The Odd Couple

United States

1968

105 Min

Color

2.35:1

English

Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
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CAST Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Fiedler, Herb Edelman, David Sheiner, Larry Haines, Monica Evans, Carole Shelley

Neil Simon has a special genius for finding the great hilarity in ordinary people doing everyday things. Like two divorced men who decide to share a New York apartment. That’s the premise of The Odd Couple though there’s nothing odd in the casting of two Oscar-winning talents like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. The two veteran funnymen work together with the precision timing of a vaudeville team, but always with bright spontaneity. Lemmon plays fussy Felix, fastidious to a fault. He proves that cleanliness is next to insanity. Matthau is Oscar, who wreaks havoc on a tidy room with the speed and thoroughness of a tornado. An enduring and endearing picture, with the intelligence one usually misses in comedies. —Paramount Pictures

Director

Gene Saks

Gene Saks (born November 8, 1921) is an American stage and film director. Saks was born in New York City, the son of Beatrix (née Lewkowitz) and Morris J. Saks.Saks studied at Cornell University and trained for acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator.

Saks has shared a long-term professional relationship with playwright/comedy writer Neil Simon, directing his plays Biloxi Blues, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Jake’s Women, Rumors, Lost in Yonkers, Broadway Bound, The Odd Couple, and California Suite. Additional Broadway credits include Enter Laughing; Half a Sixpence; Mame; I Love My Wife; Same Time, Next Year; and Rags.

Among Saks’ screen credits are Cactus Flower, which won Goldie Hawn the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Barefoot in the Park, The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, The Odd Couple, Mame, So I Married an Axe Murderer (uncredited), and the 1995 television production of Bye Bye Birdie… read more