Don't Make Waves. 1967. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick

Film

Don't Make Waves. 1967. USA. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick. Courtesy of Everett Collection

Don't Make Waves. 1967. USA. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick. Screenplay by Maurice Richlin, George Kirgo, Ira Wallach, adapted from Wallach’s Muscle Beach. With Claudia Cardinale, Tony Curtis, Sharon Tate. 97 min.

If Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success was a Weegee-like, McCarthy-era exposé of the venal New York world of yellow-bellied press agents and cynical journalists, Don’t Make Waves is its West Coast counterpart, a delicious sendup of various Los Angeles types—the shyster swimming-pool salesman (Tony Curtis), the genially dimwitted bodybuilder (David Draper), the bikini-clad free spirit (Sharon Tate, making her debut as “Malibu”), the crackpot psychic (Edgar Bergen), and the European sophisticate (Claudia Cardinale)—that seen today seems not merely a beach-party sex comedy but instead a piercing satire of the American Dream, very much of a piece with the contemporary observations of Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, and Eve Babitz.

This film accompanies Claudia Cardinale.

Tue, Feb 14, 1:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Sun, Feb 12, 4:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

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