THE ART OF LOVE: Blu-ray (Universal, 1965) Kino Lorber

 There is an old cliché that begins… “if love were a hobby…” Yet, even under these conditions, Norman Jewison’s The Art of Love (1965) could hardly be considered a ‘collector’s item’. Despite four heavy-hitters in the driver’s seat – James Garner, Dick Van Dyke, Elke Sommer and Angie Dickinson, one kickass producer of the Hollywood old school – Ross Hunter, and, two properly cured hams – Ethel Merman and Carl Reiner, The Art of Love emerges as a badly mangled and tastelessly ghoulish screwball comedy, more mincemeat than magnificent. Ross Hunter, known for glossy, entertaining fluff and melodrama of the slickest uber-sheen has his work cut out herein; the screenplay by Carl Reiner, based on a story idea from Richard Alan Simmons and William Sackheim centers on a macabre case of mistaken identity. When miserable, failed artist, Paul Sloane (Van Dyke) elects to fake his own death, dragging roommate, Casey Barnett (Garner) into his scheme, thereupon to create an influx of morbid fascination for his mediocre painterly prowess, the resulting chaos leads Paul into the arms of the virginal but sexy, Nikki Dunnay (Sommer). Problem: Paul is already engaged to wealthy American beauty, Laurie Gibson (Angie Dickinson).  From here the script has Nikki throwing herself at Paul, and Casey, penniless and enterprising, running afoul of his friendship with Paul to pursue a romantic entanglement with Laurie in order to secure his future romantic and financial prospects. Discovering Casey’s ruse, though powerless to prevent it, Paul sadistically frames his best friend for ‘his murder’, promising Nikki to restore order at the last possible moment, but only after Casey has suffered with the guillotine dangling overhead.

Ethel Merman’s aging soubrette of the lurid Parisian whorehouse ilk, Madame Coco La Fontaine, ensures at least a few bright spots of loudmouthed sass in this otherwise lugubrious rom/com, and Carl Reiner, as Paul’s fussbudgety attorney, is a politely diverting fop. But the chief hurdle to overcome here is Dick Van Dyke’s brutally brittle central performance as the curmudgeonly artiste sans talent. Paul is also incapable of love – either with or without a ‘proper’ stranger. No kidding; Van Dyke’s Paul is about as waggish and frustrated as the temperamental can get, looking positively silly in his Raggedy-Ann blind man’s garb, or worse, wearing a knock-off of the disguise to camouflage him as the elder Mr. Dawes in the previous year’s infinitely more charming – Mary Poppins (1964). Skulking around Paris incognito, Paul fiendishly plots Casey’s ruin. In fact, Casey was using Paul’s status as a suicidal artist to fatten his own wallet with gallery owner, Mr. Fromkis (Irving Jacobson).  If all of this sounds cruel and idiotic – it is – to a finite precision of staggering, staged absurdity, capped off by a bit of perverted misdirection as the building’s janitor (Jay Novello) stumbles across Casey sawing a mannequin in half and immediately assumes he is actually disposing of Paul’s body to be incinerated in the furnace.  

The Art of Love, like so many comedies from the decade, struggles to keep its simple story afloat as the sixties’ road show verve for over-produced grandiosity superseded virtually all common sense. So, instead of lithe and lovely distraction, we get weighty and weird flights into the un-farcically fantastic. This is a comedy with more back-end flatulence than front-of-the-house freedom to explore any of its half-baked and under-developed subplots. So, Dickinson’s darling falls madly for Casey in just a few hours after learning of Paul’s supposed demise and Paul, while staunchly to profess disgust for the way Nikki perpetually throws herself at his head, nevertheless, pines for her when she momentarily contemplates running off with oily Count, Pepe deWinter (Renzo Cesana). Clearly aiming at the deft and delicious humor of Blake Edwards’ The Pink Panther (1963), right down to its knock-off tedious trek through the oddly deserved city streets of Paris, The Art of Love even makes veiled references to Peter Sellers and 1964’s A Shot in the Dark. Trying and traditional, rather than cunning and cutting edge, The Art of Love toggles from cliché to hyperbole then back again, hoping against hope to stave off our ennui with the whole darn mess.   

Even the main titles are a ‘hand-me-down’; David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng’s cartoon intro clearly cribbing from their work on ‘The Inspector’ shorts, right down to having a Sergeant Deux-Deux-esque detective of the Sûreté chase after a naughty little Cupid, who insists on exposing the virtues of the female form divine as he is pursued past famous Paris landmarks. Cherchez la femme, indeed!  From here, we enter the atelier of painter, Paul Sloane – a tiny abode, littered in Paul’s failed attempts to become an artiste of some renown. The place is shared with Casey Barnett who is contented to sponge off Paul and spend all his free time chasing after the opposite sex. However, when Paul makes the impromptu announcement, he intends to leave France at the earliest opportunity and return to America to wed his fiancée, Laurie Gibson, Casey realizes he has to take drastic measures to keep the free times coming. Getting soused on the Left Bank, Casey suggests Paul fake his own death to increase the value of his art. It’s an intriguing prospect and one too good to pass up. So, Paul, after falling in the Seine, feigns suicide.

Overnight, his paintings become the toast of Paris. Through an arrangement with Madame Coco, Paul takes refuge in the drafty upstairs attic above her cabaret nightclub, gradually falling in love with Nikki Dunnay – a slinky seamstress who also comes to clean his room. Nikki is mad for Paul. But he resists her for interminable intervals, professing a plan to eventually return to America a very rich man from the profits derived from the sale of his paintings Casey peddles through Fromkis’ gallery. Only Inspector Carnot (Pierre Olaf) suspects something afoot – perhaps, fraud, assigning a detective to shadow Casey. In the meantime, Laurie arrives with daydreams of marrying her lover in the city of light. Informed by Casey of Paul’s untimely passing, over the next several days Casey hires some of Madame Coco’s girls to impersonate Paul’s ex-lovers, suggesting he was unfaithful multiple times in Laurie’s absence – even going so far as to infer a nude model has since given birth to Paul’s love child! Laurie is convinced. Paul was no good. Only now it is Casey who has fallen hard for Laurie and desperate to woo her for his own. Ordered by his former landlord to clear out of their atelier, Casey must first dispose of all the leftovers in the flat, including a mannequin he picked up one night while on a drunken pub crawl. Electing to incinerate the dummy, Casey is unaware his actions are being observed by the apartment building’s janitor who, having only caught a glimpse of Casey stuffing the mannequin’s legs into the furnace, wrongly assumes he has murdered Paul and is presently disposing of his body.

By now, Paul has learned of Casey’s desire to possess Laurie and decides, rather pitilessly, to push the theory along Casey murdered him to capitalize on his paintings. Paul plants a blood-stained knife, his necktie and a shoe for the police to find, and deliberately cuts his own finger, rubbing his blood on the shoulder of Paul’s suit coat. At trial, Paul arrives in the disguise of an old man with Nikki in tow; she, having made him promise to stop this farce before it goes too far. Instead, just before the verdict is read, Paul replaces himself with an elderly man, thus avoiding having to prevent the sentence of death by guillotine. Casey is apoplectic and Laurie faints after he is found guilty. The next day, as the guillotine is prepared, Paul leaves for the public execution, certain he will have enough time to stop it. Instead, he experiences delay upon delay, running on foot through the streets of Paris, and eventually, picked up by Laurie’s chauffeur-driven car for the last length of the journey. Casey is saved and reunited with Laurie. As the two passionately kiss, Paul realizes Laurie does not love him anymore and also acknowledges he might just have enough time to intercept Nikki’s planned elopement with Pepe. Arriving at Madame Coco’s nightclub, Paul professes his love and Nikki decides to remain at his side. Sometime later, Paul is seen painting Nikki in the raw. However, when she examines the painting, she notices her likeness is fully clothed in the portrait; Paul, only too eager to enjoy her nakedness for himself.

The Art of Love is a fairly wearisome business. A ‘sex comedy’ it’s not, nor is it of the English farce ilk, or exactly a screwball comedy meets the sixties road show glam/bam usually associated with producer, Ross Hunter. So, what we have here, essentially, is a mutt of mixed breeding and virtues, some occasionally innovative bits given short shrift because there is no ‘follow through’ and, a lot of missed opportunities to engage the cast in a bon vivant’s excursion through the romantic streets and byways of Paris without any of the joie de vivre for the exercise itself. Everything here is much too mechanical and contrived to be enjoyed at face value. So, what we are left with just seems grotesquely faked for the benefit of someone else’s amusement. Studio memos suggest the part of Coco La Fontaine was first offered to Mae West who refused it when producers failed to meet her demands that she write her own dialogue.  As for the paintings featured throughout, these were actually the work of Don Cincone, an internationally acclaimed expressionist whose works were sought after by such renown collectors in Hollywood as Walt Disney, Henry Mancini and Vincent Price. Whatever their artistic merits, the net result of the picture is dull, drab and uninspiring. Forgettable fluff is one thing. But The Art of Love fails to live down to even this measly expectation.

There is better news for the Blu-ray, supplied to Kino Lorber by Universal. The studio has spent on a new 2K master, and the results are quite good.  Colors are bold and vibrant. The palette is richly layered with mostly accurately rendered flesh tones. These occasionally lean to the ‘burnt lobster’ red end of the spectrum. Contrast, with very few exceptions, is solid. Film grain is adequately represented and fine details pop as they should. Scenes shot on location reveal an impressive amount of clarity in background detail, while sets feature a lot of eye-popping colors. The 2.0 DTS mono is adequate and, with limitations, sounds as good as it ought for a vintage mono track. Extras are limited to an audio commentary from historian/critic, Peter Tanguette that is clear and concise, plus trailers for this and other Uni product distributed by Kino. Bottom line: while the Blu-ray will surely not disappoint, The Art of Love is a fairly abysmal ball of nothing with Dick Van Dyke lethally miscast. Not a great flick, but looking fairly spiffy in 1080p nonetheless. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

1