Despite receiving considerable
acclaim during its original release—including an Oscar nomination for Best
Picture—the tart romantic comedy A Touch
of Class has not aged well. The leading performances by Glenda Jackson (who
won an Academy Award for her work) and George Segal are entertaining, and cowriter/director
Melvin Frank orchestrates battle-of-the-sexes repartee efficiently. The problem
is that the social values represented by the film reflect a peculiar transitional
moment between the Bad Old Days of rampant male chauvinism and the era of women’s
liberation. Accordingly, Segal’s character spends the entire movie treating
Jackson’s character like garbage, and yet the audience is expected to accept
two things as true—firstly, that Segal’s character is sympathetic as a put-upon
male trying to satisfy his normal sex drive, and secondly, that Jackson’s
character is enlightened because she has an affair with a married man in order
to avoid the complications of an emotional entanglement.
Similar scenarios
powered many romantic films that were made before mainstream culture reflected
more sophisticated understandings of the female experience—for instance, the
Marilyn Monroe favorite The Seven Year
Itch (1955)—but the way A Touch of
Class tries to blend antiquated attitudes with fresh ideas simply doesn’t
work, or at least it doesn’t work anymore. Having said all that, some viewers
might find things to enjoy in the picture simply because of strong performances
and occasional flashes of wit.
Segal stars as George Blackburn, an American
businessman living in London. He’s married with kids, but indulges in frequent
extramarital affairs. George meets the elegant and self-confident Vickie
Allessio (Jackson), a divorcée who works in the fashion industry, and proposes
an affair. She accepts, fully aware of George’s situation, but insists on a
suitable setting. George then arranges a romantic trip to Spain, and a comedy
of errors ensues. Predictably, the lovers develop feelings for each other in
between farcical scenes of George throwing out his back during sex and/or Vicki
trying not to arouse the suspicions of George’s friend Walter (Paul Sorvino),
who conveniently happens to be in Spain at the same time as George and Vicki.
Even though Frank has a good light touch for everything from physical to verbal
comedy, he can’t help but come off as a second-rate Billy Wilder, and the
choice to situate George as a hapless hero—instead of an outright heel—betrays
an unattractive perspective on gender relations. Plus, for all of her
character’s protestations about being a strong modern woman, Jackson ends up
seeming shrill and submissive simply because she spends so much time arguing
and making accommodations for the boorish behavior of the Segal character. FYI,
most of the film’s principals—Frank, Jackson, Segal, and Sorvino—reteamed in
1979 for another romantic comedy, Lost
and Found, which enjoyed a far less impressive commercial and critical
reception than its predecessor.
A Touch of Class: FUNKY
I watched this last year for the first time and found myself wondering what all the fuss had been about. Some good stuff, of course, but nothing major in terms of actual story or performances...and I was a big Segal fan back in the day (even if I did miss this one!)
ReplyDeleteJust saw this for the first time in tribute to G Jackson (RIP!) -- & not wishing to subject myself to "Women in Love" ever again (For starters let's just say one can't quite view the "wrestling scene" with a fresh eye after we've all experienced the Borat parody)
ReplyDeleteShe's wonderful of course -- but my problem with this film isn't so much the politics as the fact that it's that "slick" type of comedy film , where its makers try to disguise the rumbling of the gears, and to float the audience along on a lighter-than-souffle cloud of hilarity ...
The great classic problem with this approach is that one has to find the cuteness of it so wonderfully devised that one excuses the glaring and constant artificiality ... It's not an easy thing to pull off, since "real emotion" takes a backseat ...
Doris Day & Rock Hudson could pull it off in their great, masterful trilogy, for example ... John Hughes could pull it off with brilliant "set-pieces", perhaps most astonishingly with Candy & Martin in PT&A ... In a film like this it's semi-successful in its best little moments -- but whenever there's a lull here; the audience can't help but be reminded that they're watching the kind of movie where every scene is a "phony" hat trick ...