A French remake of "l'emmerdeur" (=the pain in the a....) , from a good screenplay by Francis Weber and directed by Edouard Molinaro,an OK craftsman who would sometimes come up with a more ambitious effort ,but whose filmography ,by and large ,is average,to put it mildly. Billy Wilder , on the other hand, was a genuine genius of the seventh art ,with classics by the dozen under his belt when he tackled "buddy buddy ",which is not up to his usual standard :excellence .
Weber's screenplay has undergone some changes ;generally, the part of the killer is the most successful : Matthau taking on Lino Ventura's role, is sullen, sulky ,and there are good elements added by Diamond /Wilder : Matthau as a mailman ,as a milkman ("feel better ,live longer") , and ,to crown it all ,as a priest who gives absolution to the victim ("it's latin ,you know") before the police .
On the other hand , his co-star in other Wilder's movies,Jack Lemmon ,has a badly written part ; as a suicidal man,he is not as convincing as the whining,self-pitying miserable hubby whose wife ran away with a doctor , played by singer turned actor Jacques Brel; this time ,it's not good news : the gag of Lemmon tied and gagged on his chair whilst the cleaning lady is working ,paying no attention to him,is heavy-handed and drags on;substituting a sex clinic for an insane asylum ,though it spawns the good gag about the woman about to deliver ("we don't deal with finish products "),is too a la mode and Klaus Kinski 's ageing hippie doctor 's lecture is stodgy ,but fortunately short.
In the grand tradition of Wilder ,the ending is immoral : in the original screenplay,both wound up in jail ,but to console the killer ,the survivor had good news for him :pretty soon, they would share the same cell!
Weber's screenplay has undergone some changes ;generally, the part of the killer is the most successful : Matthau taking on Lino Ventura's role, is sullen, sulky ,and there are good elements added by Diamond /Wilder : Matthau as a mailman ,as a milkman ("feel better ,live longer") , and ,to crown it all ,as a priest who gives absolution to the victim ("it's latin ,you know") before the police .
On the other hand , his co-star in other Wilder's movies,Jack Lemmon ,has a badly written part ; as a suicidal man,he is not as convincing as the whining,self-pitying miserable hubby whose wife ran away with a doctor , played by singer turned actor Jacques Brel; this time ,it's not good news : the gag of Lemmon tied and gagged on his chair whilst the cleaning lady is working ,paying no attention to him,is heavy-handed and drags on;substituting a sex clinic for an insane asylum ,though it spawns the good gag about the woman about to deliver ("we don't deal with finish products "),is too a la mode and Klaus Kinski 's ageing hippie doctor 's lecture is stodgy ,but fortunately short.
In the grand tradition of Wilder ,the ending is immoral : in the original screenplay,both wound up in jail ,but to console the killer ,the survivor had good news for him :pretty soon, they would share the same cell!