Joe Clay (Jack Lemmon) and Kirsten Arnesen (Lee Remick) are two very lonely people. He is a public-relations executive heading towards middle-age without having settled down with a family, while she is the daughter of the moderately wealthy owner of a local landscaping business. They meet by chance one evening while at a party, and they’re naturally repulsed by one another – Joe is a brash and vulgar man who finds Kirsten’s prudish behaviour to be a major problem. However, over time they grow to like one another, and very soon fall in love, and are eventually married on an impulse. It isn’t long before Joe has asserted his own favourite pastime – drinking copious amounts of alcohol – onto his bride, who is initially very reluctant, but soon manages to see the appeal. Eventually, they’ve both sunk into the depths of addiction, struggling with immense alcoholism that begins to erode at their livelihood. Joe is no longer the productive executive he was before, and it isn’t too long before he’s fired from his job. Kirsten doesn’t even notice, since her afternoons are spent drinking alone, neglecting their young daughter and passing the time while she waits for her husband to return. Joe realizes that there is a problem, and tries to regain his sobriety and attempts to convince Kirsten to join him, but even after an intervention done with the assistance of Joe’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor (Jack Klugman), Kirsten is vehemently against admitting she has a problem – and not only do their lives irrevocably change, but they find themselves seeing the other side of love, the one where all one is presented with are the flaws, which causes them to grow apart. The further they go, the more they realize the shortcomings in their lives, and before too long, they’ve found they’ve regressed beyond the point of no return, with any hope of salvaging who they were before disappearing with every drink.

In theory, Days of Wine and Roses should be something very special – the follow-up film for a director who had just come off one of the most defining films of the 1960s, starring one of the most beloved leading men at the time alongside a young actress who had only recently found her way to the screen, but not before collaborating with some prestigious directors like Elia Kazan and Otto Preminger, who essentially made her one of the most interesting performers of the era. Therefore, the fact that this film doesn’t only fail to live up to its potential, but also often serve as nothing but a disappointment, is quite troubling. There are a few significant reasons as to why Days of Wine and Roses failed, some of the structural and thus indelible to the production, others those that could have easily been avoided, had more care been taken by those involved to actually translate the Playhouse 90 teleplay to the screen in a way that not only kept the audience engaged, but did service to the very serious thematic underpinnings that have defined this film since its release. To call this film a failure may be somewhat hasty, since it at least manages to demonstrate some tact in certain areas, but there’s very little doubt that Blake Edwards, a director who was definitely adept at both comedy and drama, made a maladroit, unconvincing drama that doesn’t really say anything we haven’t heard before, not does he ever attempt to make something that seems worth watching, especially when it is well-publicized that the original version of this story, as performed on television by Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie, was far more impressive, and handled this material in a way that felt meaningful, rather than clumsily throwing ideas at the audience and hiding them behind the veneer of hysterics as a way to suggest that they’re somehow undeniably important, which is never a good approach to a story like this.

Perhaps the most fundamental problem with Days of Wine and Roses is that it isn’t quite sure of what it wants to be. Produced at a time when proverbial “message films” were at their peak, this film is certainly one of those that has something to say, which isn’t necessarily grounds to dismiss it without seeing it, but rather a cautionary footnote that warns us to expect a far more heightened experience. The trouble with this film is that it is too flaccid to even commit to being this kind of approach – it seems to suffer from complete tonal confusion, being caught somewhere between preachy melodrama brimming with moments of unnecessary sentimentality, and overly bleak social realism, both being prominent influences on the film, but not in the way that would appear all that effective, with the director adopting some of the less-likeable qualities of each in the creation of this story. Days of Wine and Roses has a very peculiar approach to looking at addiction, attempting to portray it in a way that feels gritty and authentic, but ultimately just ends up being a sanctimonious muddle of ideas that really don’t lead anywhere all that remarkable, and instead remain quite lacklustre taken as a whole. Inarguably, we can’t necessarily blame Edwards in the relative failure of the film – JP Miller was adapting his own work, and as a result didn’t put nearly enough effort into bringing it to the screen in a way that feels authentic. There’s nothing necessarily effective about this version of the story that wasn’t done in the Playhouse 90 version (which was also performed live), which may have lacked the budget or widespread release, but at least used the platform to its full extent, rather than simply being an overlong series of overwrought moments that seem to think they’re amounting to something important, but instead deflates almost immediately after reaching that mediocre peak it was aiming for.

It doesn’t help that the emotions pulsating through every scene seem so entirely constructed, artificially-created by the actors who are given a rather limp script to work from, and which fails to afford them anything interesting to do. You’d logically think the characters of Joe and Kirsten would be catnip for any young actors at this point – they’ve got memorable character arcs, which is derived from their individual complexities that paint them as nuanced figures, and there are numerous situations that give them good material. However, neither Jack Lemmon nor Lee Remick are particularly great in the film, even if they do give it their best shot. Lemmon was an actor capable of both comedy and drama, and Days of Wine and Roses was well within his wheelhouse – he could use his everyman persona to bring life to many different individuals whose only discernible quality is how realistic they are. Joe Clay is an alcoholic public relations executive whose life slowly starts to fall apart – there was nothing to suggest that Lemmon wouldn’t be able to play the role. To his credit, he is actually quite decent in the film – he hits all the right beats and delivers the dialogue with great sincerity, but it’s not enough to elevate the almost non-existent material, which leaves him without much direction. Remick, on the other hand, is actively quite mediocre as Lemmon’s co-star, which is a great disappointment, since she was a very gifted young actress. Her early moments are adequate, but as soon as she falls victim to addiction, she becomes a caricature, stumbling across the screen and delivering moments that are designed to be emotional punctuation with such an aimless insincerity, it’s almost laughable. It doesn’t help that Lemmon and Remick don’t have much chemistry – their tender moments come across as disingenuous, their moments of conflict appear far too hostile. Neither are particularly good, even if they’re doing their best with the bland material which affords them very little to do.

Less of a bad film, and more of a clumsy work, Days of Wine and Roses is a real disappointment for a number of reasons. Ultimately, this is a film that means well, but it needed a more assured set of hands behind the camera, especially when working from material that was written for a limited set of resources, but which doesn’t mean the film as a whole needs to adhere to these constraints. The film really doesn’t say or do anything we haven’t seen before – addiction is a subject that works very well on screen, since it gives the actors a chance to play different sides of a character, and undergo a struggle in real-time that can actually manifest in tangible ways, so it’s hardly surprising that Days of Wine and Roses was made in the first place. The trouble is, there isn’t really anything in here worth noting – the emotions aren’t that convincing, the story isn’t all that compelling, and the performances aren’t impressive. There are a few touching moments, but nearly all come in the first act, where the film spends time establishing these characters, only to dispose of their most effective qualities after a while. Days of Wine and Roses is a little bit of a chore, one that may not be terrible, but is just not nearly good enough to be nearly as effective as it thinks itself to be. Edwards went on to make some terrific films, which often looked at slightly more serious matters more interestingly. Despite directing the cultural sensation Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Edwards was still a director finding his style, so we can’t revile him too much for the mediocrity of this film. Ultimately, Days of Wine and Roses just isn’t a particularly great film, and considering the potential it had, such a revelation is truly beyond disappointing, since this story deserved so much better than what we ultimately received.