The Seven Year Itch: Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch plays like a collision between the spontaneity and aesthetic of Frank Tashlin and the imaginary harem from Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963). Flights of fancy blur the lines surrounding the diegetic space of the narrative. Here is a universe where vegetarian waitresses will go off on diatribes about the benefits of nudism, daydreams become reality, and Marilyn Monroe materializes out of nothing to tempt poor, unfortunate married men who have sent their wife and children to Maine for the summer. Richard Sherman is one such sap. Determined to stick to the straight and narrow while his family is away, his willpower is tested when the Blonde Bombshell herself moves into the apartment above his. The film is essentially about infidelity, a topic which was banned by the Production Code. But the genius of the film is that it is about Sherman's increasingly futile attempts to not cheat on his wife. Wilder is perhaps more well known for his later collaboration with Monroe in Some Like It Hot (1959). But despite a plot that was preordained to end in the triumph of traditional morals and marriage, the film is no less revolutionary an examination of sexual norms and gender roles. Aided in great part by Milton R. Krasner's candy-coated cinematography,  Tom Ewell's frantic performance as Sherman, and, of course, the immortal presence of Ms. Monroe, The Seven Year Itch is a magnificent comedy and an irreplaceable part of American pop culture.

8/10