What's New Pussycat?
Theatrical release poster by Frank Frazetta
Directed byClive Donner
Written byWoody Allen
Produced byCharles K. Feldman
Starring
CinematographyJean Badal
Edited byFergus McDonell
Music byBurt Bacharach
Production
companies
  • Famartists Productions S.A.
  • Famous Artists Productions
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release dates
  • June 22, 1965 (1965-06-22) (United States)
  • January 28, 1966 (1966-01-28) (France)
Running time
108 minutes
Countries
  • United States
  • France
LanguageEnglish
Box office$18.8 million[1]

What's New Pussycat? is a 1965 screwball comedy film directed by Clive Donner, written by Woody Allen in his first produced screenplay, and starring Allen in his acting debut, along with Peter Sellers, Peter O'Toole, Romy Schneider, Capucine, Paula Prentiss, and Ursula Andress.

The Oscar-nominated title song by Burt Bacharach (music) and Hal David (lyrics) is sung by Tom Jones.[2] The film poster was painted by Frank Frazetta, and the animated title sequence was directed by Richard Williams.

The expression "what's new pussycat?" arose in the beatnik generation and is a general query aimed by men at women. In the film, Michael (O'Toole) calls all women "Pussycat" to avoid having to remember their names.

Plot

Notorious womanizer Michael James wants to be faithful to his fiancée Carole Werner, but every woman he meets seems to fall in love with him, including neurotic exotic dancer Liz Bien and parachutist Rita, who accidentally lands in his car. His psychoanalyst, Dr. Fritz Fassbender, is unable to help, since he is stalking patient Renée Lefebvre, who in turn longs for Michael. Carole, meanwhile, decides to make Michael jealous by flirting with his nervous wreck of a friend, Victor Shakapopulis. Victor struggles to be romantic but Carole nevertheless feigns interest.

Fassbender continues to have group meetings with his neurotics and obsessives and cannot understand why everyone falls for Michael. The group sessions get stranger—including an indoor cricket match. Michael dreams that all his sexual conquests simultaneously bombard him for attention, listing where they made love.

Fassbender goes to the River Seine and fills a rowing boat with kerosene and wraps himself in the Norwegian flag - preparing to commit suicide in the style of a Viking funeral. Victor appears and sets up a small dining table nearby and asks what he is doing. Distracted, Fassbender forgets his idea of suicide and starts giving Victor advice. Despite his attempts to womanise, Fassbender is revealed to be married with three children.

Meanwhile, Carole's plan seems to work and Michael asks to marry her. She agrees and they settle on marrying within the week. She moves in but Michael finds fidelity impossible.

When a second "fiancée" arrives, she knows the worst. Simultaneously, a woman parachutes into Michael's open-top sports car and he ends up sleeping with her, also meeting other conquests at the bar. This takes place at a small country hotel, where all parties materialise in the format of a typical French farce. Some are checked in, but most just appear. This includes Carole's parents who wander the corridors, causing Michael to jump from room to room. A rumour has also started locally that an orgy is taking place so side characters such as the petrol station attendant also start to appear. Carole appears and wishes to see Michael's room. As they speak, all the other participants chase each other around in the background. Fassbender's wife tracks him down.

Everyone ends in Michael's room with most of the women half-naked. The police arrive and form a line. Anna, Dr. Fassbender's wife, charges in operatic Valkyrie costume, complete with a spear. They all escape to a go-kart circuit. They leave the circuit and go first to a farmyard then through narrow village streets still on the go-karts then back to the circuit.

After a mayor marries Michael and Carole in a civil marriage ceremony, the couple are signing the marriage certificate when Michael calls the young female registrar "Pussycat", infuriating Carole. They leave and Fassbender attempts to court her instead.

Cast

Cast notes

  • Richard Burton has a cameo appearance as a man at the bar in a strip club.

Production

Warren Beatty wanted to make a comedy film about male sex addiction and hoped Charles Feldman would produce it. The title What's New Pussycat? was taken from Beatty's phone salutation when speaking to his female friends. Beatty desired a role for his then girlfriend, the actress Leslie Caron, but Feldman wanted a different actress.[3]

Beatty and Feldman sought a joke writer and, after seeing him perform in a New York club, Feldman offered Woody Allen $30,000. Allen accepted provided he could also appear in the film. As Allen worked on the script, his first screenplay, Beatty noticed that Allen's role was continually growing at the expense of his own.[4]

Eventually, Beatty threatened to quit the production to stop this erosion, but the actor's status in Hollywood at that time had declined so severely that Feldman decided to let him leave and gave the part to Peter O'Toole. Beatty later said "I diva'ed my way out of the movie. I walked off of What's New, Pussycat? thinking they couldn't do it without me. I was wrong".[5] According to Beatty, a new screenwriter was brought in and Allen's role was pared back to a minor character.[5]

Groucho Marx was to have played Dr. Fassbender, but at O'Toole's insistence he was replaced by Peter Sellers. O'Toole, Sellers and director Clive Donner all made changes to the script, straining their relationship with Allen. Tension was also generated by Sellers' demanding top billing, but O'Toole described the atmosphere as stimulating.[6]

Second unit director Richard Talmadge is credited with creating the karting sequence. The film was shot in and around Paris between October 1964 and January 1965 and released in New York on 22 June 1965. It opened in Paris in January 1966 as Quoi de neuf, Pussycat? The total box office take was $18,820,000.[1]

In addition to the title theme, songs featured were "Here I Am" by Dionne Warwick and "My Little Red Book" performed by Manfred Mann.

Homage

The scene by the River Seine in which the lovelorn Dr. Fassbender plans to commit suicide and Victor's intrusion inhibiting him from doing so pays tribute to the Charlie Chaplin film City Lights (1931), in which the Little Tramp saves a dipsomaniacal millionaire bent on self-destruction.

Reception

The film received mixed reviews. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times gave the film a negative review. He criticised the script, the directing and the acting and described the film as "the most outrageously cluttered and campy, noisy and neurotic display of what is evidently intended as way-out slapstick". He praised the scenery and title song.[7] On the other hand, Andrew Sarris in The Village Voice wrote: "I have now seen What's New Pussycat? four times, and each time I find new nuances in the direction, the writing, the playing, and, above all, the music. This is one movie that is not what it seems at first glance. It has been attacked for tastelessness, and yet I have never seen a more tasteful sex comedy."[8]

Awards and nominations

Award Category Nominee(s) Result
Academy Awards[9] Best Song "What's New Pussycat?"
Music by Burt Bacharach;
Lyrics by Hal David		 Nominated
Laurel Awards Top Male Comedy Performance Peter Sellers 4th Place
Top Song "What's New Pussycat?"
Music by Burt Bacharach;
Lyrics by Hal David		 4th Place
Writers Guild of America Awards Best Written American Comedy Woody Allen Nominated

Home media

What's New Pussycat? was released to DVD by MGM Home Video on June 7, 2005, as a Region 1 widescreen DVD, on May 22, 2007, as part of The Peter Sellers Collection (film number two in a four-disc set) and to Blu-ray by Kino Lorber on August 26, 2014, as a Region 1 widescreen Blu-ray. It was previously released in VHS.

Novelization

Slightly in advance of the film's release, as was the custom of the era, a paperback novelization of the film was published by Dell Books by crime and western novelist Marvin H. Albert.

Sequel

The 1970 American movie Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You was intended as a sequel to this film, and includes much of the same premise of a young man (played by Ian McShane) visiting his psychiatrist to discuss his love-life.

References

  1. 1 2 "What's New Pussycat?, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Retrieved January 22, 2013.
  2. ↑ McEvoy, Colin (February 9, 2023). "What It Was Like to Work with Burt Bacharach, in the Words of his Collaborators". Biography. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
  3. ↑ Nashawaty, Chris (November 22, 2016). "Warren Beatty: An oral history of the elusive icon's six decades in Hollywood". Entertainment Weekly. New York City.
  4. ↑ Biskind, Peter (December 13, 2011). Easy Riders Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock 'N Roll Generation Save. New York City: Simon and Schuster. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-1-4391-2661-5.
  5. 1 2 Harris, Mark (2009). Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood. Edinburgh: Canongate Books. p. 86. ISBN 978-1-84767-121-9.
  6. ↑ Sellers, Robert (September 10, 2015). Peter O'Toole: The Definitive Biography. Basingstoke: Pan Macmillan. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-283-07216-1.
  7. ↑ Crowther, Bosley (June 23, 1965). "The Screen: 'What's New Pussycat?':Wild Comedy Arrives at Two Theaters". The New York Times. Retrieved August 16, 2016.
  8. ↑ Sarris, Andrew (August 5, 1965). "The Village Voice: Andrew Sarris". The Village Voice. New York City. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  9. ↑ "The 38th Academy Awards (1966) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Archived from the original on 11 January 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
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