Each season we aim to include one "classic" film that has a significant anniversary, and this year we selected Some Like It Hot: it was a unanimous decision.
I'd actually seen the film on a big screen once before where it reinforced my belief that you do not really appreciate a film until you see it on a big screen. It was good to have this opportunity to re-acquaint myself with this true classic.
I'd actually seen the film on a big screen once before where it reinforced my belief that you do not really appreciate a film until you see it on a big screen. It was good to have this opportunity to re-acquaint myself with this true classic.
Some Like It Hot
USA 1959 116 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack
Lemmon
Award and Nominations:
- Five Oscar nominations including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Jack Lemmon) Best Director, Best Cinematography (Black and White) and one Oscar win (Best Costume Design, Black and White)
- BAFTA award for Best Foreign Actor (Jack Lemmon)
- A further eight wins and eight nominations
Peter
Bradshaw
Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) are musicians in Chicago, and
when they accidentally witness a gangland killing they board a train bound for
Florida disguised as Josephine and Daphne, the most recent recruits of an
all-girl jazz band. Their cover is perfect until Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe)
falls for Josephine and an elderly playboy (Joe E Brown) takes a shine to
Daphne.
The idea of two men disguising themselves as women to join an all-girl band
was borrowed from a 1951 German film called Fanfares
of Love (Fanfaren der Liebe) which itself was a remake of a 1935 French
comedy called Fanfare of Love (Fanfare d’amour). However Billy Wilder
and his co-screenplay writer I A L Diamond had the inspired idea to add a
gangster subplot to the main story both as motivation to keep the musicians on
the run as well as allowing themselves as filmmakers to make witty references back
to Hollywood gangster films of the 1930s. On its re-release in 2014 Peter
Bradshaw hailed the film as “the best remake in movie history” and the
screenplay received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The casting of the main roles is superb and from the perspective of today it
is difficult now to imagine other actors in the roles, but at one time Wilder
had hoped to cast Frank Sinatra in the film and earlier on had even thought
about a double act of Bob Hope and Danny Kay. Additionally with Marilyn Monroe
in great personal distress during the making of the film Wilder had Mitzi
Gaynor on standby to take over the role, but without Monroe the chemistry of
the central roles would have worked nowhere near as well.
The film opened to positive reviews, with eminent critic Dilys Powell praising
all the performances and also commenting on the transgressive subject matter,
describing it as “a farce blacker than is common on the American screen [that]
whistles along at a smart, murderous pace”. The film subsequently received six
Oscar nominations (and won one) and since then has never fallen out of favour
with either the public or critics. In 2000 the American Film Institute selected
it as the top comedy in its 100 Years…
100 Laughs poll, a BBC poll of 253 films critics in 2017 chose it as the
best comedy of all time and in 2005 the BFI included the film in its list of
the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.
In recent times it has been possible to identify the transgressive nature
of the story more clearly. In Have You
Seen, his epic introduction to 1000 films, eminent film historian David
Thomson highlights this new perspective:
“I suspect, literally, that no one knew that the film was
a gay breakthrough. If they had guessed, they would have taken fright. But here
is another film from the late fifties that blows up every convention it can see
and discloses miracles in the explosion. Everybody’s perfect.”
The overwhelming and ongoing success of Some
Like It Hot is considered to be one of the final nails in the coffin of the
Hays Code which since 1930 had defined what was acceptable content for films
produced in the USA, although the code itself was finally abandoned only in
1968, a year which saw the release of films as diverse as The Producers, Rosemary’s
Baby and Barbarella.
Here is a link to the trailer:
Here is a link to the trailer:
