How to Murder Your Mise en Scene

How to Murder your Wife is a quite ordinary but oh-what-might-have-been film from Richard Quine, if we want to believe in directors as auteurs. Richard Quine's career only ever got out of the ordinary in patches. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but every film is just lacking something, and I can’t help but wonder what might have been, in every film he made, if Billy Wilder had directed it.

(But of course auteur theory is a ridiculous concept. Film authorship is spread over many people involved in the film’s making, more like a band than an author. It is just as ridiculous to talk of “John Lennon’s Strawberry Fields Forever” as “Hitchcock’s Rear Window”.)

If How to Murder Your Wife works it is certainly not for the script or the auteur, or even its main star, Jack Lemmon, but the contributions of its supporting stars. Virna Lisi gives the film life, with way too much spark and presence for a character without a first name, besides offering textbook visual pleasure - what glamour shots! The camera crew certainly rise to the challenge of a beautiful starlet and in so doing undermine the script - what man would curse his luck on the very morning he wakes up married to such a gorgeous and "affectionate little thing" (as his lawyer urges, "at least try it"). Terry Thomas has some great Terry Thomas moments, but is generally disappointing due to the demands the script asks of him - narrating a film to camera is always problematic.

But the best of them is Eddie Mayehoff, who plays his cartoon character perfectly. Rolling his mouth around in his cheeks, laughing at his own jokes, adding information nobody wants, telling stories that go nowhere, and forever demonstrating his belly - the screen isn't big enough to contain his twitches, and a lot of time is courteously given to his pointless digressions. Even his background acting can be admired.

And of course the moment of the film, aside from Miss Lisi’s glamour shots, is a wonderful reversal by Eddie.

Throughout, Claire Trevor, his wife, pecks at him and puts him down, always in front of others, and he always gives a feeble excuse or obediently withdraws. Except for one beautiful moment in which Eddie comes as close as anyone to achieving the film's title, and proves that sometimes the best defence is an own goal.

Eddie’s had a few too many pre-dinner cocktails and is obviously drunk. In front of Virna, Claire puts Eddie down with something like, “What’s the point of Virna cooking all day if you’re too drunk to enjoy it?” To Virna's astonishment, Eddie, knowing he’s too drunk to argue, sways back and forth and replies, “Yeah she’s right”.