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Avanti!
Directed by	Billy Wilder
Produced by	Billy Wilder
Written by	I.A.L. Diamond Samuel A. Taylor (play) Billy Wilder
Starring	Jack Lemmon Juliet Mills
Running time	140 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

This article is about a 1972 film. For the Italian newspaper, see Avanti! (Italian newspaper)

Avanti! is a 1972 comedy directed by Billy Wilder, starring Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills, Clive Revill, Edward Andrews and Gianfranco Barra. It was adapted by I.A.L. Diamond from a 1968 play by Samuel Taylor, and is probably one of the least famous movies of the team of Wilder and Diamond.

It is a comedy about the behaviour of the Italians, the American executives and the average Englishwomen of the 1970s, full of surprises and subtle dialog. As in One, Two, Three, it contrasts the behavior of people from different cultures and laughs at everybody.

Wendell (Lemmon) goes to Italy to pick up his father's body after an automobile accident. He soon finds that his self-righteous elderly father had actually been having an affair with a woman for the past ten years. They were known as the model romantic couple at the hotel. The conservative Wendell meets and falls in love with the much more open-minded Pamela (Mills), the daughter of the woman.

• This was the first and only film to feature a fully-nude Jack Lemmon. Lemmon said that he felt uncomfortable with the scene but that he didn't mind taking his shirt off at times. In the scene, his character is seen to be swimming in the sea with Pamela Piggot and they sit on a rock in the middle of the ocean. But it has since been rumoured that he wore a flesh-coloured body suit. Lemmon was worried that it might shock the public but the film turned out to be a hit for 1972.

Although the story is supposed to take place in Ischia (a small island in the Gulf of Naples) the movie was mainly made in Sorrento, especially at the Grand Hotel Excelsior.

• Pamela: "Oh, they're a terrific group! They call themselves, "The Four Apostles" - Matthew, Mark, Luke and Bertram."

• Carlo Carlucci: "While you are here, maybe you should take some mud baths."
• Wendell Armbruster: "No thanks, I had one on the train."
• Carlo Carlucci: "On the train?"
• Wendell Armbruster: "I drank it. They call it espresso."

• Carlo Carlucci: "Take Michelangelo. He had troubles with his kidneys. He took the waters (from the mud baths) here and passed three stones. They are in the museum."

• Carlo Carlucci: "Tomorrow is Sunday. Nobody works."
• Wendell Armbruster: "Somebody will work."
• Carlo Carlucci: "Mr., this is a Catholic country."
• Wendell Armbruster: "Then, we will get a dispensation from the Pope."
• Carlo Carlucci: "For a Presbyterian?"

• J.J. Blodgett (as the helicopter is approaching the Ischia heliport): "Are you guys sure this is Ischia?"
• Helicopter pilot: "Reasonably sure, sir."
• J.J. Blodgett: "Because I don't wanna land in Africa!"
• Helicopter pilot: "That would be bigger, sir."

• Wendell Armbruster: "Aagh! Goddamn Ralph Nader! Who asked him!"

• Avanti! at the Internet Movie Database