I am pleased to report, to my inner skeptic, that few gags in Some Like It Hot come from the two male leads, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, being dressed in drag. Instead, so many of the jokes from Some Like it Hot, directed, produced, and co-written by Billy Wilder, come from its machine gun speed wit and biting social and gender commentary. The movie never takes itself too seriously, so gags like Jack Lemmon’s butt being grabbed in the elevator and the relentless pursuit of Tony Curtis’ underage suitor are allowed to roll off our shoulders, but still bear enough weight to provoke thought. The men experience, quite literally, what it is like to walk in women’s shoes.
These shoes, as we witness from following Marilyn Monroe, are shoes where men find you dull, dim, dilettante, or desirable as objects in themselves. There is never a depth given to females in any interaction in this movie beyond what sensual pleasure is derived from them by the entranced gazes of men. This is all played off as the set-up to the punchline of our two leading men having to endure the very same treatment, bearing the audience as witnesses to these averse social norms.
This is to not to say that the men in this movie are not free of criticism and jest. Wilder takes much time (I’d say just a little too much) to explore these normative interactions between characters. If you see a man in the Some Like It Hot, he will likely be aggressive, misogynistic, incompetent, duplicitous, greedy, objectionable, used as the butt of a joke in a scene, or some amalgam of the above. The men in this movie (besides our two heroes, of notable intention) are nothing more than their most nasty or laughable traits.
The mob and police, for example, are particularly rife with self-aware lampooning: the mob boss of Chicago has a token item on his person from which he garners his name (Spatz Columbo, wearing spats), the surreptitious detective in the hotel lobby in one of the final scenes is hiding his face behind a newspaper entitled “Police Gazette”, the mob criminals all meet in the hotel conference hall to talk about their fiscal year, involving killing off one of their less profitable and more noisy ventures (Spatz), in probably one of the more ridiculous scenes in the movie. Wilder cranks up the silly to eleven, all while playing on popular established genre tropes.
Where I find fault with this movie, however, has to be with the cement block tied around every scene named Marilyn Monroe. Though some of the humor of this movie is undoubtedly derived at her expense, it is safe to say that none of the humor is derived from her. Perhaps the studio demanded the star power necessary to justify the expense of the film, or perhaps crafty contract negotiations landed her in the film alongside what originally would have been Frank Sinatra; there is no getting passed Monroe’s flat and ineffectual performance. Luckily enough, for all viewers, this movie has so much else going on, that this glaring ineptitude can be glossed over.
All in all, it’s a terrific picture, and certainly a time-capsule. A bit leisurely paced at times, with some scenes serving no real purpose in themselves, while others go on for one too many beats. The movie could have been perhaps fifteen minutes shorter (though I will not be the person to suggest less of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis). Those two had just terrific on-screen chemistry and performances: methodical and committed.
Anyways, I ramble.