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Billy Wilder's legendary cross-dressing comedy, Some Like It Hot, satisfies on split levels: silly and sophisticated, sweet and salacious, feminine and masculine -- often, all of these at once. Set in 1929, the film costars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as a pair of down-and-out Chicago musicians trying to escape the wrath of vicious gangsters. Posing as women, they sign on for an all-girl gig in Florida, where they both fall for the act's sexy lounge singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe). Lemmon's classic observation about Monroe, that she moves "like Jell-O on springs," is just the tip of the iceberg here. Some Like It Hot's snappy, sexually charged dialogue never lets up. But the movie’s more than just talk: Wilder displays storytelling virtuosity, unfolding his madcap tale at a giddy pace through a series of endless twists and turns. Yet, through it all, the characters and situations are realized with a clarity on the order of a Shakespearean comedy. Some deliberate male-female stereotyping early on yields quickly to subtle, urbane explorations of sexuality and sexual roles. Lemmon and Curtis prove to be perfect matches for this material, sliding in and out of drag and female personae with ease, with Curtis indulging in a sly Cary Grant caricature to boot. Monroe, meanwhile, is at her most vulnerable and voluptuous, serving as the explosive catalyst in one of the screen's greatest love triangles. Add to this Monroe's breathy renditions of "I'm Through with Love" and "I Wanna be Loved by You," and it's easy to see why Some Like It Hot is one of the most beloved comedies ever to come out of Hollywood. They don't make them better than this. Gregory Baird

All Movie Guide

The launching pad for Billy Wilder's comedy classic was a rusty old German farce, Fanfares of Love, whose two main characters were male musicians so desperate to get a job that they disguise themselves as women and play with an all-girl band in gangster-dominated 1929 Chicago. In this version, musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) lose their jobs when a speakeasy owned by mob boss Spats Columbo (George Raft) is raided by prohibition agent Mulligan (Pat O'Brien). Several weeks later, on February 14th, Joe and Jerry get a job perfroming in Urbana and end up witnessing a gangland massacre in a parking garage. Fearing that they will be next on the mobsters' hit lists, Joe devises an ingenious plan for disguising their identities. Soon they are all dolled up and performing as Josephine and Daphne in Sweet Sue's all-girl orchestra. En route to Florida by train with Sweet Sue's band, the boys (girls?) make the acquaintance of Sue's lead singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe, in what may be her best performance). Joe and Jerry immediately fall in love, though of course their new feminine identities prevent them from acting on their desires. Still, they are determined to woo her, and they enact an elaborate series of gender-bending ruses complicated by the fact that flirtatious millionaire Osgood Fielding (Joe E. Brown) has fallen in love with "Daphne." The plot gets even thicker when Spats Columbo and his boys show up in Florida. Nominated for several Oscars, Some Like It Hot ended up the biggest moneymaking comedy up to 1959. Full of hilarious set pieces and movie in-jokes, it has not tarnished with time and in fact seems to get better with each passing year, as its cross-dressing humor keeps it only more and more up-to-date. Hal Erickson

Product Details

• UPC: 027616151209
• Source: MGM (VIDEO & DVD)
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Vistavision (1.66:1)
• Presentation: B&W, Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English, Français
• Subtitles: English, Français
• Time: 2:02:00
• Sales Rank: 5,801

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• The Billy Wilder DVD Collection
• United Artists Super Deluxe Gift Set (90 films)
• Billy Wilder Gift Set
• Jack Lemmon Star Collection

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