SAVE THE TIGER
US, 1973, 100 minutes, Colour.
Jack Lemmon, Jack Gilford, Laurie Heinneman.
Directed by John G. Avildsen.
Save the Tiger is the film for which Jack Lemmon won an Oscar for Best Actor of the Year. While it received very good reviews, the film was considered not commercial enough for Australia and the prints were to be returned to America. However when Lemmon won the Oscar the film was released to very successful business.
The film is a well made look at a day and a half in the life of an average, ageing American businessman. As might be guessed, the film does not take a very optimistic view of its hem or of life. However, it portrays a typical enough character with insight and some compassion as he tries to cope with the present and assimilates his past.
Jack Lemmon's performance is very good. Audiences are so used to seeing him in comedy roles. He won an Oscar in 1955 for - Mr. Roberts - and has appeared in such comedies as - Some Like it Hot; Irma La Douce; The Great Race. He has also appeared in - The Apartment; and as an alcoholic in the sombre - Days of Wine and Roses. He is a very versatile actor.
1. What was the meaning of the title?
2. How did the film depend on Jack Lemmon's performance as Harry Steiner?
3. Comment on the progress of our insight into his character - his initial dreams and waking, impressions of him at home, relationship with his wife, age and mannerisms, his wife insisting that he see the doctor. Harry at work, relationship with Phil, money problems and temptation for fraud. Playing host to people he loathed. Plans with the arsonist, preparations for the show, then his breakdown speech and its impact. Memories of Capri and the people who'd died there, its influence on his life thirty years later. The meaning of his conversation with the old dressmaker, finding Myra at the end of the day, spending the time together. Myra giving him the opportunity to analyse his life (how much truth did he tell?). Finalising the fraud, the finale?
4. How is this a summary of his whole life even though this film comprised only a day and a half?
5. How accurate a picture was this of the American way of life?
6. What comments did Harry make during the film to show that he stood for modern disillusioned America? Was this a valuable film with insight?
7. Was it too cynical, without enough hope for the future? Why? What kind of man was Phil? Did he understand Harry? His moral scruples? Why did he go along with Harry? Did he escape into his fishing? The importance of Myra in the film - younger, her moral standards, her riding up and down the streets, her frankness, her relationship with Harry, her enabling him to talk out aloud? Comment on Harry and his relationship to the people at work. To the dress designer, to the dressmaker, to the lady-in-charge?
8. In its insight into Harry Steiner, how did the film show something of the meaning of modern man: his good points, his bad points, the fact that modern man is so often out of date, living in the past, trapped in the present, almost without hope for the future? Modern man's effort simply to keep going to try to survive good and bad? Is this an accurate picture of an average man's being trapped in the rat race?
