Some Like It Hot 1959

[8.3/10] To call Some Like It Hot absurd is an understatement of yacht-like proportions. The movie requires you to believe that Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis could plausibly pass as women in 1920s society. It insists you accept that Sugar, the dippy singer who becomes fast friends with the duo, would buy Curtis’s character’s dopey faux-millionaire routine without ever catching on. It asks you to take on faith that Osgood Fielding III, a smitten man of money himself, could tango with Lemmon for hours and never get wise to his secret.

If you can accept that absurdity though, what you’ll get in return is one of cinema’s all-time funniest farces. The film has the spirit of one of Shakespeare’s comedies. (As You Like It comes to mind, naturally.) Characters take on hidden identities to escape trouble or find love. Ridiculous scenarios follow when their new personas clash with their old ones. True love abides in silly terms. And it ends with a wedding, more or less.

That approach helps the medicine go down. I don’t want to damn Some Like It Hot by calling it classically-inspired, but you can find that same Bard-like energy in its constant wordplay and escalating goofiness. Writer-director Billy Wilder and his team practically wink at the audience through all of this, acknowledging the outsized irreverence of the setup, but the movie just has too much fun to care about trifles like plausibility.

Nobody, however, is having more fun than Jack Lemmon. As Jerry/Daphne, he’s a wind-up toy who’s always just been wound up. He mugs. He flounces. He laughs like a hyena at his own smart remarks. He squirms. He tangos. He flees like a cat who just heard the vacuum cleaner. He grins. He slaps. And he keeps his comical motor running at all times, as Jerry begins plainly having a blast in his feminine getup, to the point where you wonder if he’s steadily learning something big about himself through this whole escapade. Through all of it, Lemmon is an absolute shining star, threatening to go supernova at all times.

His likable, over-the-top energy helps sustain the film through its loopy set pieces, which is a good thing, since this release is a surprising thing for the 1950s -- a sex comedy. The premise of two chaps posing as dames to avoid a mob hit doesn’t necessarily portend that tack, but Wilder and company find their way there anyway. Lemmon’s “Daphne” and Curtis’s “Josephine” aren’t just angling to avoid being rubbed out like the squealer targeted by Chicago crime boss “Spats” Colombo. They’re trying to evade the advances of wealthy admirers and presumptuous bellhops, not to mention rub elbows (and other body parts) with their breathy, buxom bandmate, Sugar.

Make no mistake, while pretty tame by modern standards, the film wastes no opportunity to get risque with Marilyn Monroe. The costuming team puts her in as many barely-there outfits as possible. She croons about love while offering as many wiggles as shimmies as one can reasonably cram into a given stanza. And she giggles and coos with every jibe and surreptitious come-on. For as much great, outsized comedy is packed into every frame of Some Like It Hot, it’s not hard to divine what Wilder was hoping to sell the movie on.

Despite that mercenary/objectifying bent, Monroe does well in the role. There’s more life and joie de vivre in her performance here than in lesser outings like her turn in How to Marry a Millionaire. As much as the film turns Monroe into an attraction, it also lets her be a character: resigned to her rotten luck in love, a little bit bad, and apt to form a genuine friendship with her drag-wearing counterparts. Maybe this is all just a fig leaf to excuse invoking Monroe for her more superficial attributes, but she makes the most of the persona.

As much as a marketing boon as it is to feature Marylin Monroe in a sex comedy, Some Like It Hot may be more properly categorized as a sexual harassment comedy. While that term didn’t exist in 1959, Josephine and Daphne are on both the giving and receiving ends of questionable “romantic” pursuit. The two of them are pinched, patted, and cornered, despite their less-than-convincing disguises. They use their feminine getups to sneak peaks at their bandmates in their bed-clothes. And Joe even manages to seduce Sugar under the falsest of false pretenses, not long after a failed attempt by Jerry to do the same. The phrase, “This couldn’t get made today” is thrown around a lot lately, but it rings true for Wilder’s less-than-sensitive romp.

And yet, it’s a strangely progressive, or at least open-minded, film, especially judged for its era. As much as it makes Joe and Jerry transgressors themselves, Wilder and co-writer I. A. L. Diamond add in subtle realizations from the twosome that it’s not as fun to be on the receiving end of those unwanted advances. The gender politics of Some Like It Hot aren’t great, as you might imagine, but there’s quiet acknowledgement that being a woman in this world creates challenges men don’t have to face, something even “Daphne” and “Josephine” are forced to acknowledge.

In the same vein, you would hardly hold up this movie as a bastion of trans representation. It feeds into problematic stereotypes about trans women having something to hide or otherwise “trick” others. But it also lands on a strangely heartening “love is love” finish. You’re uncomfortable, to say the least, when Curtis’s Josephine tries to make good and gets the girl despite his multiple, reprehensible deceptions. At the same time though, the message is one that attraction and attachment persists, and is more important than whatever presentation two partners take on in a given moment.

Beyond that, the movie features a quasi-lesbian kiss (or at least what the on-screen audience perceives as one), and depicts Lemmon’s Daphne and his moneyed suitor Osgood genuinely caring for one another, even when Daphne’s biology is revealed. Some of this is played for laughs of the “Could you even imagine?” variety, but there’s also a sort of transgressive 1950s brand of acceptance beneath it all.

While the movie’s take on gender and romance is a mixed bag sags, and although it sags in places (mostly during Joe’s millionaire seduction scheme and the latter mob interludes), the sheer raucous silliness of the thing sustains it throughout. Some Like It Hot is not a place to go in search of realism of down-to-earth observations. Instead, it’s a launchpad for uproarious snappy dialogue, rib-splitting facial expressions, and more delightful lunacy than even most cartoons can muster. The premise of this one is out there, but there’s no shortage of entertaining, energetic absurdity, expertly crafted to flip the audience’s wig.