First of I'd like to address the elephant in the room: the sole reason Some Like it Hot is remembered today. At the end of the film the male bassist Jerry, pretending to be a female bassist, Daphne, is engaged to be married to millionaire Osgood Fielding III so that he (Jerry) can gain access to his (Osgood's) enormous fortune, reveal the ruse, and abscond with the money. However, Jerry gets second thoughts and decides he wants to break off the engagement, and tries to convince Osgood that they cannot be married for a variety of reasons from not being a natural blond to being infertile. Osgood dismisses all of these, but then Jerry admits to being a man to which Osgood responds "Well, nobody's perfect." ending the film. There is a ton to unpack with this final joke and since this topic is right in my wheelhouse I'm gonna dig right in. So first off this heavily implies that Osgood is bisexual with a preference toward women. For a 50's movie this is surprising representation to be sure, and at no point in the film is this ever considered to be a source of ridicule and isn't even hinted at until that final line. This is really what makes the joke work. Today it reads very much as a joke on the audience for assuming Osgood has no romantic or sexual interest in men. Jerry's reaction is one of exasperation, but it's implied that has more to do with his frustration that Osgood isn't deterred rather than any hate or fear of Osgood himself. The joke really works in this context and I don't feel at all attacked or at all like the joke is on bisexual/homosexual people. The target of the joke is the people who assume a gay/straight binary.
However, not all is perfect, and it is the 50's after all, so something's got to give. Unfortunately, in this case it's the other joke surrounding Osgood. He's a predator. The reason Jerry gets engaged to Osgood in the first place is because Osgood relentlessly pursues and even sexually assaults Jerry while he's disguised as Daphne. This feeds into a lot of homo/bi phobic stereotypes of hyper-sexuality and predatory behavior that have been and continue to be socially pervasive. So naturally that's a bit of an unfortunate consequence of this final joke as it re-contextualizes Osgood's behavior to being symptomatic of his sexual orientation. On the other hand, Osgood's predatory behavior is understood until the end to be emblematic of predatory behaviors men exhibit towards women, and is the butt of the joke. So for the majority of the movie Osgood's predatory behavior seems to be a joke skewering the predatory behavior of men, and by making the target of this predatory behavior a sympathetic male character pretending to be a woman the film encourages its male audience to think about the effects of their predatory behavior on women. I have no idea what was on the filmmaker's minds when constructing the character of Osgood, if they were playing on homo/bi phobic stereotypes, or weren't even considering such and instead were trying to question male predatory behavior. To be honest it doesn't really matter, each joke on its own works incredibly well and is surprisingly progressive, but taken together as part of a complete narrative, problems begin to show. It really is one of those things that gets worse the more you think about it.
Now that that's out of the way what did I think of the actual movie. All of the above concerns only one, small, sub-plot, interesting though that subplot may be. Well, I had a blast. There is something missing from modern attempts at comedy. A kind of intelligent wit that focuses on rapid clever dialogue that heavily exploits puns, double entendres, and dramatic irony. The sort of thing where if I were to copy and paste lines of dialogue without context the joke would be entirely missing. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't at least attempt to explain a few such as the "Friends of Italian Opera" convention being a cover up for a meeting of a national crime syndicate. Mulligan who is investigating shows up to see if he can gather any evidence on the organization and has this exchange with one of the gangsters:
Spats Colombo: Hello, copper. What brings you to Miami?
Mulligan: Heard you "opera lovers" were having a convention, so I thought I'd better be around in case anybody decided to sing.
Another fun line comes from Sweet Sue the conductor of the all girl band protagonists, Jerry and Joe, are a part of disguised as women:
Sweet Sue: Well, that's all for tonight, folks. This is Sweet Sue reminding all you daddy-Os out there that every girl in my band is a virtuoso, and I intend to keep it that way.
Another fun line comes from Sweet Sue the conductor of the all girl band protagonists, Jerry and Joe, are a part of disguised as women:
Sweet Sue: Well, that's all for tonight, folks. This is Sweet Sue reminding all you daddy-Os out there that every girl in my band is a virtuoso, and I intend to keep it that way.
I really wish more modern comedies would emphasize this kind of linguistically driven humor... Ok one more exchange less reliant on context but also highlights the films use of Osgood to comment on predatory men:
Jerry: [referring to Osgood] That dirty old man!
Joe: What happened?
Jerry: I just got pinched in the elevator!
Joe: Now you know how the other half lives.
Jerry: [looks in a mirror] Look at that! I'm not even pretty!
Joe: They don't care. Just as long as you're wearing a skirt. It's like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
Jerry: Really? Well, I'm sick of being the flag. I want to be a bull again!
You may notice I haven't really commented on the plot. In these kind of movies it hardly matters, Joe and Jerry are pretending to be women in an all women band as they are on the run because they witnessed a gangland shooting and the gangsters want to tie up loose ends. Rich guy Osgood falls in love with Jerry as Daphne (and apparently Jerry as Jerry), and Joe falls in love with singer and Ukulele player Sugar Kane (not her real name: she changed it from Sugar Kowalczyk). Joe pretends to be the millionaire son of the owner of Shell Oil to win Sugar over, and Jerry maintains his Daphne disguise to get rich off Osgood. Its a standard farce romcom setup that does a serviceable job in setting up and delivering the humor with no real surprising twists. The gangs coincidentally meet up in Miami where the women's band is performing, spots Joe and Jerry, forcing them to attempt to break off their respective engagements with Osgood and Sugar and get away. They both come clean to their respective targets, and their relationships are miraculously sustained (much to Jerry's chagrin). Really if it weren't for the rather transgressive (at the time) narrative of men crossdressing and the joke that caps off the whole film I'd be willing to bet Some Like it Hot wouldn't be nearly as well remembered. It's definitely not a bad movie, its a brilliantly executed comedy, but it does little else to stand out from other comedies of the era. If that's what you're in the mood for, however, Some Like it Hot is certainly not a bad option.
Had fun with this one. Its always interesting to me to dissect issues of representation in older films when attitudes were so very different. Sometimes you hit upon a movie like this one that actually has some positivity to it. Coming up Tuseday we're starting to dip into the 60's with the Oscar winning biopic: The Miracle Worker
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