AsiaLIFE

The small motorboat is sailing off into the horizon, Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis are kissing in the back seat while out front Joe E Brown is whisking Jack Lemmon off to his luxury yacht. Still in drag Lennon lists the reasons why he cannot marry Brown–he smokes, he’s not a real blonde, he has lived for years with a saxophone player. Throughout Brown maintains a resolute “I don’t mind”. Eventually Lennon tears off his wig announcing that he is a man. In probably the most famous closing line in cinematographic history, Brown responds: “Nobody’s Perfect.”
To many Some Like It Hot (1959) is director Billy Wilder’s perfect movie. Judged the best comedy movie in American cinema by the American Film Institute, it is also ranked 14th in the organisation’s top 100 films of the twentieth century.

Wilder’s genius lies in taking a routine plot line and giving it a twist. Two musicians oversee a mob killing in Chicago and hide themselves in a travelling band, this is hardly groundbreaking stuff. But by choosing to make the band all female, Wilder crosses transgender boundaries. Macho, womanising Curtis has to hide in furs and tights in order to save his neck.

The tension behind the twist makes a farcical comedy into a masterpiece.

Although now widely acclaimed as one, if not the, funniest film of all time, Some Like It Hot was not as great a critical success at the time as his follow-up film, The Apartment. Also starring Lennon, but this time teaming up with a youthful Shirley MacLaine, Wilder scooped Oscars for Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay for the latter film.

Again the master director’s focus is not as others would like. By choosing to cast Lennon as a man who lets out his apartment to work colleagues for personal advancement in the office, Wilder has chosen a weak central character that is not instantly likeable. However, the making of the man is the making of the film, with Lennon winning both the audience and MacLaine in the final sequences.

Something that made Wilder stand out as a director was his ability to play against type, evidence Curtis in drag and wholesome Fred MacMurray as a skunk in both The Apartment and Double Indemnity. He also made stars perform. Monroe is a revelation in Some Like It Hot, proving she was more than a blonde bombshell.

Never afraid to explore the darker side of humanity, Wilder’s classic film noir Sunset Boulevard is almost too painful to watch. Starting with William Holden’s drowned body floating in a pool, the whole film is played in flashback from the view of the dead man as he becomes ensnared by faded movie star Gloria Swanson. One of the strongest indictments of Hollywood’s star system, Sunset Boulevard is consistently voted as one of the best films of all time.

After The Apartment Wilder’s career went into a decline. While his latter films fail to match up to his earlier work, this just goes to prove, as written on Wilder’s headstone, that nobody’s perfect.