Movies I Love, Part IX: Some Like It Hot

Posted: July 28th, 2008 | Filed under: Cinema, Culture, Ruminations | No Comments »

I guess if I was going to herald “Some Like It Hot,” I should rightfully have done so last week before it’s showings at the Village 8 this past weekend. Well, sorry. My bad. But there’s always Wild & Wooly or one of those chain rental places.

Anyway, the Film Babe and I did head over to see the movie voted the funniest of all time by the American Film Institute.

(An aside before I move on. Village 8 is starting to show some great films, classic and foreign and independent. So it’s time for them to get enough personnel to cover those moments when the ticket office and popcorn lines are long. Twice this past weekend there were long, long, long, long lines for both and only one ticket seller and two people selling the goodies. Tsk, tsk. Such inexcusable management gaffes make for disgruntled audiences unlikely to come back for more. Which is to say: Have enough people working to take care of customers.)

But I digress.

“Some Like It Hot.” Zowie!!!!!

Billy Wilder’s comic masterpiece will be a half century old next year. It holds up just fine, thank you very much.

It’s 1929 and times are tough during prohibition in Chicago. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are a couple of musicians finding it hard to get a gig. While in a garage one night to borrow a car, they witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. It is imperative that they vanish as soon as possible.

In response to which, and in order to get out of town, they hook up with a band with a several week gig in Florida. It’s an all-girl band. So they’re in drag. Of course, Curtis falls for the singer in the group.

Who wouldn’t? She’s Sugar Kane. A/k/a Marilyn Monroe, the greatest of screendom’s icons. And billionaire Joe E. Brown falls for Daphne. Who is Jack Lemmon. It works.

A grin a time zone wide ensues.

This is shtick. This is slapstick. This is old school humor.

God bless it all.

Throw in George Raft as the bad guy and it’s all a good thing. All a marvelous time watching a flick.

I’d forgotten the scene on the train when Lemmon ends up partying with the other girls in the band when they all crowd into his sleeping berth. I’m sure it’s homage to one of my favorite funny scenes in film, the stateroom scene from Marx Brothers’ “Night At The Opera.” And it works even if you don’t know the cinematic reference.

Which is not to even mention that the movie has the greatest last line of any film, a perfect coda for this farce of farces.

Okay, so I’m sorry I didn’t write about “Some Like It Hot” before it played on a big screen. But you should rent this anyway. Even if you saw it when it was released. But especially if you’ve never had the extreme pleasure.

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