The Art of Love

Funny, unique, and wonderful cast!
For me this movie is a favorite. I purchased this, never having heard of or seen it previously, because it contains two of my all-time favorite actors in Dick Van Dyke and James Garner. Both lean on their acting strengths we have all come to enjoy to make this a fun and interesting comedy.The blu-ray sound and visual quality is excellent as Kino Lorber does a great job with restorations. The movie is funny, quirky, unique. The blu-ray contains two special features the theatrical trailer and audio commentary with Peter Tonguette. A great buy for fans of Van Dyke or Garner and a great support for the Kino Lorber library.

A Funny Movie
The Art of Love was a funny movie from a different time. Dick Van Dyke is excellent as always. James Garner does a good job as his best friend taking advantage of Dick Van Dyke. The movie is a bit dated but still a fun little ride. Angie Dickenson has a minor role in the movie. If you are looking for an old rom-com this is the movie for you.

Out of love
Classic

I’m very pleased this finally came out in the US
The Art of Love is a delightful romantic comedy from Norman Jewison as director and Carl Reiner as writer. It stars James Garner, Dick Van Dyke, Elke Sommer, Angie Dickenson, and Ethal Merman with appearances by several character actors led by Roger C Carmel who were staples during the 60’s and 70’s. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Miiko Taka of “Sayonara” fame but her appearance is all too brief. All the creative talent involved were at the top of their game when this film was made. The transfer is very nice and I’m happy to report that unlike the DVD previously released in Europe, it is in widescreen 1.85:1. The film features a lovely musical score by Cy Coleman and the extras include a number of trailer and an audio commentary. If you are a fan of any of the principals listed above, you should get this Blu-ray.

A perfect addition to my collection of oldies.

This is a fun movie with an All Star Cast! James Garner and Dick Van Dyke are a terrific comedy duo. Elke Sommers and Angie Dickinson, so beautiful with gorgeous clothes. Ethel Merman the Queen of Broadway, running a night club full of beautiful dancing girls. Roger C Carmel running a Gallery, which makes them rich under suspicious circumstances. A 60s situation comedy, with slapstick, lots of laughs and a great ending. Carl Reiner made a lot of great comedies, this is one of them, he plays James Garner’s lawyer when he is falsely accused of murder. Another favourite, is The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. They don’t make movies like this anymore. Get out the Popcorn and Enjoy!

The Kino Lorber DVD of The Art of Love (1965), runs for 99 minutes, apparently without any cuts, and has good color picture and sound, and adequate English subtitles. (But no other language subtitles, which must disappoint North America’s French and Spanish speakers.)The aspect ratio is supposedly 1.85 to 1 (original theatrical ratio) but it isn’t; if it were 1.85:1, there would be one-inch black bars above and below (since most rectangular TVs are about 1.73 to 1 in shape). Kino Lorber have clearly massaged the ratio so that it occupies the whole screen. I dislike that practice; I’d rather have the original theatrical ratio and have the black bars, but unfortunately, many DVD and Blu-ray companies are doing this, for ratios from 1.66:1 to 1.85 to 1.There are no chapter stops. There are no special features (I don’t count trailers other Kino Lorber films as special features) except for a commentary by Peter Tonguette, which, if a “feature”, is not “special”, except in the sense of “specially bad”.The inadequacy of Tonguette as a DVD commentator, I already made plain in my Amazon.ca review of Kino Lorber’s edition of Outcast of the Islands. Tonguette’s commentary there failed to answer many of the questions film fans hope for from a commentary. He does it again here. Within the first several minutes he fails to identify a number of character actors whose names I would like to have known, and, from skipping through the commentary (I couldn’t bear to listen to all of it), it seems that he continues to do the same throughout. Don’t count on Tonguette to identify that face you’ve long known but can’t put a name to — he’s no help at all. One might recognize Roger Carmel as the Art Gallery proprietor, based on his Star Trek appearances, but who is the assistant proprietor, who has many appearances and lines of dialogue in the film? Tonguette doesn’t tell us — and apparently doesn’t care.In the Outcast of the Islands commentary, he spent over six minutes trying to prove that the director was an “auteur” *because he used the same font in the credits lettering in more than one of his movies* (yes, I know, it’s a jaw-droppingly stupid thesis, but that’s what Tonguette considers to be high-level critical analysis of a film); here he spends a few minutes making the claim that extended cartoon sequences for title credits indicate that a film comedy is going to be lame — absurd, since the first two Sellers Clouseau films, two of the greatest all-time comedy classics, have such extended cartoon credits sequences. And to top it all off, he decides that the listener needs a *plot summary*, and so, for a few minutes, passes over the opportunity to identify character actors, Paris location shots, etc., as he tells the listener what happens in the story! Doesn’t the guy know that anyone listening to his DVD commentary has *already watched the movie* and therefore *knows* the plot of the story? The purpose of a commentary is to tell listeners what they *don’t* know. It seems that one of the qualifications for becoming a noted film critic these days is to lack common sense.After about ten minutes, I couldn’t listen to the rest of his arty and insubstantial commentary — just a mass of his opinions, with very little insight into the art of filmmaking, or into the film “The Art of Love” in particular. Any moderately keen film fan could have done a better commentary than this. Kino Lorber should stop using him for their commentaries, and send him off to retirement.As for the film itself, it is actually not too bad a comedy, but it never really sparks, the way many other 1960s comedies do. This is hard to account for, given the superb cast, and the director (Norman Jewison, who directed the masterpiece of comedy, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming). I laughed a few times, but they weren’t full belly-laughs. The plot isn’t bad, yet somehow it doesn’t come up with enough surprises — and surprise is the lifeblood of comedy.The film is clearly spoofing the Peter Sellers Clouseau films at points, but again, while some of the jabs are a bit funny, they don’t really hit home. You smile in recognition, but the satire just isn’t strong enough to generate real honest laughter.I can’t seem to pinpoint any particular performance as weak — all the stars and many of the supporting players are doing their jobs well enough — but somehow it doesn’t all come together in the way that one would expect a comedy with Carl Reiner, Ether Merman, Dick Van Dyke, James Garner, Angie Dickinson and Elke Sommer to come together.The IMDb fans give this film a 6.2 out of 10. That’s a bit too harsh. I’d say 6.5 to 7 out of 10 would be fairer. It is an entertaining film, and even funny in parts, but not just not funny enough, given the high standard of so many early to mid-sixties comedies. It’s a film you will probably watch only once, or, if a second time, only after a long interval. It’s certainly not worth spending the extra money for the Blu-ray as opposed to DVD edition, and even the DVD edition is overpriced if you have to pay more than $20 for it.