A pie-in-the-face simply isn’t funny anymore. Nowadays slapstick has developed a reputation of being simplistic and lowbrow. Classic gags died out with the silent pictures, we are now a sophisticated audience with sophisticated tastes. Keaton once said that a pie-in-the-face died out because you can’t fit it into a full feature and make it believable to an audience. In real life we seldom have occasion to throw a pie in someone’s face and so it’s not believable. I disagree. It still has a place in full feature movies and it can be funny. The problem is that all the people who had enough talent to make a pie-in-the-face funny are no longer around. Slapstick is not simplistic, on the contrary it requires a great deal of talent, and as an audience when we look down on it from the height of our sophistication, we fail to realize we are the ones who are simplistic in our assessment. Pulling off slapstick and making it believable to the audience is a feat of colossal proportions, almost impossible.
When Blake Edwards made Victor or Victoria the time of the pie-in-the-face had long since passed. Raiders of the Lost Ark had come out and audiences wanted Spielberg and ET, slapstick had been dead for over three decades as had musicals, and Victor or Victoria was both. It made a splash when it came out, but it has been relegated to dusty shelves and now is remembered by few. It deserves better, if for no other reason, for Blake Edward’s courage and talent in resurrecting slapstick and musicals in the same movie while audiences clamored for car chases and explosions.
Victor or Victoria brings together unbelievable talents. Blake Edwards, Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren. Blake Edwards managed to put a pie-in-the-face into a full feature movie because of his rare comedic talent. The music is by Henry Mancini for crying out loud, it can’t get better than that. And Julie Andrews singing alone or with Robert Preston, well, it’s Julie Andrews, I don’t have to say more.
The last time a pie-in-the-face made me smile was in Victor or Victoria and all the slapstick in that movie - from a bottle breaking on a note sung by Julie Andrews, to a bar brawl, to Garner pretending to bribe a cop, punching him in the face instead and recovering the money before running off - blended seamlessly in a full feature film. It doesn’t take much, just phenomenal talent, the sort that is hard to find nowadays. I just love this movie, it’s a forgotten jewel. Go watch it.
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