MovieChat Forums > What's New Pussycat (1965) Discussion > This didn't age well...

This didn't age well...

posted 14 years ago by RashomonLaStrada
9 replies | jump to latest

In making WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT, the filmmakers no doubt saw themselves as being "hip" and very "today" and daringly challenging the tired comedies of Doris Day and/or Bob Hope.

But I don't think there was much underlying the show of hipness. I like silly comedies. But I've seen better silliness from the Three Stooges. I enjoy "Bedroom Farce," but that requires finesse. No finesse here.

I wonder how many years it took for Woody Allen to feel embarrassed that he wrote such lame gags or whether he was already embarrassed when the movie came out. I'm impressed that Allen grew so much in 11 years between this movie and the masterful ANNIE HALL.

"The good end happily, the bad unhappily, that is why it is called Fiction."

[–] bstephens21 14 years ago

I wonder how many years it took for Woody Allen to feel embarrassed that he wrote such lame gags or whether he was already embarrassed when the movie came out. I'm impressed that Allen grew so much in 11 years between this movie and the masterful ANNIE HALL.

If anything, he can be pleased with himself. The final film has very little of Allen's work as intended. In an odd case of karma, he nearly got pushed off the project by Sellers the same way he pushed off Beatty. Since it's his scenes that make the film come alive, he can look at the movie and think "I told you so".

[–] slokes 14 years ago

<<If anything, he can be pleased with himself. The final film has very little of Allen's work as intended. In an odd case of karma, he nearly got pushed off the project by Sellers the same way he pushed off Beatty. Since it's his scenes that make the film come alive, he can look at the movie and think "I told you so".>>

I think Allen was more responsible for the final product than Sellers, however compromised it might have been from interference. I mean, those are his jokes about sex hang-ups and group analysis and Wagnerian opera, you can just feel it. Sellers did some writing, and I bet without any factual back-up that his scenes with O'Toole were largely improvised, but Sellers was only incidently a writer who wouldn't have cared about any scene he wasn't in. Allen is the only credited screenwriter on this film.

I concur with Rashomon regarding the dated quality of this film, and think the fault lies largely with the young writer. I don't think Allen had the chops in 1965 for screenwriting, he was a work in progress who could amuse and engage only off and on but was still finding his way to stake his claim on film the way he had with nightclub work. The result here is a film that's all over the place. I know he pretty much disowned this work as much as possible, but I think it was his baby more than anyone else's.

[–] bstephens21 14 years ago

"I think Allen was more responsible for the final product than Sellers, however compromised it might have been from interference."

The psychiatrist was a very minor character. Sellers took it after a series of heart attacks because he wanted a light cameo role. You wouldn't know it from the final product, because Sellers hijacked the picture. Woody Allen was the original sidekick accompanying Peter O'Toole throughout the film; not so in the final film. Whole scenes were changed to accommodate Peter Sellers and cut out Allen. Basically, the only way you can know for certain that Woody wrote it is if its a Woody Allen scene without Peter Sellers. If Sellers is in the scene, even with Woody, changes are very little of his work is there. Even when its his words being spoken, your not accounting for the difference in tone and setting based off the producers decision. Even if all the dialogue was the same (which it's not), Woody Allen wrote a completely different film. There is plenty of "factual back-up" about it. Sellers seizure of the picture has been well documented in plenty of books. Woody even talks about, in Woody Allen on Woody Allen, going to see the dailies and telling the producers the movie was terrible. It was one of the large reasons he decided to take creative control of his work afterward (another parallel with Beatty).

[–] slokes 14 years ago

As you say, bstephens, Sellers' Fassbender character seems to have highjacked much of the film. For example, when we see Fassbender at the marriage registry, it seems like he really shouldn't be there at all. He's married, but where is his wife and kids? And what's his relationship with Carole? Victor is the only character in the film, other than Carole's parents, who is on friendly terms with both. And poor Victor deserves the eye-time with Francoise Hardy, not that quack.

Did Allen actually walk off the film? If this film was shot in sequence (a big IF, because nothing in "What's New, Pussycat" suggests much of a plan), it may well be so.

I don't agree with you that Allen's work was completely shut out whenever Sellers is on screen. That opening line of Sellers, "Is she prettier than you? I'm prettier than you" was ascribed to Allen pretty directly in a New York Times profile I remember reading in the 1980s, and I think a lot of the other dialogue certainly remind me of his first book "Getting Even" and the album of his stage comedy I heard. Allen himself may well have been frustrated by being forced into mere joke-man mode, but I sense a lot of his jokes in the final cut, however carelessly strewn about.

[–] bstephens21 14 years ago

Did Allen actually walk off the film? If this film was shot in sequence (a big IF, because nothing in "What's New, Pussycat" suggests much of a plan), it may well be so.

He never walked off. It was still a big career push for him, even if he did hate it. He certainly went on the road to promote it. And it was successful enough that his managers were able to launch his directing career. But he never liked the film.

I don't agree with you that Allen's work was completely shut out whenever Sellers is on screen.

His dialogues not completely shut out, but its not the scenes he wrote. I think a good example is the "love in the elevator" scene, which Allen especially mentioned disliking. He wrote the scene, but the producers changed the setting from a business building to a posh hotel, and ruined everything Allen felt was funny about the scene. His writing is there, but its modified past its meaning.

[–] slokes 14 years ago

<<I think a good example is the "love in the elevator" scene, which Allen especially mentioned disliking. He wrote the scene, but the producers changed the setting from a business building to a posh hotel, and ruined everything Allen felt was funny about the scene. His writing is there, but its modified past its meaning.>>

That is a singularly bad scene. Capucine seemed about as happy to be working on this film as Allen apparently was.

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] CursedShadow 9 years ago

I have to disagree. I saw this movie in the theater when it was first released and just saw it for the second time (although heavily censored and horribly cut) recently. I think it holds up rather well.

[–] [email protected] 8 years ago

This movie clearly is from another time; lots of material in it guaranteed to offend modern sensibilities. Still, it paints a picture of the mid-60s that can be fairly irresistible. Now, if you want something finely, poorly aged, I'll suggest "Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You" - a 1970 sort-of sequel/remake, with nobody at all from the original movie and a bad case of carrying on the pop art absurdity of the time past its exit point. If the original was a wild, fun '60s party, this movie is waking up the next morning with a splitting hangover, and finding there's one guest who never left and is still manically dancing around, knocking over drinks with cigarette butts in them, and crushing leftover Chee-tos into the carpet.