Some Like It Hot

Director: Billy Wilder (USA). Year of Release: 1959

Chicago, 1929, February 14^th. A hearse is driving slowly through the streets, slightly overloaded with two men in the front, and two next to the coffin in the back. In the background a police car appears and starts its siren. The hearse speeds up, and both police and pall bearers grab guns. In the fight that follows, the coffin is hit. A liquid pours out of the holes. The men open the lid to show that the coffin is full of whisky bottles.

I’d forgotten much of Some Like It Hot’s opening. In my memory, it all started with a pair of musicians accidentally witnessing the St Valentine’s Day Massacre. But lots more happens on screen before we get there, from a police raid on a speakeasy to the saxophonist sweet talking the secretaries in their agents’ office and making irresponsible bets while the double bass player looks on with exasperation. By the time we get to the massacre, we’ve already seen a ton of exposition.

Although my memory may be vague on incidental details, I’ve seen the film often enough – as, I hope you have – to know the general plot. Needing to escape the mob quickly, Joe and Jerry disguise themselves as Josephine and Daphne and join a women’s band headed for Florida. Just as they are considering whether they really want to do this, up pops Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane (née Kowalczyk), and high jinks ensue.

The script contains many memorable one-liners (including the best final line of a film, ever), but not just that. There are plenty of slapstick visual jokes, Tony Curtis gives his best Cary Grant impression, and, if it’s that your sort of thing, Monroe sings a few songs. It is a perfectly executed film, part comedy, part gangster film, part romance with a little drag show included. It was written and directed by Billy Wilder at a time when he was unsurpassable.

If the film has any faults it is that it expects Marilyn Monroe to play the dumb blonde that she was not in real life. Constantly saying how stupid she is, she is not given any of the witty lines put in the mouths of Curtis and Jack Lemmon as Joe and Jerry. The camera also zooms in regularly on her arse and her almost-see-through top. This is all unnecessarily unbecoming for a film and a director who should be above all this.

Some Like It Hot also features drag, which is often potentially problematically used to ridicule women and/or trans people. Some people think that men wearing dresses is intrinsically funny. This film generally avoids this pitfall. When “Daphne” first wears a skirt, her first reaction is not how silly it looks, but how impractical life is for women. “It’s so draughty. They must be catching cold all the time.” Daphne makes similar comments on how difficult it is to walk in high heels.

We are also called to witness everyday sexual harassment. As soon as Joe and Jerry dress as women, they are seen as fair game by all inhabitants of the hotel, from the elderly guests who pinch their bums to the young and fresh bellhop with his unconvincing come ons. Jerry/Daphne initially does not understand this, saying “I’m not even pretty.” Joe tells him/her “They don’t care—just as long as you wear skirts. It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull,”

Maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on a film which was a product of its time. Some Like It Hot was released in 1959, when the Hays Code was still in force (the Code was finally repealed in 1968, but become increasingly challenged by the development of New Cinema). The Hays Code tried to regulate the way in which sexuality was depicted on screen, most memorably, that when a man and a woman were shown on the same bed, one of them had to have one foot on the floor.

Some Like It’s Hot acknowledgement of sexuality was, in a sense, a challenge to the Hays Code, Indeed, the Catholic League of Decency condemned the film for being “seriously offensive to Christian and traditional standards of morality and decency,” and it was banned outright in Kansas The film was ahead of its time, and it offended all the right people, with innuendo which might feel a little tired now.

And yet, the film’s expression of sexuality is incredibly limited. There is something quaint about the Jerry’s incredulity at the very idea of two men marrying each other. I have read reviews which say that the film promotes same sex relationships. I find this to be an extremely favourable interpretation of a film whose main message seems to be that men falling in love with other men is so bizarre that it’s comical. At the same time, it is not a film which judges.

Nonetheless it does land some punches showing the daily harassment which women are expected to suffer. Joe and Jerry are not thoughtless macho types, and, when Jerry starts to get into the role of Daphne, he starts to embrace his femininity. There is something about watching Lemmon smile behind Daphne’s make up which makes you think that maybe more men should loosen up and try being a woman for a while.

At the same time, it is a shame that the film seems a little too keen to objectify and infantilise Monroe. When Sugar tells Daphne about her happiness at home with her sisters, it’s a way of keeping her young and safe. Throughout the film, Monroe/Sugar is denied any agency. The best that she can hope for is to hook up with Joe, who may – against the odds – turns out to be less of a bastard than any of the other saxophonists she’s known. Poor Sugar.

Summary: of course, you should see this. And of course you should critique it. In part because you’re unlikely to see much better.