Jack Lemmon: Save The Tiger April 19, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , trackbackThere’s a wonderful story about SAVE THE TIGER, recounted by the film’s director, John Avildsen, on the DVD’s commentary track. It was 1972, and Paramount had left the film on the shelf, not sure what to do with it. It was a harrowing film, documenting 36 hours in the life of Harry Stoner and his nervous breakdown as his clothing business faces ruin and he contemplates turning to crime via arson to survive. It’s not easy viewing, and Paramount had doubts about its chances of success. So before Paramount took hold of the film and recut it, John and the films writer, Steve Shagan, thought that if they could show the finished film to Jack Lemmon, and if he liked it, then maybe he would carry enough clout to convince Paramount to leave it alone. So they took the film to Rome, where Jack and Billy Wilder were making AVANTI.
Just imagine it; it’s 1972 and Lemmon and Wilder are in Italy making that wonderful romantic comedy. Just imagine that moment in time, one of the best actor/director partnerships in Hollywood history working together on that sunny comedy and they sit down in a small theatre outside Rome to watch a troubled ‘little’ picture called SAVE THE TIGER.
So they watched the film and when it finished and the lights came up, there was silence for awhile, and then Billy Wilder said, “There’s only one thing wrong with this picture,” to which he could see Avildsen react in horror, and then he added, “I didn’t direct it.” Probably, John Avildsen recalls, the sweetest thing any director could say to another director. So SAVE THE TIGER was left alone by Paramount and Jack Lemmon went on to win an Academy Award (Best Actor, 1973).
When watching SAVE THE TIGER, I often find myself thinking about TAXI DRIVER. They are both seem to be about the American Dream turning to Nightmare, and both are such definitive examples of 1970s filmmaking. They are both low budget, both with excellent scripts, both graced with astonishing acting. Jack Lemmon’s performance is a tour de force, like watching THE APARTMENT’s CC Baxter in frustrated middle-age, his hopes and dreams of 1960 thwarted and his life ruined. America has changed.
Harry Stoner is facing a ruined business, a marriage on the rocks, a daughter in Europe, and he constantly thinks back to happier times, simpler times when everything made sense; Stoner’s reminisce falters, his voice trails off, his eyes wistful, elsewhere, seeing memories… and Lemmon carries it off. As his breakdown takes hold he thinks back to his Wartime days, the men who died there, the pointlessness of their sacrifice in the face of what America has become. Stoner starts seeing things, his dead wartime buddies, and is visibly falling apart, increasingly lost, much as Travis Bickle in Scorsese’s later film. The film’s end is so typically 1970s- there is no neat conclusion, and Stoner is probably more lost than ever. It is a very powerful movie, as relevant today as it ever was, and one of Lemmon’s finest.
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Great, great film; reading tributes as heartfelt as this makes me want to dash off and slap the film into my DVD player…