Billy Wilder’s extremely accurate meditation on booze is as grim and hopeless as you’d expect.
I loathe Ray Milland. Watching Panic in Year Zero (1962), you’re pretty sure the only thing worse than the end of the world would be getting stuck with Ray Milland as your dad. “The living will envy the dead…”
No matter the film, Milland is unlikeable, charmless, always looks to be about to fly into a rage. The nicest thing I can think of to say about him is that he looks like he knows how to change a flat tire.
So he’s perfectly cast here.
I vastly prefer I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955), but I would, being a girl.
