a perfect example of a light-dark comedy standing the test of time

Rating: 10/10 (22 May 2010)

Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot is about what makes men different than women. It's funny, uproarious, because men who are big womanizers (they're musicians in 1929 prohibition-era Chicago after all) have to go in disguise as women so they aren't recognized as the men they are by mobsters who want to rub them out for several hits they witnessed. I loved seeing how the actors worked off of one another, especially because they had such wonderful dialog to work with. That is one part of it, and how steady the story actually is (it really never falters from being a classically told story for all of its wackiness that ensues), but it's just the repore of the stars, the power they exude on screen (that is, that Marilyn Monroe exudes) and how funny they are in playing it both serious and fun in a single beat.
Now that that premise is out of the way, what else is funny about it? Where to start? For one thing just how Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis have their reactions to how they look or who they are as 'women' ("I'm more of a Daphnme", Lemmon's Jerry says), and how they both react in varied ways to Marilyn Monroe's Sugar. Her character admits that she's stupid, but is she really? She's playing this "girl' in other movies before, and yet it's a little varied this time around; she'd love to find a rich man on a yacht, sure, but she'd also just like to find a man who would treat her right. It's here that the fun, and some hidden depth and incredible sexual innuendo, comes out of the relationship between 'Cary Grant' Joe (a great-bad imitation) and Sugar, especially the scene between the two on the Yacht and their meeting on the beach... which is almost all of their scenes. They're quite brilliant.
Jack Lemmon also scores very highly here with his performance as Jerry/Daphne. Any moment he has to react to Osgood is so funny because of how he reacts and how Joe E. Brown so consistently reacts to Daphne's expressions. It's surely one of the classic moments in movies at the end, but I perhaps loved even more just seeing how the two actors were in the tango scene (and Lemmon's reaction to that to Tony Curtis, the "We're engaged!" bit is one of the funniest scenes of its time, or any time). We get to see by Wilder's script and direction how men and women (or men as women or men as men) portray each other or react when trying to court. It's a sex farce that was somehow acceptable (I'm surprised some of the innuendo and dress got by with the censors at the time), but also has stayed fresh, maybe fresher, because of how precise it is in its observations on sex and relationships. It sort of goes between the very dark comedy of love in Sunset Blvd. with the lighthearted Hollywood stuff of Sabrina.
The former may still be Wilder's best film, but Some Like it Hot finds him working at the peak of his powers with comic timing and sharp dialog for able and ready performers. Was Monroe ever funnier? Perhaps sexier in Seven Year Itch, or a technically better or deeper actress in Don't Bother to Knock. But she's on par with her male co-leads in delivering the goods as someone who gets how to do this comedy. It's rare for lightning to strike like this in comedy in general- The Producers, Duck Soup and His Girl Friday had it- and this is another example.