Phffft

Comedies of remarriage are a backbone of the screwball genre, and there’s several classics to be mined from the material (The Philadelphia Story and The Awful Truth come to mind immediately). Phffft is not one of these films, as it takes a couple amusing gags, strong comedic actors, and then sticks interminable pieces in-between.

The title’s high-concept is more thoughtful than much of the writing. The title comes from a newspaper article describing the noise made when a marriage ends in divorce. It’s a little ridiculous, and the title is more than a little stupid, but that’s the level of commitment we’re working with here.

Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon play the couple whose marriage goes belly up, find it difficult to readjust to married life, and eventual come back together. Much of the film is humorous interludes of their single adventures, readjusting to dating and dealing with overly involved family and friends. Jack Carson plays Lemmon’s best friend, while Kim Novak has two scenes as a sad, desperate party girl.

There’s not a lot of meat to Phffft, and many of the setups are more interminable than hilarious, but Holliday and Lemmon make several clunkers into amusing bits. Holliday plays a soap opera writer, and she gets a lot of mileage out of jokes about her work. She does even better in a lunchtime drunk scene where she spots her ex-husband, stops at his table, slathers butter all over her ring finger, removes her ring, and throws it at him. Her manic glee in the act is charming and hilarious, she’s so spiteful while smiling cutely, and we remember just how solid an actress she was.

Lemmon pairs well with her, always managing to find pathos in his frenzy, a trademark of his work. His double takes can make some moments shine where others wouldn’t have saved them. His befuddlement pairs well with Holliday’s neurosis, sympathetic next to Carson’s oily sleaze, and strangely tender with Novak’s superfluous and desperate good-time girl. A dance scene between Lemmon and Holliday is the clear high point of the film. They begin on separate dates, combative and antagonistic with each other, before winding up in each other’s arms, filled with a comfort and joy, flirtation and surprise. It’s also two actors in clear enjoyment of each other’s company, and one wishes that Holliday and Lemmon had gone on to become one of the great cinematic pairings, but we’ll always have the two films they made.