BACHELOR FLAT
US, 1962, 91 minutes, Colour.
Terry Thomas, Richard Beymer, Tuesday Weld, Celeste Holm.
Directed by Frank Tashlin.
Bachelor Flat is a comedy of the early 1960s. It was written and directed by former cartoonist, Franklin Tashlin. Tashlin had made a long string of successful light comedies in the 1950s including Son of Paleface, Susan Slept Here, The Girl Can’t Help It as well as a number of Martin and Lewis films including Artists and Models or Hollywood or Bust and then collaborated for almost ten years with Jerry Lewis himself, Rockabye Baby, The Geisha Boy, Cinderfella, It’s Only Money, Who’s Minding the Store, The Disorderly Orderly. At this time he also directed Danny Kaye in The Man from the Diners’ Club.
Terry- Thomas had been very successful in British comedies in the late 1950s. He was popular in the United States and here portrays a British professor who is a honeypot for impressionable women. His fiancée, Celeste Holm, has neglected to tell him that she has a teenage daughter (Tuesday Weld). There are romantic complications, especially when Terry- Thomas’s roommate, played by Richard Beymer (West Side Story) becomes infatuated with Tuesday Weld.
A fluffy romantic comedy with the usual complications and ambiguities.
1. The quality of this comedy, its particularly American style: fast, types, caricature, mistaken identities, sex emphasis?
2. The focus on Terry- Thomas, the adaptation of his comic style to America? Bruce as a person, the warmth of his characterization even within the farce, personality qualities? The English type in California, the quiet and refined Englishman, the professor, the middle aged man becoming a sex object?
3. The basic marital situation as a basis for farce, Helen and her absence, as a type, her stay in France, her not telling the truth about Libby? Her expectations of Bruce? Bruce and his expectations of her? The emphasis on his 'properness'?
4. The contrast with Michael, the young American type, off-hand, lazy, part-time student, a flirt? The inevitability of his love for Libby? Yet his being the butt of a lot of the comic violence? A farcical subject? Did he have a definable character?
5. The focus on Libby, the device of her arriving in the house, binding their characters together? Her character, her pretence, its TV origins? The satire on the tough American girl? The satire on the young American romantic girl? Her effect on each of the characters?
6. The farce and the parody in the lecture sequences, the pursuit of the professor by the women, the various types of women, the satire on them? Michael's theory about the pursuit of women, his theory about being aggressive? His getting the professor drunk and its farcical presentation?
7. The standard conventions of his being in the house, the police arriving, escapes?
8. How good a Terry-Thomas? comedy was this, the various sequences where he was made demands of, his dreams etc.?
9. The picture of the American way of life, Its funny aspects, ugly aspects? How enjoyable and telling is this kind of farce and satire?
