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| Days of Wine and Roses | 
| Category: Movie
Buy New: $2.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 3695
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 118 minutes
ASIN: B000I5PPMU
Theatrical Release Date: December 25, 1962
Release Date: October 6, 2008 (New: This Week)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Days of Wine and Roses February 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Cousin Larry and I saw this blueprint of how not to live. Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick become alcoholics and separate after having a child. Lemmon sobers up. Remick does not. I had a drinking problem in my 20s. I should have given this film more thought. Lemmon was a great actor, the average businessman struggling to make it in the city, funny and tragic at the same time. The title was taken from a poem by Ernest Dowson. "Vitae Summa Brevis" laments the brevity of life: "They are not long, the days of wine and roses. Out of a misty dream our path emerges for awhile, then closes within a dream."
 One of the best films of all time September 18, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Forget the fact that it's in B&W this film is one of the best ever made.
It's portrayal of the gradual slip into alcoholism of the main characters is brilliantly delt with. The slip is sensitively portrayed and a lesson to all. Forget the melodrama of the greenhouse search - shown in the film - a similar crisis awaits all heavy drinkers.
I have Jack's film "The Apartment" as my No1 film ever, this is No2.
A dramatic sobering movie September 9, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
When I was a child, I sat and watched this movie with my dad. It remains (40+ years later) in my mind, one of the best "Public Service Announcements" against drinking that I have ever seen. For my whole life, this movie has been what I think of when people talk about "getting drunk and having fun." It has stopped me from ever thinking that getting drunk is the critical component in fun. I bought it hoping it will have the same effect on my son once he is old enough to watch and understand it. Lee Remick ends up becoming a drunk who can't save herself. A timeless tale that resonates in today's society and in our headlines.
Great Film, Disappointing Commentary Track July 9, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
It's an excellent film, though I did find it a bit too self-consciously preachy at times, which I found took me out of the dramatic moment from time to time. This preachiness is somewhat amplified by being presented in the person of Jack Klugman, playing a recovering alcoholic. I have a great deal of respect for Klugman as an actor, but to me, his line deliveries do have a tendency to sound a bit strident and overly-intense to begin with -- even as Oscar Madison in Neil Simon's 'The Odd Couple'! -- so the already-preachy tone of some of the dialogue, placed into his mouth make the film almost seem to stop at points while a public service announcement is played out. This nitpick however, cannot diminish the overall dramatic power of the film, or its value in helping people to understand something of the tragedy of alcoholism.
The Director's Commentary track by Blake Edwards was really quite disappointing. Edwards freely admits to not having even watched the film since it was first made, so instead of being able to provide insightful commentary as the film proceeds, he frequently admits to (and apologizes for), long stretches of his own silence as he's swept up in the drama as an audience member. There is, however, about 8 minutes in, an interesting anecdote about a conversation he had with Jack Lemmon during shooting about their own drinking habits.
Days of Wine and Roses June 27, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
A downbeat love story pickled in bile and booze, this melodrama of addiction by the great Blake Edwards skirts the same terrain as "Lost Weekend" without ever getting preachy. Instead, Edwards examines the sullied yet undying connection between his two self-destructive protagonists, played by Lemmon and Remick with unblinking honesty. (Two specific scenes--his in a madhouse and hers in a motel--are wrenching.) Charles Bickford lends terrific support as Kirsten's widower father, as does Jack Klugman in a small role as Joe's AA sponsor. "Days" is a hard-hitting drama about love in the ruins, buoyed by Henry Mancini's melancholic jazz score.
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