IN JACK Lemmon films, it is Jack Lemmon who mostly commands our attention, because of his important characterizations.

However, these characterizations are usually within films whose themes concern social attitudes which also develop into social trends, or values influencing the human self anywhere to lose touch with wise humility. In addition, these films with Lemmon are not restricted to any sort of exclusive ‘North American’ social problems, precisely because they are rooted foremost in the problems of the human self, rather than a simple escapist belief that societies, governments, institutions, bureaucracies, are anonymous omnipotent structures beyond the influence of the human selves who created them and exist within them in the first place.

Characters or actors?
For example, in ‘DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES’ of 1962, it is Lemmon’s initial reliance on a friend’s opinion on what sort of girl Lee Remick is supposed to be, which leads to his incorrect opinion of her. She, on the other hand, quickly sees his incorrect estimation of her and snubs him; but later, it is his very awkwardness and naivety which strikes her as amusingly sincere, and they become lovers who realize they have something in common: They like to drink. They become a married couple afflicted by alcoholism, not at all because of the stress of American economic demands, but because of a simple consumer weakness for various brands of liquor, and being part of a social trend based on personal withdrawal from society.
They are not a bad couple at all, and we like them. What this film does, in keeping with director Blake Edwards’ unique exposure of personality traits in his films, is demonstrate the responsibility of self by a negative example of honesty. In other words, as film-characters Lemmon and Remick are flawed, but as actors revealing the nature of those flaws they are perfect. Take your preference.

‘Irma La Douce’
The next year, 1963, Lemmon teamed up again with director Billy Wilder to make ‘IRMA LA DOUCE’, one of his and Wilder’s most profound, enjoyable, and creative films which deals wisely with unnecessary problems created by blind human zeal and self-righteous dogmatism.
Wilder needed France’s liberal civilized social beliefs (entrenched since the Enlightenment), where married women have ‘lovers’, and married men ‘mistresses’, so that the term ‘adultery’ sheds its hysterical stigma when applied to such customs, and therefore the unconventional story of ‘Irma La Douce’ seems not so unusual at all in France as it might in other countries.
The film’s events concern a Parisian cop, Jack Lemmon on the street beat, who begins to notice young women lingering outside hotels on a side street. He organizes a police raid on the hotels, and carts off all the prostitutes and their clients to jail. Unfortunately, among the clients caught is a high court judge, so his case is dismissed, and so is he.
Of course, Wilder’s artistic premise here is Lemmon’s moral and legal zeal conflicting with a broader, more far-sighted social attitude, where sexual pleasure is a legal right, as opposed to conflict and pain created by blind beliefs. In any case, in liberal French, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Danish, and perhaps other Western European cities, prostitutes are zoned and medically certified, so one can walk entire streets, and indulge in what is provided.
Lemmon returns to the same street he busted and meets the same ‘old’ situation, which never ends, and also one of the hookers he arrested, Shirley Maclaine, who, in sympathy, gives him lodging in her room after he defends her against a violent pimp. Still holding to his moral values, Lemmon devises a plan, where he works all night in the Parisian marketplace, then pretends to be a rich regular and disguised client who gives Maclaine all his money for her services, so she needs to sleep only with one client (who is Lemmon, thereby killing two birds with one stone, so to speak), which results in a morally conventional and satisfying marriage arrangement in the end.
It is here that Wilder and Lemmon achieve a demonstration of the responsible self without shortsighted zealousness and self-righteous dogmatism, by acting out Wilder’s brilliant writing whose premise shows where humans cannot see solutions that are possible if they believe too much in an a priori position they have already taken, which prevents any benign solution unknown to them from emerging.

American artistry
Most of Lemmon’s subsequent best films, such as : ‘GOOD NEIGHBOUR SAM’; ‘THE ODD COUPLE’; ‘AVANTI’; ‘THE FORTUNE COOKIE’; ‘SAVE THE TIGER”; ‘MISSING’; and his final masterful characterization in ‘ GLEN GARY GLEN ROSS’ of 1992, show a character either reluctant to sheepishly follow the social stereotypes of those around him, or in a desperate search to regain his responsible self, or even sanity, after blindly accepting some scheme to get ahead in life.
His fourth film under Wilder’s direction, ‘The Fortune Cookie’ of 1966, is one not to be missed for such a revelation of systematic corruption. ‘Save The Tiger’ of 1973, for which he won his second Oscar, on the other hand, is a stunning rebellion against the pressures to conform to materialistic bourgeois values.
In 1982, Lemmon extended his conscientious acting to include a profound criticism of the then US State’s involvement in supporting a brutal dictatorship in Chile, where his student son goes missing, and no one takes his questions seriously.
By 1992, ‘Glen Gary Glen Ross’ confirmed Lemmon’s ability to portray a character on the brink of questioning his lifestyle. Dave Mamet’s brilliant play became a brilliant film with a superb cast, because, like the stunningly effective modern American playwrights before him, such as Moss Hart, Eugene O’Neil, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee, Mamet is concerned with modern theatre reflecting the responsible self in the contemporary world, rather than emulating a frozen conventional Shakespearian theatrical tradition.
Lemmon’s films are therefore part of that self-critical modern American artistic legacy left by classic films, vocal and instrumental jazz, theatre, and exciting literature from the 1930s onward, which define the true responsible international voice of American culture.