éThe Perfect Furlough (Universal-International) is an almost perfect formula farce. The formula:
(G.I. + id") x (WAC +Sex) = Box Office TNT Scriptwriter Stanley Shapiro and Director Blake Edwards (This Happy Feeling), two of the most promising young masters of movie comedy, have applied the formula with such style that the studio has been able to guarantee the customers exactly 287 (count 'em) laughs without fear of refund. And while the public rolls in the aisles, the professionals should take careful notice. Furlough is a definitive encyclopedia of comic cliche.
The story gets off to a brisk start with Cliché No. 1: an Army outpost in the Arctic, in which 104 G.I.s sit stiff with boredom. Until Cliché No. 2, a gorgeous psychologist (Janet Leigh) of the WAC, recommends a policy of vicarious leave—send one man on a perfect furlough and let the others enjoy themselves thinking about it. The scheme naturally produces Cliché No. 3, a shamelessly corporeal corporal (Tony Curtis), who wins the raffle and is shipped off to spend three weeks in Cliché No. 4, Paris, with Cliché No. 5, a South American screen queen (Linda Cristal). But all at once the gravy train is stopped by Cliché No. 6: a service-nervous Nelly of a P.R. officer (King Donovan). The officer gets scared that the corporal, faced with an objective as tempting as the screen queen, will volunteer for Cliché No. 7, an action that is above and beyond the call of duty. And so he proclaims that the corporal is under Cliché No. 8, house arrest, a condition which, as every collector of cinematic clichés will readily foresee, inevitably leads to No. 9: the scandalous pregnancy of the screen queen, Cliché No. 10 and triumphant conclusion: the corporal's shotgun wedding to the psychologist.
The beauty of Blake Edwards' direction is that it restores to these familiar jokes something of their first fine fervor and surprise. The man obviously loves his material, and he has fired the players with something of his own excitement. Even bored old Keenan Wynn is back at his best. Cast as a great big horrible actors' agent. Actor Wynn slinks about the screen looking like an absurdly prosperous tapir in dark glasses. But when a terrified female pressagent informs him that his big star is pregnant, Wynn reduces his face to a heap of malevolent hamburger, and produces the funniest line in the film: "Miss Baker," he snarls, "I shall hold you personally responsible!"
The Mistress (Daiei; Edward Harrison), one of the finest films the Japanese have made, is a poignant restatement of the timeless truth that in the last analysis a social problem is a moral problem, and a moral problem can only have a religious solution.