Review: Some Like It Hot (1959)

IMDb Synopsis: When two musicians witness a mob hit, they flee the state in an all female band disguised as women, but further complications set in.


I think everyone has an answer when asked what they consider to be funniest film ever made. Most people, along with the American Film Institute, choose Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot. After finally watching it for the first time, I can see why.


Jack Lemmon is one of my favorite actors, one reason for this (and a lot of my other favorite actors) is because he's so versatile: he can do drama (Days of Wine and Roses) or comedy (The Apartment) and manage to be wonderful at both. It's quite obvious that he owns the film. I was really impressed by Tony Curtis, who also seems to have a lot of versatility- this was only a year after he played Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success.
In my reviews of How to Marry a Millionaire and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, I mentioned I wasn't a Marilyn Monroe fan for several reasons. However, I liked her in both of those films, and I thought she was wonderful as Sugar Kane. She's genuinely funny- I found myself cracking up at her quite a few times (if you've seen the film, I'm sure you know why). I didn't think I'd ever say this about Monroe, but I'm honestly surprised she didn't get any kind of recognition from The Academy. Joe Brown was also a really great addition to the cast, and delivers the famous closing line (which I'll mention towards the end of this review).


Billy Wilder is probably my second favorite director of all time (the first being Hitchcock). He's directed so many of my favorites, and I love his work because it remains timeless. After sixty one years, Sunset Blvd is captivating, and The Major and the Minor is still hilarious. I feel the same way about Frank Capra- so many of his films still delight movie watchers today. Some Like It Hot is no different. It's one of those movies that's bound to make you laugh, no matter how many times you've seen it. For instance, the closing dialogue between Jack Lemmon and Joe Brown:




Jerry: Oh no you don't! Osgood, I'm gonna level with you. We can't get married at all. 
Osgood: Why not? 
Jerry: Well, in the first place, I'm not a natural blonde. 
Osgood: Doesn't matter. 
Jerry: I smoke! I smoke all the time! 
Osgood: I don't care. 
Jerry: Well, I have a terrible past. For three years now, I've been living with a saxophone player. 
Osgood: I forgive you. 
Jerry:  I can never have children! 
Osgood: We can adopt some. 
Jerry: But you don't understand, Osgood! 
[Finally gives up and pulls off his wig]
Jerry: Ohh... I'm a man! 
Osgood: Nobody's perfect! 

If it isn't obvious, I'm giving Some Like It Hot 5/5 stars.

Review: Ace In the Hole (1951)

IMDb Synopsis: A frustrated former big-city journalist now stuck working for an Albuquerque newspaper exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to re-jump start his career, but the situation quickly escalates into an out-of-control circus.


Billy Wilder is one of my favorite directors, who made quite a few of my favorite films- Sunset Blvd, Double Indemnity, Stalag 17 and The Apartment being just a few of them. Being a huge Wilder fan, I expected quite a lot from Ace In the Hole. I'm glad to say my expectations were met.


I'm starting to become a big fan of Kirk Douglas (and I have TCM to thank for that as I've seen several of his films since he's Star of the Month for September), and this is the best performance from him that I've seen so far. I thought it was really interesting to see him as the "bad guy" since he plays more of the hero-type in films like Spartacus. The cast itself is made up of several marvelous actors, including Jan Sterling,  Porter Hall and Richard Benedict.


Billy Wilder's direction is wonderful, but considering it's from the same man who made Sunset Blvd, I'm not surprised.  Also worth mentioning is the extremely well written script from Wilder and screenwriters Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman, which was nominated for Best Story and Screenplay at the 1952 Academy Awards.


Overall, I found Ace In the Hole to be a wonderful film noir, thanks to both Wilder and Kirk Douglas. I'll be watching this again soon.

5/5 stars

Film Noir Contest: Sunset Boulevard (1950)

..My post for Film Classics Film Noir Contest. I know this post is a bit late, as I just found out about it last night.

Two films instantly come to my mind when I hear the words "film noir": Sunset Boulevard and The Maltese Falcon.
Since I just wrote about Falcon a few months ago, I decided to talk about Sunset instead.


Sunset Boulevard is what I consider to be the best film noir to come out  of Hollywood in the nineteen-fifties. It's one of my favorites and is considered one of the greatest films of all time by many critics.

Sometimes, when discussing or reviewing a film, it's said that one certain element completes it- whether it be the acting, the plot, the direction, the score, etc. With Sunset Boulevard, it's all of these elements and more that make it the phenomenal film it is today.

William Holden, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim all deliver wonderful performances (as they all received Oscar nominations), but it's really Gloria Swanson's film. As much as I loved Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday, Swanson should have won the Best Actress Academy Award in 1951, since she gave possibly the greatest screen performance of all time. I always find myself feeling mesmerized during the final scene as she says, "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up", as she descends into madness:

Sunset Blvd wouldn't be the great film it is without Billy Wilder. From his flawless direction, to his infamously quotable script ("I am big. It's the pictures that got small."). He and Swanson both make the film complete. I think Roger Ebert summed it up best when he wrote:

"...who else can field two contenders among the greatest closing lines of all time? From ``Some Like It Hot'' there is ``Nobody's perfect.'' And from ``Sunset Boulevard,'' Norma Desmond's: ``There's nothing else. Just us, and the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my closeup.'' 

credit: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19990627/REVIEWS08/906270301/1023

If you haven't seen Sunset Blvd yet, you can do so here. Also, a big thanks to David from Film Classics for hosting this contest!

May Noir of the Month: Double Indemnity (1944)

IMDb Synopsis: An insurance rep lets himself be talked into a murder/insurance fraud scheme that arouses an insurance investigator's suspicions.




This month, I'm going to be writing about one of the most popular film noirs of all time: Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. Released by Paramount Pictures in 1944, it stars Barbara Stanwyck as sultry femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson and Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff, the insurance salesman that gets caught in her web.




This film was based on a novella of the same name written by James Cain (one of his other novels, The Postman Always Rings Twice, was also adapted as a film noir in 1946 and starred Lana Turner and John Garfield). After it's publication in 1935, Cain sent copies of Double Indemnity to the major studios in Hollywood.  Shortly after, Warner Brothers, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Columbia and Paramount were all fighting to buy film rights. All the studios canceled their bids, however, after Joseph Breen from the Hays Office sent out a letter in which he warned:


"The general low tone and sordid flavor of this story makes it, in our judgment, thoroughly unacceptable for screen presentation before mixed audiences in the theater. I am sure you will agree that it is most important…to avoid what the code calls "the hardening of audiences," especially those who are young and impressionable, to the thought and fact of crime"- (taken from Wikipedia)


This was not unusual for Hollywood at the time, as the Hays Code had just been enforced the year before. Cain's original novel dealt with several elements, such as sensuality, adultery, and murder- things than had been almost taboo in motion pictures at the time. Eight years later in 1943, the script was edited and the rights were bought for $15,000 as a picture for director Billy Wider.

Double Indemnity was Wilder's third film as a director, and one of his best. He directed many film noirs including Sunset Blvd (my favorite noir of all time), Ace In the Hole, and Witness for the Prosecution. Some of his other triumphs include The Major and the Minor (his directing debut), The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, and The Lost Weekend, the film that received Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Ray Milland. 


I once heard someone say that Barbara Stanwyck seems almost "miscast as the femme fatale". This was because Stanwyck had never come close to a role like that of Phyllis Dietrichson. In fact, when Wilder offered her the role, she confessed to him that she was a bit frightened of playing a killer, to which he replied, "Are you an actress or a mouse?". He convinced her to play the part, and she later said in 1972 she had "been grateful to him since". I've seen several of Stanwyck's films, as she is one of my favorite actresses, and I think this was the best performance of her career. 

Other standout performances are from Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson. MacMurray plays the man  seduced by Stanwyck into killing her husband, and Robinson is the one who discovers the secret behind their devious scheme. I haven't viewed many films starring either of these actors, but Double Indemnity is considered their best by many.

If I had to choose the one scene that stands out the most in the film, I'd probably say  the scene in which MacMurray murders Stanwyck's husband, played by actor Tom Powers. The murder is not shown, but the feel that Wilder and the actors give make it all the more real and suspenseful. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find it on YouTube, as I would have provided a link here.)


Double Indemnity is without a doubt an ultimate must-see for any classic film fan, and one of the best film noirs to come out of Hollywood in the 1940s. If you have not done so already, I highly recommend checking out this suspenseful masterpiece from Billy Wilder.

My Picks: The 50 Best Male Performances in Film

 Just like my previous post, I'll be listing my top fifty male performances. Again, I'm not limiting myself to one role per actor.

My top 50, in alphabetical order by film title:

Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Allnut in The African Queen (1951, John Huston)

Harold Russell as Homer Parish in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, William Wyler)

Cary Grant as Dudley The Bishop's Wife (1947, Henry Koster)

Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)

Paul Newman as Brick Pollitt in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1958, Richard Brooks)

Jack Lemmon as Joe Clay in Days of Wine and Roses (1962, Blake Edwards)

Sidney Poitier as Noah Cullen & 

Tony Curtis as John Jackson in The Defiant Ones (1958, Stanley Kramer)

Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)

James Dean as Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955, Elia Kazan)

Andy Griffith as Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes in A Face In the Crowd (1957, Elia Kazan)

Burt Lancaster as Milton Warden,

Frank Sinatra as Angelo Maggio &

Montgomery Clift as Robert Prewitt in From Here to Eternity (1953, Fred Zinnemann)

Bing Crosby as Father Chuck O'Malley in Going My Way (1944, Leo McCarey)

Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind (1939, Victor Fleming)

Henry Fonda as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940, John Ford)

Spencer Tracy as Matt Drayton in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967, Stanley Kramer)

Henry Travers as Clarence &

James Stewart as George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra)

Clark Gable as Peter Warne in It Happened One Night (1934, Frank Capra)

Gregory Peck as Father Francis Chisholm in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944, John Stahl)

Dana Andrews as Mark McPherson in Laura (1944, Otto Preminger)

Sidney Poitier as Homer Smith in Lilies of the Field (1963, Ralph Nelson)

Ray Milland as Don Birnam in The Lost Weekend (1945, Billy Wilder)

Peter O'Toole as King Henry II in The Lion in Winter (1968, Anthony Harvey)

Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gough in Lust for Life (1956, Vincent Minnelli)

Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston)

Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine in The Man With the Golden Arm (1955, Otto Preminger)

Ernest Borgnine as Marty Piletti in Marty (1955, Delbert Man)

Dick Van Dyke as Bert in Mary Poppins (1964, Robert Stevenson)

Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds in Mr. Deeds Comes to Town (1936, Frank Capra)

Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin in Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)

Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954, Elia Kazan)

Montgomery Clift as George Eastman in A Place in the Sun (1951, George Stevens)

Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees (1942, Sam Wood)

Leslie Howard as Henry Higgins in Pygmalion (1938, Anthony Asquith)

James Dean as Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (155, Nicholas Ray)

Gregory Peck as Joe Bradley in Roman Holiday (1953, William Wyler)

Joseph Cotten as Charles Oakley in Shadow of a Doubt (1943, Alfred Hitchcock)

Gene Kelly as Don Lockwood in Singin' In the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen)

Warren Beatty as Bud Stamper in Splendor In the Grass (1961, Eliz Kazan)

James Mason as Norman Maine in A Star Is Born (1954, George Cukor)

Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony in Strangers On a Train (1951, Alfred Hitchcock)

William Holden as Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd (1950, Billy Wilder)

Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch & Phillip Alford as Jim Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, Robert Mulligan)

James Stewart as John "Scottie" Ferguson in Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)

Robert Taylor as Roy Cronin in Waterloo Bridge (1940, Mervyn LeRoy)

Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1939, William Wyler)