Some Like it Hot

There are few comedies that have stood the test of time as well as Some Like it Hot.  With Billy Wilder’s writing and direction, the pacing is as snappy as the gags. With Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as a pair on the run resorting to disguising themselves as women, the laughs come frequently and easily.  And with the unforgettable Marilyn Monroe steaming up the screen and complicating the duo’s plan, we are in for a wild and delightfully screwy ride.

Joe and Jerry (Curtis and Lemmon) are two musicians who had just found work in Chicago, but when the police bust a speakeasy run by the notorious mobster Spats Colombo (George Raft), they are out looking for work again.  They hear of a band heading to warm sunny Florida looking for a bass and a saxophone, perfect!  Only problem is they are looking for women.  Then Joe and Jerry witness Spats and his boys whack a few guys off.  Desperate to get far from Chicago, they disguise themselves as a couple of chicks and take jobs in the all girl band, where Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe) is the lead singer/ukulele player.

Watching Curtis and Lemmon try to be girls is a hoot.  Just the image of their man-shaped calves trying to stay afloat in heels puts me in stitches.  When Lemmon realizes he is a disguised rooster in the hen house, the temptation is almost too much.  The slumber party side of these girls suddenly coms out, and suddenly he is not too happy about having a dozen pretty ladies in his bunk.  Down in Florida, the shoe goes on the other foot and the boys have to deal with men pursuing them.  Lemmon on his tango date with the short millionaire Osgood (Joe E. Brown) are some of the funniest moments in the film.  And the bellboy who hits on Curtis is wonderfully outrageous, “That’s the way I like ‘em, big and sassy!”

But the greatest treat in Some Like it Hot is Marilyn Monroe.  She is the perfect woman, complete with a flask strapped to her thigh, a weakness for saxophone players and can lob back one liners with natural ease.  Her presence on the train makes our boy’s disguises much more difficult and inspires further identity deception when Curtis disguises as a young millionaire to lure her in.  Isn’t it funny how a girl can seem so innocent to sex, yet the very icon of it.  That is the hook of Monroe’s charm, especially in the scene where she sings, “I want to be loved by you.”  Her dress is practically see through, just barely covers and the spotlight hovers just above her neckline, tantalizing those trying to get a better look.  She is what boys dream of and acts like she doesn’t even know it.

Really, the film is all about sex, but Wilder could not just come out and say in in 1959, so it is disguised with this tale of men in hiding.  Whatever, Spats and his gang are only really interesting if they kill our heroes or bring in new girls.  Joe lusts for Sugar.  Jerry is being lusted over by Osgood.  And sweet Sugar seems to think she only wants money, oh silly girl.

When it came down to the Academy Awards, Some Like it Hot came up with six nominations (Best Writing, Cinematography, Director, Art Direction and Lemmon for Best Actor), winning one award (Costume Design).  But for the Best Picture category, things were kept to a more serious crowd.  That has not effected this film’s fame or love, however.  AFI ranks Some Like it Hot at the top of their 100 Laughs list.  Today, all generations are still busting their guts over this glorious gem of classic comedy.

“Story of my life.  I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop.”

Ninotchka

While in Paris to sell some jewelry for the government, three Russians get distracted when they justify checking into a suite at a swanky hotel because it has a safe large enough to store the jewels.  They settle into their lavish suite, enjoying the western capitalist comforts, until a  higher ranking official is sent to straighten them out, Ninotchka (Greta Garbo).  She is a no-nonsense woman, bland and only thinking of essentials.  When she happens to meet Count Leon (Melvyn Douglas), he is instantly fascinated by her, at first for the novelty of being a proud Russian, then for her womanly charms that she hides so well.  Romance seems almost foreign to Ninotchka, and as she warms up to Leon, ideas of Western culture do as well.  But the romance is complicated by both the jewelry exchange and Ninotchka’s beloved Russia.

I’ll admit, I had my doubts wondering how much I could believe in seeing a a strict Russian comrade turn into the sort of girl who drinks pink champagne in silly, yet fashionable hats.  However, this turns out to be Garbo’s greatest role and she is in complete control of the film.    She displays her wonderful range between her straight-laced introductions to being happily drunk and in love, while not completely forgetting her character’s Russian roots.  That scene where Leon first gets her to laugh, it’s like seeing a flower bloom.  Suddenly I could see through that Nurse Ratchet hairstyle and see a soul, and a beautiful one at that.  “Garbo Laughs” was the tagline to promote the film, but the best part is that we laugh with her.

Now, I can see the contrasting ideas between Eastern and Western culture either bringing some hearty laughs or leaving people feeling  a little uneasy.  The film makes some great jokes, most of them at Russia’s expense.  When first meeting Ninotchka, Leon says, “I love Russians! Comrade, I’ve been fascinated by your five-year plan for the last fifteen years.”  He love to cleverly sneak in a quick punch to Russia in between his flirting all through the film.  Soviet Russia is an easy target for a cheap laugh, and the film throws a lot of bulls-eyes.

On the other hand, it can seem that capitalism and Western culture are just seductive to the faithful Russian people.  At first, Ninotchka seems content with her strict Soviet upbringing, but soon we see that she was living in ignorance.  Was she ever happy before, or is this film saying that women cannot be happy until they are dressed in the latest fashions with a man on her arm and drinking pink champagne?  The film seems to make us think that all young people of Russia are just pining for the pretty things they can get in Western culture.

I digress, it can be easy to over analyze this film, but that is not what we are suposed to do.  It is simply a fun romantic comedy that is smart enough to raise these cultural and social issues and use them to bring even more laughs.  We can partially blame the great Billy Wilder for writing this witty, Oscar nominated screenplay.  See it for Garbo’s amazing performance, not for Soviet Russia jokes.

“I should hate to see our country endangered by my underwear.”

The Apartment

C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) has found the quickest way to rise from a nobody-clerk to an executive in hisNew Yorkinsurance company.  He lets the other executives use his apartment as a safe place to take their mistresses.  Though Baxter is often waiting outside in the cold when a date is running late, they drink all his liquor and eat all his cheese crackers, he keeps putting up with the pile of annoyances in hopes of the men acting on their promises to make him an executive.

Because of all the comings, going, loud music and empty bottles of liquor in his trash, Baxter’s neighbors assume he’s a real swinging bachelor.  His neighbor, Dr. Dreyfus (Jack Kruschen) says he can hear everything from next door and advises the young man to either slow down or donate his body to science.  With Baxter not always able to explain all the noise, the land lord starts becoming suspicious.

At work, Baxter has eyes for the pretty elevator operator, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine).  They flirt in the elevator on his way to see Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) about a promotion.  Part of this promotion includes letting Sheldrake use the apartment as well, but at least he has theater tickets to exchange so Baxter has somewhere to go, so Baxter asks Fran to go with him.  What Baxter doesn’t know is that Fran is Sheldrake’s mistress in a long line of mistresses.  Later, after drama ensues and Fran finds out the ugly truth about her relationship with Sheldrake, she tries something drastic in Baxter’s apartment.  Baxter becomes the only person who cares enough about Fran to help her.

Baxter is the sort of nice guy we can’t help but love, even though it’s obvious he’s a huge pushover.  He is constantly being taken advantage of by the executives just for a fast-track promotion.  Though we realize this isn’t the most honest path to rise in the company, we don’t chastise Baxter for loaning out his apartment.  Of all the scandalous ways to get ahead at this insurance firm, Baxter is keeping pretty tame and classy.  And for those of us who tsk-tsk-ed him at any point are turned completely in his favor when he unselfishly helps Fran.

Out of context, this plot may sound a little heavy.  In the film, it’s anything but.  From the start, a wonderfully light tone is set and stays consistent throughout the film.  We’ve got Jack Lemmon with all his quirky, charming comedic genius being pulled different ways.  His scene in Sheldrakes office with the nasal spray had me in stitches.  The jokes are quick, charismatic and naturally off the cuff.  And when the plot becomes heavier, that light feeling is not lost.  It becomes a wonderful charm to help ease the tension, get Fran back on her feet and moves Baxter to new levels of confidence.

You rarely find a film with this high level of comedy and an engaging plot with so much at stake.  Between the wonderful acting, which can range from slapstick comedy to life and death dramatics, and the zany yet calculable plot, The Apartment does not let up or let you down.  It was a two hour film, yet I sat back, laughed and became so engrossed it felt like it was over too quick.  I highly recommend The Apartment to all people who just want to enjoy a classic film.  Other than the horrible injustice done to Psycho (I cannot forgive the Academy on that one), Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is the best picture of 1960.

“When you’re in love with a married man, you shouldn’t wear mascara.”

Double Indemnity

There are four things a film noir must be: dark, smokey, seducing and cynical.  To write a decent piece about Double Indemnity, one of the best examples of film noir, I feel the need to pull the shades closed, put on a fedora and let cigarette smoke waft around the room.  But I don’t smoke, and with my modern computer screen blazing at me, it’s hard to strike that dark mood anymore.  It’s as if all noir retired along with the typewriter.

In the film directed by Billy Wilder, Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) is an insurance salesman and when he visits the Dietrichson household about renewing their auto policy, he gets more than he expected.  Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) is at home, clad only in a towel on the second floor looking down to Neff in the entry way.  The attraction is instant and rather than shoo Neff away to come back when Mr. Dietrichson is around, she meets him downstairs and starts to ask questions about accident insurance.  Neff is no dope and can sense that Phyllis has murder on her mind.  Neff resists at first, but she pulls him in with lustful greed and together they concoct a plan to get Mr. Dietrichson accident insurance without him knowing and then stage a scene that looks like a train accident, because those pay double.  But Neff’s boss, Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) can sense that something isn’t right and creeps closer and closer to figuring out that Neff was in cahoots with Phyllis the whole time.

What makes this story so compelling is how we feel that Neff could be any good man and Phyllis can be any woman who chooses to use her sexuality for evil.  Neff has many chances to back out, but he’s driven by greed and lust.  Because of his inside look at the insurance business, he gets overconfident and thinks he can outsmart the system.  Meanwhile Phyllis is the face that can launch a good man into a murderous fraud scheme and keep cold and calculating enough to take that blond wig seriously.  I still can’t look at a woman with dark eyebrows and perfectly molded blond hair without thinking of Double Indemnity, and I would never trust them.

One of my favorite moments in the film is the suspenseful scene where Keyes visits Neff’s apartment at the same time that Phyllis is due to arrive.  Keyes talks about how he’s sure she was working with a partner to kill her husband and stage his death, it’s only a matter of time until the two are found together.  Meanwhile, Phyllis is listening just behind the door.  The best part is how tense everything feels as Neff realizes Phyllis is behind the door and Keyes says,  “They may think it’s twice as safe because there’s two of them, but it isn’t twice as safe. It’s ten times twice as dangerous.”  The warning goes straight to the both of them.

Sadly, Double Indemnity did not win the award for best picture, but I can understand why.  In 1945 with war raging and people trying to keep positive back home, a film dark film about murder and scheming women just isn’t what the world needed to take top honors.  A film about murderous adulterers was already controversial, so it’s not surprising that it lost to Going My Way’s story of a heartwarming singing priest.  But today, Double Indemnity is the go-to film when studying film noir.  It’s upheld in the AFI’s top 100 as #29.  And personally, it takes a great weight off my shoulders to know that my husband has finally seen it.

“How could I have known that murder could sometimes smell like honeysuckle?”

Sunset Boulevard

“She was the greatest of them all. You wouldn’t know, you’re too young. In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later he strangled himself with it!”

Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is a wonderfully dark and cynical film about the relationship between a struggling hack screenwriter and a faded silent film star delusionally anticipating her return to the silver screen.  Joe Gilles (William Holden) is becoming more and more desperate to sell his stories.  He’s behind on car payments and in an effort to run from the bill collectors, he turns into the driveway of a decaying mansion and finds an empty garage perfect for hiding his car.  Inside, a woman calls to him, “You there, why have you kept me waiting so long?”  Having nowhere else to be, Joe goes inside and meets Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and her faithful butler Max (Erich von Stroheim).

I’ve always interpreted the events in Sunset Boulevard to be wonderfully simple.  Joe was mistaken to be the funeral director for Norma’s pet chimp who has just died.  We don’t realize it yet, but Norma’s new pet has just walked in the door.  Throughout the film, Joe becomes Norma’s boy toy, she lets him live there while he works on an excessive screenplay Norma has written for her return.  Norma gladly towels him off as he exits the pool, buys him the clothes she wants him to wear and holds a grand New Years ball just for the two of them.  The mansion is his cage, all Joe is missing is a leash.

The film won the Oscar for art direction easily.  All the sets in or around the mansion are beautifully creepy with lavish detail.  As Joe describes, “The whole place seemed to have been stricken with a kind of creeping paralysis – out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion.”  Inside the mansion is a grand staircase, a projection screen hidden behind an oil painting and beautiful classic furniture.  There are dozens, perhaps near a hundred pictures of Norma all over the house.  One of my favorite sets is Norma’s bedroom full of satin veils and ruffles hanging from the ceiling and her bed looks like a viking ship.

Joe provides the perfect narration for this film about the dark side of cinema.  When we first hear his voice, it’s the cynical, ironic perspective of a man floating dead in a pool.  Somewhere along the story set in the past, the perspective changes from dead-floating Joe of the present to Joe in the shown scene.  The change isn’t that important and nearly impossible to detect because Joe’s style of speech is so consistent.  He’s obviously a writer, and some of his descriptions do teeter on the verge of hack (“She sat coiled up like a watch spring.”), but with this macabre style of story it fits.  He’s the perfect candidate to be thrown a story that feels like Edgar Allan Poe resurrected to write about Hollywood.

Nominated for best actress, Gloria Swanson steals the film with her oh so creepy Norma Desmond.  I always get a little shiver when she puts her fingers she moves like claws on Holden.  Her over expressive facial expressions of a silent film star, make it seem like she’s never left the screen.  Her eyes are so fierce, her painted mouth never has a real smile, but twists into sneers of repressed rage.  I love the way Norma gives me the creeps,  “Stars are ageless aren’t they?”

There have been some complaints about me ranking Sunset over the official Best Picture winner, All About Eve.  I do so thinking about what most of today’s viewers would appreciate more and relate to better.  Sunset has the more striking visual elements and more iconic characters.  The cynical and ironic narration by Holden is more understood by our modern age.  I’m not knocking Eve at all, that film does it’s own thing wonderfully, I just see more people loving Sunset and simply liking Eve.

And I do love Sunset Boulevard.  I love Norma’s desperate attempts to keep Joe, the scene at Paramount studios and Cecil B. DeMille’s cameo.  That shot with Joe floating in the pool blew me away and when he said, “Shh, you’re going to wake the monkey” I couldn’t get enough.  For this film to survive so well after sixty years, there must be more out there who also deeply love Sunset Boulevard.

“You don’t yell at a sleepwalker – he may fall and break his neck. That’s it: she was still sleepwalking along the giddy heights of a lost career.”

The Lost Weekend

In today’s society, people give the privilege of drinking many purposes.  You can learn to taste the subtle differences in fine wine or crafted beers, it can lighten the atmosphere of a party, provide liquid courage, lubricate celebration or just let you feel numb at a loss.  Sadly, there are many times when this privilege manifests inside people into a dark obsession.  The Lost Weekend is a story where the bottle has become ruler over a man’s life and serves only to destroy.

Wick (Phillip Terry) has planned to take a long weekend with his brother Don (Ray Milland) out of the city.  Lately, Don’s drinking has gotten out of control.  He has no job, financially depends on his brother and spends all his money on alcohol.  When Don tricks his girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) and Wick to leave him alone for the afternoon and then doesn’t show up in time to make the last train, Wick gives up on him and leaves Don alone for the weekend.  Helen tries to check in and keep an eye on Don, but his weekend binge takes him to darker places than the neighborhood bar, including a sanitarium, stealing booze and thoughts of suicide.

Don uses alcohol as a crutch, a way to deal with his failure as a writer, but he doesn’t realise it is the cause of his failure.  The intimidation of a blank sheet of paper pushes him to drink, hoping to become inspired and see the vision of his work.  But when one doesn’t do the trick, he reaches for another and again until he can’t see straight.  It’s a sad cycle, known to challenge many creative minds that the film illustrates perfectly.

Ray Milland pulls off an amazing Oscar winning performance.  It’s one simple task to act like a drunk, but to give a face to all the horrors of alcoholism is quite a feat.  We see him trashing his own apartment, scrambling like an animal searching for the bottle he’s hidden.  We pity him as he desperately beg his bartender for a drink.  At the brink of insanity, we see his hallucinations and his reaction makes the images exponentially frightening.  It takes an amazing actor to bring all those aspects of alcoholism to life in a realistic, scary and sympathetic way.

Except for in reading Stephen King’s The Shining, I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened by a psychological profile of alcoholism.  Milland’s perfect performance is only one aspect that brings this frightening illness to life.  Under Billy Wilder’s Oscar winning direction, we’re shown some of the darkest places a man and his mind can go.  The camera work can transport us through an empty glass and at times there’s ominous music that reminds me of old episodes of The Twilight Zone.  At times, it feels like Don is living in a nightmare world, even when things are simply coincidence, but that’s how the mind works when under the influence.  Though it may not be a story everyone wants to see, The Lost Weekend is the best film of 1945.  Please drink responsibly.

“Of course you couldn’t write the beginning cause you didn’t know the ending.”

Witness for the Prosecution

Directed by Billy Wilder and based off Agatha Christie’s play, Witness for the Prosecution is an intriguing courtroom drama full of well thought out characters, engaging dialogue and plot that delivers surprise after surprise.

British lawyer, Sir Wilfred Robarts (Charles Laughton), has just been released from the hospital after suffering a heart attack that put him in a coma for two months.  He has a nurse (Elsa Lanchester) fussing over him every minute begging him to take it easy for a while, but when a juicy murder case comes up, the wily old man cannot resist.

Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) is accused of murdering a rich widow, whom he met by chance, befriended and idly hoped for an endorsement on his eggbeater invention.  The fact that he did not mention his marriage to her and that she left him a great deal of money looks like he led her on.  Leonard swears he is innocent and had no ill intentions.  The only person that can back up his alibi is his wife, Christine (Marlene Dietrich).

Christine is a cold, calculating type of person from Germany.  It turns out that she was already married when she went through a marriage ceremony with Leonard.  This means that she can testify in court on his behalf, but the whole case is turned on end when she instead decides to be a witness for the prosecution, brutally incriminating Leonard.

Charles Laughton earned a nomination for playing Wilfred as such a wonderful, crafty old man.  The way he slips away from his nurse, hides his cigars and brandy is just like any stubborn man.  He’s genuinely quirky and fun when he discovers his new lift for the staircase and rides it up and down.  His monocle test to see if Leonard and Christine are telling the truth is smart, intriguing and shows us that Wilfred has some interesting tricks up his sleeve.

Witness for the Prosecution is one of the best courtroom dramas I have ever seen.  The way flashbacks are set up throughout the film makes it feel more like a mystery, giving us pieces of the puzzle along the way.  All the characters feel real and intriguing, never flat and they never deliver stale or wooden dialogue.  The whole film seems to move like an old train, slow and chugging at first, but then flying at top speed at the very end, where a sudden twist creates a screech of metal on metal, nearly throwing the whole train off the tracks.  Sorry for the train metaphor, but the ending is so surprising and great that the voice during the credits politely asked me not to give anything away.  My lips are sealed.  You need to see this film.

“I am constantly surprised that women’s hats do not provoke more murders.”