Rent Some Like It Hot (1959)

Neo Screwball. - Some Like It Hot review by Steve

Billy Wilder revives the screwball comedy, about 20 years after its golden age. As was typical of his mentor Ernst Lubitsch, the director returns to Europe for his story, a '30s French farce called Fanfare d'Amour, and transplants it to the US, to the Chicago of the jazz age and prohibition.

Two musician pals (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) witness a gangland hit and go on the run in drag as part of a female swing group, fronted by Marilyn Monroe.  Screwball was usually about boy meets girl. Here, the two men drive the narrative. What we now call a bromance...

But their relationship complicated by the predicament that they are in the guise two female jazz musicians and travelling with a party hard girl band. Like most screwball comedy, it is a masquerade; characters pretending to be something they are not. The exception is Monroe, who doesn't know that Curtis is a man, so candidly exposes her heart.

Marilyn was famously impossible on set, but she delivers a performance (and a couple of good vocals), not just dumb blonde schtick. Lemmon and Curtis are inspired. On the threshold of the '60s, Lemmon succeeds Cary Grant as the great comedy star of his era. This is a fabulous spectacle of comic imagination. 

Better first time - Some Like It Hot review by JD

When I remembered seeing this 20 years ago I thought it was a timeless classic. It is a classic, but the acting, particularly from Lemmon, is cringeingly bad. The Chicago mob are unlikely to have been RADA. Tony Curtis and Marilyn however shine through this dross to make it worth rewatching.