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English: Listening to Cinema |
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Introduction to... |
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The all-time outrageous, satirical, comedy farce favorite, Some Like It Hot is one of the most hilarious, raucous films ever made. The film is a clever combination of many elements: a spoof of 1920-30's gangster films with period costumes and speakeasies, and romance in a quasi-screwball comedy with one central joke - entangled and deceptive identities, reversed sex roles and cross-dressing. In fact, one of the film's major themes is disguise. This very funny film was advertised with the tagline: "The movie too HOT for words." It was released at the end of the repressive 1950s at a time when the studio system was weakening, the advent of television was threatening, and during a time of the declining influence of the Production Code and its censorship restrictions. Director-producer Wilder challenged the system with this gender-bending and risqué comedy, filled with sly sexual innuendo, free love, spoofs of sexual stereotypes (bisexuality, transvestism, androgyny, homosexuality, transsexuality, lesbianism, and impotence), sexy costuming for the well-endowed Marilyn Monroe, an outrageous and steamy seduction scene aboard a yacht, and a mix of serious themes including abuse, alcoholism, unemployment, and murder among others. The screenplay is Shakespearean in the way it cuts between high and low comedy, between the heroes and the clowns. In the annals of film comedy, there are only a few films that truly stand out as having withstood the test of time, and Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot is right at the top. Recently named the number one comedy of all time by the American Film Institute, Wilder's wise-cracking, gender-bending farce is a perfectly pitched comedy of romance and masquerade, with its outrageous scenario constantly kept in check by the finely tuned performance from its stars, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe.
The plot is classic screwball. Curtis and Lemmon play Joe and Jerry, two struggling musicians trying to make ends meet during the Prohibition Era of the late 1920s. After witnessing the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre, in which a Chicago gangster named Spats Columbo machine-guns seven men in a car garage, Joe and Jerry have to get out of town. Since they're flat broke (Joe even sold their overcoats for money to bet at the racetrack), they have no means to travel except one option: Disguised as two women, they join an all-girl jazz band travelling to Miami for a three-week, all-expenses-paid gig.
So, for two-thirds of the movie's running time, Curtis and Lemmon play their roles in quite convincing drag as Josephine and Daphne. Just pulling off the ruse that they're women isn't enough to fuel the entire movie, so things are made even more complicated with the introduction of Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane, the band's lead singer who has a penchant for getting into trouble and drinking too much. Monroe dreams of marrying a millionaire but despairs, "I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop." Joe/Josephine lusts for Monroe. Monroe lusts after money. He disguises himself again as a a frigid young millionaire on vacation in Florida hoping Sugar will fall for him. Monroe is at her best in this role, both utterly alluring and slightly sad. Her Sugar is a delightfully upbeat screen character who is hiding a great hurt inside, just as Monroe was in real life.
Jerry/Daphne has his own problems when he catches the fancy of an aging, seven-time-married-and-divorced playboy named Osgood E. Fielding III, who has a devious grin and a wandering hand.
And, if that weren't enough, the Chicago gangsters just happen to be having a convention in the same Miami hotel, so it isn't long before Spats shows up to throw the whole scenario into utter turmoil. Some Like It Hot succeeds largely because it constantly pushes the envelope of good taste, always threatening to fall over into utter absurdity, yet never does. It is that tightrope-balancing act that gives it its pizzazz. It's both silly and sexy, and it thrives on twisting expectations and setting up scenarios that seem hopelessly irresolvable. The jokes are sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious, but they are always impeccably timed and perfectly delivered. Jerry: I'm engaged!
Joe: Just keep telling yourself you're a boy. You're a boy.Both Curtis and Lemmon are practicing cruel deceptions--Curtis has Monroe thinking she's met a millionaire, and Brown thinks Lemmon is a woman--but the film dances free before anyone gets hurt. Both Monroe and Brown learn the truth and don't care, and after Lemmon reveals he's a man, Brown delivers the best curtain line in the movies.
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