Some Like It Hot

Some Like It Hot_360P

Billy Wilder being as daring as he could with Code still firmly in place decides to stretch all the gender boundaries he could with this comedy in drag. The results some say resulted in the funniest film ever made. Some Like It Hot concerns a couple of jazz age musicians in 1929 witnessing the murder of informant George E. Stone. Of course the head doer George Raft spots our intrepid duo and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are forced to flee Chicago. The getaway plan. Take a gig with an all woman orchestra going south to Florida. The orchestra has Marilyn Monroe as a singer so the trip will have its pleasant diversity. After the trouble Wilder had with Monroe on The Seven Year Itch he swore he wouldn't do another film with her. But United Artists wanted a big name for box office guarantee before he could get the financing and Curtis and Lemmon weren't big enough. So Monroe was signed and by all accounts the picture was another trial to make for all concerned. Tony Curtis's feelings were well known about Monroe, he didn't like her. Yet his scenes with her were very funny indeed both with him in drag and doing a spoof of his idol, Cary Grant. Jack Lemmon was far more philosophical. I saw him in an interview once simply say that Marilyn was a girl with a whole lot of problems and unrealized talent when she died. That's what you would expect from Lemmon, one of the nicest people ever in the film industry. Jack Lemmon also got an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. But Some Like It Hot ran into the year of Ben-Hur sweeping all the Oscars that year. It wasn't even nominated for Best Picture. Billy Wilder lost for Best Director. The only Oscar it did win was for Orry-Kelly for costume design for those recreations from the Twenties and the special costumes that Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis wore. Billy Wilder sprinkled his cast with a lot of people identified with the gangster genre. Who more than George Raft who really lived the part in real life. And others like George E. Stone, Mike Mazurki, and Nehemiah Persoff. Pat O'Brien plays the federal man on the trail of the mobsters and in his memoirs O'Brien thanked Billy Wilder profusely for giving him a part in a classic film when his career hit the skids in the Fifties. Of course the real daring here was Joe E. Brown as the dissolute playboy and his infatuation with Jack Lemmon in drag. Today Brown's character would be really a gay guy who's into drag queens and Lemmon after some initial misgivings might just decide that gay for pay pays a lot better than playing the bull fiddle. But the Code while not broken was stretched a might in Some Like It Hot. A film that didn't get into the top five in 1959 is now considered the funniest comedy of all time. You won't get any argument from me over that one.

With Billy Wilder's steady direction, the great casting, and Wilder/Diamond's sparkling script Some Like It Hot has become one of the most enjoyed comedies of cinema history. The story itself is pure comedy gold; the unhappy jazz-musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) are witness to the St. Valentine massacre in 1929 and flees from Chicago with an all-girl-band who's headed for Miami, dressed up as "Josephine" and "Daphne". Soon both are hooked on Sugar Kane (Marylin Monroe), the band's lead singer - but things gets more complicated when arrived in Miami, Daphne attracts a elderly playboy and the gangster of Chicago arrives at the Floria-hotel to have a mafia-meeting. The work of the three participants in center is truly great; Marylin Monroe is at her most sexy and charming, Tony Curtis' brilliant control and Jack Lemmon is truly priceless at his peak. The movie paces fantastically throughout opening scenes of Chicago, onto the train-ride (features fantastically funny moments of brilliant comedy timing) and arriving at the hotel in Florida, and the situations that occurs with the band, with playboy Osgood Fielding III, Marylin Monroe and the mafia. And Billy Wilder shows his talent with keeping such a sparkling screenplay brilliantly paced and edited, never rushing itself - and Wilder sneaks in some fine moments of noir with the Chicago-gangsters brutality and cruelness. And the movie is a altogether different experience as a comedy than anything before it, the absurdity and quirkiness of Curtis and Lemmon in a transvestite-comedy is fantastically funny, and the final dialog between Osgood Fielding and Daphne/Jerry seemingly came out of the blue, and surprised me just as much today as it did back in 1959. Some Like It Hot is nothing less than a must-see in comedy, and cinema history.

What can you say about this movie that has not been said before? A genuine classic, the basics run as follows... Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and the ever-fabulous Jack Lemmon...... the boys do drag, Marilyn sings occaisionally, looks edible in practically see-through dresses AND acts well to boot... Lemmon and Curtis play musicians accidentally caught up in the St Valentine's Day Massacre... they go on the run in the only band which will hire them - an all female band which means their only option is to drag up and bluff their way along - and meet up with marginally alcoholic and slightly unhinged Marilyn.. some chaos ensues as Curtis tries to woo her and Lemmon unwillingly finds a suitor for himself... The film is surprisingly touching in places but is basically a lovely silly comedy. It regularly appears in lists proclaiming it to be one of the 100 best movies of all time and quite rightly so. Marilyn - despite suffereing a miscarriage during filming - is on superb form, Jack Lemmon looks almost attractive in drag and Tony Curtis actually avoids being too slimy and annoying. The drag scenes are wonderfully underplayed and the classy use of black and white photography throughout helps make both the drag and the period setting look plausible. Highlights include Tony Curtis's Cary Grant impression (for those of you uneducated in the fabulousness of Cary Grant check out Bringing Up Baby, also on this term), Jack Lemmon being romanced in great style - which leads to just about the best last line of a movie of all time - and Marilyn looking glorious of course. If you've never seen this movie you really really should; if you already have then I am sure you need no persuasion to see it again!

A delightful cross-dressing comedy, this was one of the first of its type and it still is one of the funniest. It is very cleverly written, impeccably acted, particularly by Joe E. Brown, and features excellent chemistry between the two leads. There are parallels in the film to actual events and attitudes that existed in the 1920s, giving the film a historical insight as an extra virtue. The film works so well not just because of its historical parallels but also because it spoofs gangster films and not just the cross-dressing joke. Overall it is a wonderful film that sparkles along to its glitzy Academy Awarding winning costume design.

Some Like it Hot will have a Danish re-premiere on Marilyn Monroes 75th birthday June 1st 2001, and making the text for some advertising material in that connection I saw the movie again and liked it more than ever. Most comedies about men in womens' clothings have a vulgar humour. This is, of course, not the case for films like "Tootsie" and "Some Like it Hot" in which Billy Wilder using black and white instead of colours turns down the importance of the change of sex in many ways so that you can concentrate on the comedy which is extraordinarily well timed with a spiritual dialogue. The acting of Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Marilyn Monroe, not to mention Joe E Brown, Pat O'Brien and George Raft is out of this world, and of course it is possible to make a mafia war comical. Some scenes almost remind you of a Marx Brothers' movie. Like when a small berth in a train sleeping car in a few seconds is overcrowded with beautiful girls mixing Manhattan-drinks in their hot-water bottle while Jack Lemmon is desperately trying to remind himself that -- just then -- he is a girl, and Marilyn Monroe in seconds (with her back towards the camera!) produces perfect small, square ice-cubes out of a huge ice block. The music is enchanting like the Marilyn Monroe-songs which are all so well known.

Any camera loved Marilyn the best… In all her films, Marilyn dominated any photographer not just because of her ability with a script but ceaseless attention to the camera... More than anyone else on the set, she knew the importance of her sex appeal…The 'fifties belonged to Marilyn, and in that decade it almost seemed as if the world belonged to her also Sugar is one of Monroe's most loved and memorable character... She presents herself as a sensitive woman quick to feel compassion or affection, sensual and readily impressionable which is Sugar Kane... It was her greatest role and certainly her greatest film... The film opens in 1929 Chicago during Prohibition, where Spats Colombo (George Raft) and his gang gun down seven men in a car garage… A couple of small-time Jazz musicians witness it and flee To avoid the mob, Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) disguise themselves as women and attach themselves to an all-girl band… Joe calls himself Josephine and Jerry calls himself Daphne The orchestra takes a train to play an engagement in Florida... On board, the two men have a hard time keeping cool with all the beautiful girls around, especially during a late-night pajama party in a Pullman sleeper… Needless to say, Joe falls in love with the sensual Sugar (Marilyn Monroe), a luscious ukulele player and singer with the troupe Once in Florida, Jerry meets a really wealthy bachelor Osgood Fielding (Joe E. Brown). Of course, Jerry is still dressed as Daphne, and the seven time divorcée proceeds to pursue Daphne… Joe wants to romance Sugar but knows that he needs a wealthy front The boys think they are safe until the gangsters arrive at the same Miami hotel to attend a gangsters' convention Marilyn sang three songs in the film: "I'm Through with Love," "I Wanna Be Loved By You," and "Running Wild." The movie's closing line is one of the most celebrated in movie history…The film won an Oscar for Best Costume Design and was nominated for six Academy Awards Irresistibly funny this black-and-white shot comedy is a definite must-see!

A Comedy that has it all, and lacks absolutely nothing. "Nobody's perfect" may be an inherent truism, but "Some Like it Hot" is a definite somebody in the universe of cinema, thus it IS perfect in every sense. Swing, sex and slapstick, (three words that immediately come to mind when trying to describe it) , are a mix so delicious, so fruitful in its possibilities that one cannot imagine a film which can live up to them, and yet this one does. Marilyn, her trademark, displeasingly infantile voice aside, is a bombshell of thermonuclear dimensions, whose powers of titillation will not expire so long as there are hormones and/or Viagra. The sexual content, for socio-historical reasons cannot be as explicit as we've come to expect, but there's still plenty of it, from Monroe's see-through outfit to the double entendre worthy of the Farelli Brothers ("What do I do if it's an emergency ? - Pull the emergency break!" ), including overtly gay themes that have a cult following of their own. The Lemmon/Curtis duo operates with gleeful, unrestrained vitality that can only be likened to Chaplin in his heyday. Though not a Musical, the combustive energy of this movie is so stimulating it almost makes you get up and dance.

Sit back and enjoy this comedy, I don't believe in greatest this and that when it comes to films, but boy, this is superb. The acting here is fantastic, all actors, even Monroe are on top form. The direction by Wilder is superb, the guy's style in this picture is perfect. He directed this film in a very clever way, by using one camera for the majority of the scenes, he could easily edit the film together without studio interference. The script is well written. The dialogue between Lemmon and Curtis is beautifully balanced. Monroe is just too hot for the screen in this picture. Although, Monroe had major off-screen problems (83 takes to get things right) she is fantastic on-screen. She may not have the best lines, but what the heck! She plays the role very well. Overall, this is awesome, it really is.

Some people still say this is the greatest comedy ever made in Hollywood. Who am I to argue? Even after 45 years, it's still very funny and not the least bit dated. It is one of the true classics in the history of film. I know one thing: Marilyn Monroe never looked hotter! The film is a wonderful combination of comedy, action, suspense and romance with great old-time gangster scenes played out first in Chicago and then in Miami Beach. George Raft and Nehimiah Persoff are just great as gangsters. The stars, though, are Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis but you can also enjoy performances from famous known actors like Pat O'Brien and Joe E. Brown. The action scenes are in the beginning and end. In the middle, the bulk of the film, is the main story featuring comedy and romance. Lemmon has the best lines in the film and his facial expressions alone evoke lots of laughter. This film is so famous that there is no need going into detail, but for some younger person reading this, don't worry about this being an old-fashioned, boring black-and-white film your parents or grandparents liked but you would find boring. You'll have fun watching this, too, I guarantee it.