome during the summer of 1972. Principal photography was completed on schedule and $100,000 under budget.^[2]

Wilder was disappointed with the completed film. "Maybe we went overboard with some of the comic relief, because Avanti! is not a comedy", he stated. "If this film had worked the way we wanted it to, it would have had more of the quality of The Apartment. I always feel sorry for the disappointment of the actors, and all those dear technical people who do so much, when the picture doesn't make it the way they hoped . . . I went much farther with forbidden themes than I had with Kiss Me, Stupid, but nobody cared. Audiences thought it was too long and too bland. I guess they would have liked it better if it turned out the father was having the affair with one of the bellboys at the hotel."^[2]

Cast[link]

• Jack Lemmon as Wendell Armbruster, Jr.
• Juliet Mills as Pamela Piggott
• Clive Revill as Carlo Carlucci
• Edward Andrews as J.J. Blodgett
• Gianfranco Barra as Bruno
• Pippo Franco as Mattarazzo
• Janet Agren as Nurse
• Giacomo Rizzo as Barman
• Ty Hardin as Helicopter Pilot
• Antonino Faa Di Bruno as Concierge
• Raffaele Mottola as Passport Officer
• Harry Ray as Dr. Fleischmann

Critical reception[link]

A.H. Weiler of the New York Times thought the film was "intermittently funny, charming, cute and, unfortunately, over-long." He continued, "Wilder, Lemmon and I.A.L. Diamond . . . fitfully charm us but they haven't moved forward at any great comic clip. They have warped some parts of the playwright's plot to give us a fairly reasonable flow of giggles and an occasional guffaw." He also cited "a fine job turned in by Clive Revill." ^[3]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "a pleasant, civilized comedy" and added, "Avanti! isn't a laugh-a-minute kind of a movie, and it's too long by maybe half an hour. It also suffers from the problem that the audience has everything figured out several minutes before Jack Lemmon does. Still, the movie has a certain charm, some of which seeps in along with the locations, and there is in most of the many Wilder/Lemmon collaborations a cheerful insouciance, as if life is best approached with a cheerful, if puzzled, grin." ^[4]

Jay Cocks of Time observed, "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. But Miss Mills is fresh and winning, and there is a deft performance by Clive Revill." ^[5]

The British television network Channel 4 has called the film "a rare instance of the travel comedy - never an easy thing to pull off - succeeding without recourse to old racial stereotypes . . . As a love story, it's full of Wilder's biting satire . . . Taken at face value, it's simply a travel comedy about funny foreigners and love in the Mediterranean. Yet what stands out is how uncomfortable Wilder seems to be with making a sex comedy in the 1970s. Forced to take on board the aftershocks of the summer of love but saddled with an old man's attitude and an old man's cast, Wilder seems perilously out of his depth. As Lemmon and Mills strip off to reveal pale white skin and flabby fat, you can't help feeling that the resolutely misanthropic director is somewhat appalled by the realities of his characters' bedroom antics."^[6]

Awards and nominations[link]

Jack Lemmon won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and nominations went to Billy Wilder for Best Director, Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond for Best Screenplay, Juliet Mills for Best Actress, Clive Revill for Best Supporting Actor, and the film itself for Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy).

Wilder and Diamond were nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium but lost to Jay Presson Allen for Cabaret.

DVD release[link]

MGM Home Entertainment released the Region 1 DVD on July 15, 2003. It is in anamorphic widescreen format with audio tracks and subtitles in English, Spanish, and French.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Avanti! at the Internet Movie Database
• Avanti! at the TCM Movie Database