What’s New, Pussycat (1965)

Directed by: Clive Donner | 108 minutes | comedy | Actors: Peter Sellers, Peter O’Toole, Romy Schneider, Capucine, Paula Prentiss, Woody Allen, Ursula Andress, Edra Gale, Katrin Schaake, Eléonore Hirt, Jean Parédès, Jacques Balutin, Jess Hahn, Howard Vernon, Michel Subor, Nicole Karen , Jacqueline Fogt, Tanya Lopert, Barbara Somers, Annette Poivre

Women have been falling in love with Michael James from his earliest childhood and he has always let it lean on him. As editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine in Paris, he cannot escape the abundance of female beauty at work, but the women he meets in other places also want to make love to him right away. No problem for the woman crazy Michael. Except that his girlfriend Carole, the first woman he loves dearly, insists on marrying him. Wanting to avoid being unfaithful to Carole after the wedding, Michael prefers to forgo this permanent union altogether. At the same time, he also does not want to lose her and therefore goes to therapy with Dr. Fritz Fassbender healing patients using unorthodox therapies. Hopefully he can heal Michael before the arrival of Carole’s parents who want nothing more than for their daughter to marry Michael.

The film bears the distinct signature of Woody Allen, who makes his feature film debut here. His screenplay is still unpolished and at times too farcical, for example the hiding in the closet for a cheated husband in search of a wife and cheater, and sometimes too long-winded, but most of the time it is a witty, elated farce with absurd dialogues. Michael comes Dr. Fassbender at a striptease club and Fassbender claims he’s only there because he’s been following Michael as part of therapy. Michael asks how Fassbender got there before he was. Fassbender thinks for a moment and then says he followed him very quickly. Bland, but fun.

Very funny is Peter Sellers who looks like a beatnik with a long haired wig and glasses and spews the most idiotic and bland lyrics in a very witty way. He yells at his wife that she is a monster and a monster and that in that order. Another funny character is Liz Bien (Paula Prentiss) who keeps making suicide attempts and receives a present from the hospital staff for the umpteenth time her stomach is pumped. Romy Schneider’s role as the lovely Carole, who explodes into a huge diatribe every time she’s angry, is fun, especially when she’s inciting the scrawny Woody Allen to defend her honor against the huge bully standing right in front of her. a bundle of Shelley’s poems.

‘What’s New, Pussycat’ is an exuberant comedy that is sometimes too long-winded and too cold-hearted, but above all very witty. The title song by Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David, responsible for an impressive series of megahits sung by Dionne Warwick, who has a beautiful voice, is just like the film nice and fat, a bit farcical and due to the sensual voice of Tom Jones an unrelenting sing-along. that will keep you smiling for days to come.