Some Like it Hot

After watching Psycho (Norman Bates is watching me sleep...), I deserved to watch something light hearted. So after watching the very short A Trip to the Moon (a part of film history), Dad went to the video rental place down town and grabbed the 1959 movie Some Like it Hot, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe. He grabbed this because he knows that I like romantic comedies and cross dressing. It also meets his film history criteria. So everyone wins, yay!

The plot of Some Like it Hot has two guys, Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) working as musicians in gangster-ridden Chicago. They witness a hit and are forced to go into hiding in order to avoid being killed themselves. This involves dressing in drag and joining an all girls band. While there, the boys, now called Josephine and Daphne, meet Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe). Joe and Jerry kind of fight over Sugar for a bit, but Joe eventually wins, going so far as to impersonate a millionaire in order to win her. Jerry gets to live happy-ever-after with Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), an actual millionaire.

So, I'm not sure about anyone else, but what I took from this movie is that any girl worth having is either A) dumber than a box of rocks or B) a man. Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) is certainly very pretty and a sight to behold, but she isn't exactly the brightest thing around. Joe is able to lie to her and keep up two different identities around her and she doesn't question either of them. Then he reveals that not only has he been lying to her, a lot, but he is also one of those no good saxophone players that she has confessed that she is going to avoid from now on. Instead of slapping him silly and telling him to get lost, she falls into his arms to be forever his.

While it's cool that the movie showed women as something other than the pinnacle of primness (they tell dirty jokes, just like normal people! Ooooh!), it's less cool that there are an awful lot of shots of simply legs. Sugar is often in outfits that make her look naked, making her body more important than her mind. Why exactly does Joe like her? 'Cause I'm really not sure.

There is also the idea that what women want is to marry a millionaire. Failing that, we will totally take the no good bums we've been dating our entire lives. Heaven forbid we want someone who doesn't lie to us and a relationship based on mutual respect and affection.

I'm far fonder of Jerry/Daphne, whose character development can be seen through his growing comfort in high heels. He starts out barely knowing what to do with them, turning his ankles with every step. He quickly starts to be able to walk in them normally. When he starts to need to run in them, he starts off a little unsure, taking smaller steps. By the end of the movie, not only is he running full on in heels, but he's bounding up stairs in them, which is a lot harder than it seems. He ends up completely comfortable in this symbol of femininity, embracing his inner woman, and totally ready to accept the proposal of Osgood Fielding. Okay, so their marriage would be completely illegal in the time they're living in, but that doesn't actually seem to be a big concern of anyone involved. The illegality is certainly a bigger concern to them, though, than the fact that there may not be any attraction between them, which isn't even really brought up. Jerry is happy to have been proposed to and Osgood is cool with the fact that Jerry is a man. Keep him in a dress in public, and I see no reason their union can't happen. They can be rich eccentrics who keep to themselves. It'll be great.

There has to be fanfiction about that. There just has to be.