Golden Age Comedy Hall of Fame (1952-1976)

Such a prestigious film deserves a huge photo!..I love that war room set! And Kubrick shot it from so many different angles that it was hard deciding which photo I wanted to use. I almost just went with a photo of Tracy Reed, I mean who doesn't love a photo of a pretty girl in a bikini. Though it's funny that she's in General 'Bucks' (George C. Scott) bedroom at 3am and is laying in bed wearing high heels and a bikini. I guess General Buck likes em that way But what exactly was he doing in the bathroom when Brig.General Ripper calls? I guess we'll never know and that's what makes the movie so cleverly funny, it's all of these hidden comic situations that are so subtle that you have to think about them to get them. Like the scene where Keenan Wynn finds General Ripper shot dead in the bathroom...while shaving. While shaving? Ha, Did that have something to do with conserving precious bodily fluids?

Kubrick is undeniably one of the great directors. Most all of his movies show spectacularism, coupled with restraint...which then results in a beautiful crated film that never force feeds emotions onto us. I could go on and on about the sets and filming techniques that Kubrick employs, the word 'superb' is hardly adequate for the level that Kubrick takes his films to.

Kudos to the army base battle scene. I'm talking about the choice of a hand held (16mm?) camera that's used at near ground level to simulate actual war footage. The results is a noticeably grainy stock that looks like early Vietnam war documentary film. For Kubrick to do that back in 1964 was pure genius.

Kudos to the interior of the B-52 bombers. Hot damn, those cockpits and bomb controls looked real to me. Of course most of us have never seen the inside of a B-52 but I can image they'd look a lot like what we seen on the screen. The entire film is amazing in the visuals.

And a huge shout out to some very fine performances. Everyone seems to single out Sterling Harden as the war and fluid obsessed Brig Gen Ripper...and he owned that role too! But my favorite was Peter Sellers as the President and as Capt. Mandrake.

The other stand out for me (and every actor was good in this) is George C. Scott. Loved how the film started off with this crusty General who's more interested in his secretary than an important call from a superior officer, ha!

I could write a few thousand words on this movie But I'll wrap it up, I promise!.....Freakin amazing film This was my second watch. The first time was many years ago and I liked it then. This time around my opinion has climbed even higher. Who knows how high it could go with a third watch.

Marilyn Monroe is smokin' hot in this...Tony Curtis & Jack Lemmon are riotously funny...the supporting cast is a hoot, and the shooting location exotic, but the real star of 1959's Some Like it Hot is Billy Wilder himself.

These days movie fans give a huge amount of credit to the director, but a movie is only as good as its script and if one thing is true of a Billy Wilder film, they have great scripts! Wilder's scripts often pushed the boundaries on social conventions, that's what makes his films so memorable.

Some Like it Hot took 1950's audiences on an adult themed comic ride, while exploring male/female gender roles. It does this exploration coupled with a well though out story of 1929's Probation gangsters who rub out the competition in the infamous St Valentine's Day massacre. By combing different genres, Wilder is able to give a believably real motivation to our two cross dressing stars. His film goes much deeper than just a Milton Berle style shtick of a man in a dress...Wilder comes up with a real motivation for our two fellows to have to really live as women, so they can save their own lives! That makes a huge difference to the scope of how they act and interact, as women in the movie.

What struck me as very interesting was that Lemmon and Curtis don't hold back as female impersonators. One would expect a 1950's film to have them doing cheap gags, but the two for most of the film behave as if they were women, especially Lemmon. One of the film's funniest parts was towards the end when Lemmon has convinced himself that he's a girl (by repeating over and over) then has a hot date with veteran comic actor Joe E. Brown. The next day he/she is all giddy over the diamond bracelet and announces he/she will marry the millionaire. That prompts the line from Tony Curtis:
"You're a guy! And why would a guy want to marry a guy?"
Just the idea that Jack Lemmon living as a girl would marry Joe E. Brown must have ruffled more than a few feathers....Billy Wilder is really pushing the envelope by exploring different aspects of genderism here.

The film is fun without being overly silly, it flows without ever going astray. I loved the idea of using older actors from the 1930s to play the gangsters in this period piece film. We not only get George Raft but Joe E Brown, Pat O'Brien to name a few old timers...And then there's Marilyn in that Orry-Kelly gown, damn I though she was topless for a second! What a provocative dress! Even the back side stuns with a deep plunge right down to her assets!