One of the things I like best about challenges like this is I can rewatch a film I have seen many times before but pick up on something new that I maybe never noticed before. It’s not always a big thing either. Take Some Like It Hot, the outright delightful comedy from director Billy Wilder in which two musicians, Joe and Jerry, dress up in drag in order to join an all-girl band to get away after witnessing a bad mob hit in Prohibition-era Chicago. I remembered from my previous write-up that Wilder had cast George Raft as the mob boss Spats Columbo, a comedic take on the sorts of characters that Raft had played quite a few times in the 30s and 40s. That tracks with how Wilder put a number of silent film stars in the fantastic Sunset Boulevard. But then I spot a quick blink-and-you-miss-it joke where Spats picks up half a grapefruit, ready to splat a minion in the face with it.
So, was Wilder thinking of Jimmy Cagney’s famous move with a grapefruit in one of Cagney’s own mob films? Was it Raft’s idea? Or was it all just a coincidence? I’d love to know, but at the same time, I am feeling far too lazy to look it up right now.
Anyway, here I am with another film I have written up before, and I am at a loss as to what to say here. Last time, I made some remarks about how I felt that the drag actually has aged pretty well all things being equal. The longer the film goes, the less that the film goes for the obvious jokes of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon disguised as women. Honestly, after a bit, the film decides to focus more on Curtis’s Joe spinning a pack of lies to woo Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar Kane Kowalczyk where, when he isn’t posing as her female bandmate, he’s posing as rich guy Shell Oil Jr. It’s a romantic comedy, so chances are good she’ll be fine with the deception once she finds out the truth, but it does occur to me that if this film were made today, that would be a third act reveal that would cause a temporary break-up, one of those cliches that make it hard for me to like many rom-coms.
But getting back to the drag aspects of the film, aside from the fact that today, yes, two men can get married and it’s not universally frowned upon, I still think the film has aged fine. However, I wrote that in 2018, and my thoughts at the time was on the growing transgender awareness that was happening at the time. I just felt like, just as certain racial stereotypes are not seen as funny anymore, then maybe certain stories where men-dressed-as-women would be on their way out as well in many respects simply because a man dressing as a woman was maybe no longer automatically funny. But now I’m sitting here in 2023 and seeing attacks on drag queen storyhours, a thing I did not know existed before, and it looks like there was a backlash for the sort of thing I was seeing in 2018.
I am incredibly reluctant to talk about political issues here. I have political views, strong ones in some cases, but I likewise don’t want to put them here for reasons involving my personal life that I had rather not go into. There are many films out there were the context and themes are political, but I am not sure Some Like It Hot is one of those. It’s a light comedy, mostly with Wilder’s customary wordplay and a bit of slapstick and visual gags mixed in. You know, a standard Billy Wilder comedy.
So, what do I say about this comedy on this go-around? If anything, I think I want to go back to my previous comments about how Wilder seems to be something of a film buff himself. The grapefruit here, a quick blink-and-you-miss-it bit helps, but so does the fact that Edward G Robinson Jr, son of the famed actor who also made a career as mobster characters and who likewise appeared in Wilder’s Double Indemnity, has a small supporting role as another mobster. Some Like It Hot isn’t a mob comedy, but it uses mobsters for comedic effect. Wilder did have an excellent eye for casting, especially considering what he would end up doing with the likes of the generally genial Fred MacMurray in both the aforementioned Double Indemnity and The Apartment where MacMurray’s genial nature was used to help disguise two men who were both horrible in very unique ways.
Still, is there anything like that in Some Like It Hot? Jack Lemmon appeared in many Wilder comedies, usually as a fussy guy who has trouble catching a break, and that certainly holds here. Marilyn is her usual breathy sexpot, with many of her early scenes accompanied by the sort of saxophone music one might expect from a film that wants the audience to notice how gorgeous she is. As for Tony Curtis, I can’t say I am overly familiar with the guy or his usual character types since the only major roles I have seen him in are here and in Spartacus. No, I don’t think there’s any sort of breakthroughs there.
But you know what? Maybe there doesn’t have to be. Some Like It Hot doesn’t have to break barriers or be anything revolutionary. All it has to be is funny comedy told well, with great timing on both sides of the camera. Wilder could and did pull that off in a lot of his work, and Some Like It Hot is clearly no exception. It’s delightful, hilarious, and probably about as close to the comedic ideal as a film can be. If there’s nothing here for me to really say more on, then that’s more on me than it is on the film. After all, even if the film is just about flawless, I’m not a work of art or a breezy comedy that opens with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. I mean, there’s probably something here I’m missing at present. After all, nobody’s perfect.
Man, that last sentence sure does feel labored.
NEXT: Some Like It Hot probably made me a lifelong Billy Wilder fan. 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth probably did the same for me for director Guillermo del Toro.
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