How to Murder Your Wife

How to Murder Your Wife is a 1965 comedy starring Jack Lemmon & Virna Lisi. The film was directed by Richard Quine, who also directed It Happened to Jane & Bell Book and Candle.

Related Topics:
1965 - Jack Lemmon - Virna Lisi - Richard Quine - It Happened to Jane - Bell Book and Candle

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Jack Lemmon plays Stanley Ford, who is a happily unmarried man with all the creature comforts one could desire including a wonderful butler who takes care of all his material needs. At a bachelor party for a friend, Lemmon gets drunk and wakes up married to an Italian woman (Lisi) who speaks nearly no English. It totally alters his life. He even changes the cartoon he writes and shifts it from a secret agent to a household comedy. When he begins to have trouble with all of these changes he starts to plot that at least his secret agent cartoon will return to order and plans, in his daily comic strip, killing his wife.

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His wife takes offence and leaves. He is accused of murdering her and disposing of the body, with the cartoons used as evidence at his trial. He manages to get off the charge by telling the jury that he did murder his wife, and they should acquit him on the grounds of justifiable homicide. It has a happy ending of sorts where he is reconciled to his wife.

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The film is a problematic one, since while most people would accept that it does have funny moments and it is well acted, it also contains a strong element of misogyny which many would now find unacceptable, particularly in the trial scene near the end.

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