tobiagorrio

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in any of the reviews of Kiss Me Stupid is that Billy Wilder intended the film to be an updated version of Restoration-era sex comedies like William Wycherley's "The Country Wife." The film includes many of the elements of those plays: The rich playboy with an insatiable appetite for women (Dino); the small-town middle-aged guy (Orville) who has married a younger woman (Zelda) and fears that the rich rake will sleep with his wife. As in "The Country Wife," the husband's attempts to keep his wife out of the rake's clutches only lead to the very outcome he feared. The big difference is that Orville is slightly more sympathetic than the cuckolded husbands of Restoration comedy, and the wife's adultery actually makes the marriage stronger. But it is essentially Wilder's tribute to the sex comedies of the late 17th century -- and that's one reason why it's so ironic that KMS was derided as lowbrow trash, since it's essentially a modern-dress version of a style of comedy that is considered "highbrow."

Good to see too that the original version of the Dino-Zelda scene has been restoried -- though why MGM doesn't announce this on the disc I'll never know...