What's New Pussycat?

(As a side project while writing this spring, for when I need to change my mental track, I’m doing some viewing and writing about Woody Allen. I’m going to watch and write about his films as a director; but in preparation I’m looking at some of his pre-directing work.)

Producer Charles Feldman and obvious-candidate Warren Beatty originated this 1965 sex farce about a commitment-phobic himbo and hired Woody Allen to write it; he agreed if he could also play a supporting role. Beatty thought Allen was making his own part too big, so he quit, thinking that would tank the project. Instead, Feldman moved forward with Peter O'Toole. Supposedly, ATW (according to Wikipedia), Groucho Marx was supposed to play the psychotherapist role but O'Toole insisted on Peter Sellers. (Imagine being a Groucho-Marx-obsessed Jewish kid like Allen and having him lined up to star in your first produced screenplay. And then the star nixes it.)

Add a bunch of beautiful women and...that's a movie? Apparently so—in 2022 dollars the movie made $160M at the box office ($18M in 1965). It is not a good movie; much of it is only marginally watchable, and then only if you find time capsules like this amusing. Directed by "British New Wave" director, Clive Donner, What's New Pussycat? is a typical example of a kind of "swinging '60s" sex comedy that is mostly puzzling today, rather than funny or particularly sexy. It is an interesting watch from the perspective of Woody Allen's career, however.

Considering how well-known his style and mannerisms eventually became, it's strange how difficult everyone else seemed to find Allen's dialogue—whatever was left of it after rewrites and improvisation. Before anyone really knew it was a thing, Peter O'Toole was playing the first version of the "Woody Allen character," as would many actors in later Allen films, but without the benefit of having seen Allen himself do the character. The result is a half-successful attempt mostly bulled-through with English charm and either drunkenness or the appearance of drunkenness—it is O'Toole, after all, who also doesn't fit the character anyway for being miles too handsome. But he can chase a rotating selection of skirts with the best of them, so he's moderately amusing. Sellers on the other hand, did plenty of shit work over the years, but I don't know if I've seen him worse than he is here. The problem is that Allen is mostly writing ironic jokes to be delivered in an offhand way—like Groucho. When Woody's in the film, suddenly the dialogue makes sense. It's funny—because he delivered it as if it meant nothing. Whereas Sellers seems to be trying out different accents and inflections and tones and moods on a line-by-line basis. Plus he's wearing a long-haired wig and cowboy boots much of the time—he looks ridiculous and unconnected with the rest of what's going on. Sellers is seemingly not able to ever get his head around the character in a way that makes him comprehensible to the audience. There are still a few fleeting pleasures in the moderate slapstick he and Allen get up to together. But—apart from Allen, who is naturally well-served by his own material and nails the performance—all of the men in the film are dull, neurotic jackasses. He's a neurotic jackass, too, but not dull.

This film, actually, belongs to its women. I've seem this film before—so long ago I can't remember—but I was surprised this time to note that this sophomoric sex farce, almost too stupid to even be considered misogynist because it's so childish, is paradoxically full of funny, interesting women. They may be cursed to follow along in the wake of O'Toole's vapid sex addict, as he fucks and drinks his way to a short, lonely life, but they're all a lot more fun than any of the men in the film (apart from Tom Jones). An effervescent Romy Schneider, an hilariously weird Paula Prentiss, cold and beautiful Capucine, and daffy sexpot Ursula Andress almost make this one worth revisiting.