The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Growing up I spent a lot of time watching, and mostly liking, classic Hollywood movies and musicals my mum forced me to watch with her. However, looking back on them now, I never find them as funny, captivating or amusing as I did, not to mention the era’s racist, sexist and homophobic humour and themes that I now recognise as an adult. A lot of the time I find ‘comedies’ made in that time offensive, stupid and just unfunny, however I’m surprised to say that The Seven Year Itch actually made me laugh. If you bypass the shameless brownface and blatant sexism, a lot of the writing was extremely witty, and Richard’s out of control imagination created some funny moments.

The film begins with the idea that every summer, New York gets too hot for women and children’s little fragile, delicate bodies to take, and the men have to send them away to the country for the weeks to come. During this time, the men throw their already almost non-existent morals out the window and have fun drinking, smoking and ogling young women. In the thick of this is Richard (Tom Ewell), whose wife has ordered him to not do any of the above while she is away. He obliges, until he finds a young, blonde model (Marilyn Monroe) has moved into the apartment above him. The rest of the film revolves around Richard fighting to stay faithful to his wife (who appears throughout the film in force ghost like fashion) while The Girl unknowingly makes life harder for him.

I found the film’s humour to be quite witty at some points, actually eliciting a chuckle or two, and also found myself enjoying the fake scenarios Richard conceived in his mind. Wilder’s beliefs that a film should engage the audience with it’s narrative and not it’s stylistic factors were obvious, as the it was quite simplistic in it’s camerawork and mise-en-scene. The use of visual effects such as Richard’s wife appearing as a figment of his imagination was very impressive for 1955. The plot was easy to follow, but possibly too simplistic and very obviously catered to old, straight, white men who can relate to Richard’s predicament. In fact it seems like the plot of all Marilyn Monroe’s films are just “Boyoyoing! Now this beautiful, blonde bombshell is here I suddenly can’t concentrate on being faithful to my wife/job/friend/child/pet!”

I would recommend the film to anyone who has affinity for classic Hollywood cinema, as it’s definitely one of the more entertaining films to come out of the time period that I've seen. It's a simple plot, but it's an easy watch and provides some good laughs, and in my opinion was probably too smart for it's time. In my ranking of Billy Wilder movies, it's definitely not Sabrina level good, but is funnier, more enjoyable and less "I-understand-that-it's-the-era-it-was-made-but-I'm-actually-very-uncomfortable-at-the-level-of-sexism-portrayed-as-flippant-humour" than Some Like it Hot.