Some Like it Hot
Its like jello on springs. With a motor.--Jerry (Jack Lemmon) in Some Like it Hot.
There is really only one thing you want to know when you see are about to settle down to watch a classic film, "How has this stood up to time?" I have a number of classic films in my Netflix queue, so I am often in the position to find out how things have fared. Recently, I had a chance to sit down and watch Some Like it Hot. I have seen this film a number of times; Usually I have it on as background noise while I knit or read or cook. But, this time I really sat down and watched it.
I was really worried, to begin with, that some of the humor and the acting would not have aged well. I was worried, in the opening minutes of the film, that I would end up with that feeling of embarrassment that you get when someone has done something and it hasn't turned out just they way they planned, but they worked really hard on it and you really wanted them to pull it off. The film opens with cops chasing after bootleggers in Chicago in 1929. The speakeasy where are heroes are employed as members of the band is raided a few minutes later. We meet Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) and we find out that they are roommates and that Joe is a total cad. They later witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and have to flee the city disguised as women as part of an all female band in order to save their own skins. This is also when our heroes meet Sugar Cane (Marilyn Monroe).
At this point, my feeling of embarrassment on the filmmaker's behalf subsided. Marilyn Monroe is hilarious (and super hot) as Sugar Cane. All of her lines are delivered with this sense of artless innocence, like she doesn't really know what she's got going on. Its wonderful. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as men pretending to be women are also top shelf. No sense of embarrassment here. (And, why I would have thought that, I shall never know, considering the caliber of those two actors.) Tony Curtis for most of the film goes back and forth between being a man and being a woman. And,some of the timing involved in the switches that go on in the film is spot on and flawless. Plus, the challenges to conventional takes on gender and sexuality that a film like this puts forth still have merit today. Who would have thought that a film set in 1929, made in 1959 would have the potential to make you think about "convention" and "how things are done" today. So, at least with Some Like it Hot, the answer to the question is, "Why, yes. Yes it does."
