Some Like it Hot

Some Like it Hot; comedy, USA, 1959; D: Billy Wilder, S: Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Joe E. Brown, Nehemiah Persoff, Joan Shawlee, Dave Barry

Chicago, 1 9 2 9. Jerry and Joe are a couple of musicians who play at a party that gangster Spats masked as a funeral, but then a raid surprises everyone and many get arrested. Jerry and Joe save themselves, but witness how Spats eliminates the traitors. Since they are now hunted by the mafia, they decide to dress up as women Josephine and Daphne, thus joining an all woman band heading for Florida. In the train, they meet the blond Sugar, and Joe falls in love with her. Once in the hotel, Joe masks into the kind of guy Sugar falls on, namely into a millionaire with glasses. In the meantime, the rich Osgood flirts with Jerry as Daphne. When Spats and his gang show up, they recognize Jerry and Joe, but get killed by their mafia boss. Joe admits everything to Sugar and they fall in love and run away together with Jerry in a boat.

The reputation of "Some like it Hot" is extremely high: AFI names it the best comedy on its list of "100 years...100 laughs" and no. 14 on its list of best movies of all time; it became a huge hit and critical success, and was nominated for numerous awards. Still, all that cannot disregard the fact that the film isn't particularly funny (in fact, some of Wilder's own dramas were funnier), that its start is awfully slow and that it is rather overrated, just a very good comedy. Wilder's transgender concept was not that inventive as let's say "Tootsie's" was, while the big flaw is that the coiled Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are not particularly convincing as women—neither physically (their Adam's apple is visible on their thick necks; their hips are too flat) nor verbally (Curtis' voice was at least overdubbed by a convincing feminine voice, but Lemmon speaks in almost the same tone both as a man and a woman and has that annoying outbursts of giggles). Overall it is still a rather cute comedy with a brave premise for the conservative 50s that ridicules macho behavior and gives insight into how it is to be a woman in a man's world. 

Several ideas are creative (for instance, during the "party" on train, Daphne is seen drinking bourbon from a rubber hot water bottle). Among the amusing and creative moments is the one where Sugar admits what she loves in a man in front of Joe disguised as Josephine: a millionaire with glasses, and a yacht, so Joe later disguises himself further, as some British millionaire in Florida (though the big flaw is that she also mentioned how she simply melts away when a man plays the saxophone, and Joe plays said instrument, so he should have used that as an extra trump card). Even though many gags are too tame to ignite by today's standards, there is still one hilarious, laugh-out-loud sequence that hits just the right tone: when Joe, pretending to be a millionaire, is trying to seduce Sugar (a charming Marilyn Monroe) on a yacht, she tells him she once "sold kisses for the milk fund" and then they start kissing. Cut to the next morning back on the shore, after they were obviously kissing the whole night, Joe asks her: "How much do I owe the milk fund?" and she says: "850,000 $", upon which he replies with: "Let's make it an even million", and kisses her some more. Truly, a hilarious, pure Wilder dialogue. Actually, right in the next scene there's the second best gag, when Joe enters his apartment and spots Jerry dressed up as Daphne smiling and saying: "I'm engaged!" Joe asks him: "Who is the lucky girl?", and Jerry replies: "Me!" If at least there were more these kind of juicy lines: this is a classic, but it could have been better made. The short episode of the Italian mafioso boss Little Bonaparte (Nehemiah Persoff) who eliminates Spats at a fake birthday party is hilarious ("My birthday? Why, it ain't for another four months." - "So we're a little early! So what's a few months between friends?") and almost overshadows Lemmon and Curtis, whereas one scene transition at around 115 minutes into the film is genius: Joe and Jerry run upstairs from two thugs, and descend from the elevator dressed up as women in the same scene.

Grade:+++