From the days of wine and roses, finally comes a night like this.
Overview
An alcoholic falls in love with and gets married to a young woman, whom he systematically addicts to booze so they can share his "passion" together.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.3/10
IMDb: 7.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
Metacritic: 74
TMDB: 7.5/10
Director
Blake Edwards
Production
Jalem Productions, Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Charles Bickford, Jack Klugman, Alan Hewitt, Tom Palmer, Debbie Megowan, Maxine Stuart, Jack Albertson, Leon Alton, Don Anderson, Lynn Borden, George DeNormand, James Gonzalez, Kenner G. Kemp, Harold Miller, Bert Stevens, Arthur Tovey, Charlene Holt, Mary Benoit
Curator Review
Verdict
A bleak, tightly acted alcoholism drama that starts with a deceptively light romantic sheen and then steadily turns devastating. Its emotional force comes from Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, and from the film’s unsparing view of how addiction corrodes love, identity, and denial.
Best for
Viewers interested in classic Hollywood dramas with serious social themes
Fans of performance-driven films about addiction and recovery
People who like emotionally intense, increasingly tragic relationship stories
Viewers drawn to 1960s melodrama with a sober, adult edge
Skip if
You want an uplifting romance or a hopeful recovery story
You prefer modern, psychologically expansive addiction dramas
You are sensitive to grim domestic conflict and emotional cruelty
You expect the director’s usual comic tone
Overview
Blake Edwards uses the surface of a romantic comedy to lure you into one of the harshest alcoholism dramas of the studio era. What begins as flirtation and shared nightlife gradually reveals a relationship built on dependency, self-deception, and mutual ruin. The tonal shift is the point, and it lands hard.
Worth noting
Jack Lemmon is extraordinary here, playing against type with a mix of charm, panic, and self-loathing that makes the character painfully believable. Lee Remick is equally strong, and the film is at its best when it treats her not as a secondary casualty but as a full tragic figure in her own right.
Bottom line
The movie can feel stage-bound at times, but that austerity works in its favor: it keeps the focus on behavior, relapse, and the slow collapse of domestic life. It’s a difficult watch, but an essential one for anyone interested in classic American melodrama or screen depictions of addiction.
Top Letterboxd reviews
theriverjordan (4★) · 241 likes
“Days of Wine and Roses” is the closest that Blake Edwards ever came to being Billy Wilder.
It’s also the moment where their careers diverged - just as the ends of their respective works on alcoholism opposed one another in their endings.
After a string of films, including “Experiment in Terror” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” which seemed to flit between the dark and light of city life in a way reminiscent of Wilder, Edwards - three years before Wilder’s “The Lost… more
Lara Pop (4★) · 179 likes
I've always been scared of alcohol. I'm scared not of its short-term consequences but of its ability to make one lose control in the long run. I'm scared of the long run and I'm scared of how easily it can turn into a habit. A habit that controls you more than you do the habit. In the first place, it's not about how much you drink – but how regularly, and, whether you can break that regularity every once in… more I've always been scared of alcohol. I'm scared not of its short-term consequences but of its ability to make one lose control in the long run. I'm scared of the long run and I'm scared of how easily it can turn into a habit. A habit that controls you more than you do the habit. In the first place, it's not about how much you drink – but how regularly, and, whether you can break that regularity every once in… more
Cormac 👑 (4★) · 171 likes
Men will literally find a nice girl and fall in love with her and get married and get her hooked on drink to justify his own addiction and become full-blown alcoholics together and watch her sharply spiral out of her own control & into a life of eternal misery instead of going to therapy.
...Sound of Metal by way of the 60s.
Steven Sheehan (3.5★) · 114 likes
It was in an interview with James Lipton that Jack Lemmon revealed his disease. He was addressing the host of Inside The Actors Studio and the budding actors sitting in the audience waiting on his every word, discussing the moment his character in this film, Joe Clay, stood in front of an AA meeting and stated he was an alcoholic. "Which I am incidentally" Lemmon continued. Cue stunned silence.
Taking on the role of Clay was essentially a sideways move… more
Rocky🕵️🎞️ · 103 likes
You remember how it really was? You and me and booze. A threesome... If you want to grab on, grab on. But there’s just room for you and me, no threesome.
this is the way I look when i'm sober... enough to make a person drink.
A depressing and uncomfortable film in ways I wasn’t expecting it to be, especially when you have names like Blake Edwards and Jack Lemmon attached to it and it’s tagged as a “relationship comedy.”… more
1955 · Drama, Crime · 1h 59m · NR · Curator 4.7/10 (13.5K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, FlixFling, Cultpix, FilmBox+, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Another classic studio-era addiction story with a raw, character-centered approach.