We would recommend Billy Wilder’s farce to almost anyone: the jokes are exact and the three leads make them seem spontaneous. The gangster business occasionally interrupts the pleasure of watching Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe.
Some Like It Hot is a farce we would recommend to almost anyone, including those who suspect they have heard all its jokes already. Billy Wilder builds it around two men escaping the Mob in women’s clothes and allows desire to complicate a practical arrangement. His screenplay with Diamond understands how quickly a person can turn a temporary deception into a habit. It also trusts us to follow the deception without stopping to explain each new difficulty.
Tony Curtis’s Joe approaches Josephine as a problem to be solved, and Curtis makes his calculation quick enough to be funny. Jack Lemmon’s Jerry has far more trouble containing himself as Daphne; every adjustment seems to require his whole body. We laughed at the effort Lemmon puts into being Daphne, particularly when delight starts to get ahead of caution. His shifts from alarm to pleasure are so quick that the disguise never settles into a single joke. Curtis’s relative composure makes Lemmon’s agitation funnier.
Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar Kane Kowalczyk gives this commotion somebody worth paying attention to. Monroe makes Sugar’s appeal obvious, then allows disappointment to trouble her delivery without slowing the comedy. She can make a line sound hopeful and doubtful within the same breath, which prevents the character from becoming merely a prize for clever lying. The film’s attention to her beauty can be insistent, but her comic timing keeps correcting any assumption that she is there just to be admired.
Charles Lang’s photography lets us study the performers’ faces, and it is particularly attentive to the small changes in Monroe’s expression. That attention helps keep Sugar present as a person even while the men are occupied with their own difficulties. Orry-Kelly’s dresses make walking convincingly part of the job, giving the actors a joke before either has spoken. Curtis’s careful self-control and Lemmon’s busier movements keep the costumes from having to supply every laugh.
Arthur P. Schmidt’s editing gives the actors time after the line, when a look can make the joke worse for the person receiving it. The reactions have room to develop, particularly when Lemmon seems to be thinking his way into fresh trouble. Adolph Deutsch’s score helps keep things moving, although the dialogue and faces could often sustain the pace on their own. At 123 minutes, the film needs that variation in how it gets a laugh.
The crime material is less consistently rewarding. George Raft gives Spats Colombo a welcome severity, but Wilder’s gangster business can feel like an interruption once the leads have established their rhythm. The danger gives Joe and Jerry a reason to persist with their disguises, which the farce certainly needs. These passages are simply broader and less surprising than the exchanges among Curtis, Lemmon and Monroe.
Many disguise comedies exhaust themselves asking how long the clothes will fool somebody. Wilder keeps finding humour in how people behave once they think the clothes have worked, and the three leads make that a richer question than it sounds. Save it for an evening when company has agreed on nothing except wanting to laugh.
