Blu ray review: The Fortune Cookie (1966)

Kino Lorber has released Billy Wilder’s best film since The Apartment (1960) and funniest since Some Like it Hot (1959). The Fortune Cookie is the first collaboration of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Lemmon is Harry Hinkle, a hapless TV cameraman who is injured when a football player burst through the sidelines during a play and collides with him. Matthau is Willie Gingrich, his lawyer brother-in-law who sees a big payday by pretending the injuries are serious, when Harry, in fact, feels fine.

The film is barely on for twenty minutes when one is struck by the effortless chemistry between the two lead actors, and the sharp, witty dialog that is spat out with gusto. It is typical of Billy Wilder and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond’s screenplays, where the dialog pops with energy and keeps the entire film at a rapid pace.

Walter Matthau won his only Oscar as the shyster lawyer “Whiplash Willie,” cultivating a reputation that wallows in the small-time while reaching for the big time. He believes he has found that opportunity. Lemmon is typically outstanding as an honest man who begrudgingly goes along with the ruse because he needs the money, and is convinced by Willie that insurance companies have a lot of money anyway. Also, the situation may result in his reconciling with his pretty ex-wife. A breathless comic farce, The Fortune Cookie doesn’t waste a second, remaining compelling and hilarious throughout its entire running time.

This is one of the few films in which Judi West appears, playing Harry’s pretty-but-unfaithful ex-wife, and also one of the few films featuring Ronny Rich, portraying the football player who injured Harry. Each of them appeared in around a dozen movies and TV shows, but they both truly shine in this movie.

Billy Wilder was one of the great movie auteurs who created both great comedies and great dramas with equal aplomb. When Lemmon and Matthau scored big in Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple -- the film that defines their work together – Wilder successfully reteamed them again in the 1974 screen version of the Hecht-MacArthur play The Front Page (also on blu ray and reviewed HERE), and less successfully in Buddy Buddy (1981).

The Fortune Cookie is certainly Lemmon and Matthau’s best film as co-stars for Wilder; a classic comedy of the 1960s with a supporting cast including Cliff Osmond, Lurene Tuttle, Noam Pitlik, Harry Holcombe, and Sig Ruman. The sharp black and white cinematography is visually stunning. This was one of American cinema’s last black and white features. In another year, both films and TV shows went full color unless an artistic decision was specifically made.

Kino Lorber’s blu ray features a commentary track by noted film historian and scholar Joseph McBride, author of Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge.

Highly recommended, The Fortune Cookie can be purchased at this link: Fortune Cookie