Some Like It Hot (1959, Billy Wilder, USA)

A Level Film Studies - Focus Film Factsheet Some Like it Hot (1959, Billy Wilder, USA) • Spotlighting is used when Sugar Kane Component 1: Varieties of (Marilyn Monroe) sings “I Wanna Be Film and Film-Making (AL) Loved By You”, emphasising her beauty and Component 1: American Film (AS) hiding in shadow her transparent dress. Mise-en-Scène Core Study Areas: • Objects and costume connote characters’ social Key Elements of Film Form status; Spat wears expensive shiny shoes, Meaning & Response indicating his superior gangster status, while The Contexts of Film Charlie’s toothpick suggesting his low status. • Forms of transport, such as the train, bicycle, Specialist Study Area: yacht and motorboat, are key motifs emphasising Auteur (AL) the theme of journeys and transformation. • The characters are doubles - Sugar and Rationale for study Daphne are both blondes and act like sisters, while Osgood and Jo dress alike, give the • Some like it Hot is one of the great same gifts, and use the same boat. American comedies, with witty dialogue, memorable images and one of the most Editing famous endings in film history. • The film adheres to the Classical Hollywood mode of continuity editing throughout. • The film’s cross-dressing and entangled • Rapid whip-pans are used in the cuts between identities challenge traditional sex- Sugar and Jo on the yacht and Daphne and roles and enable complex readings. Osgood on the dance-floor to connote the two sites of action happening simultaneously. STARTING POINTS - Useful • The famous “nobody’s perfect” ending is Sequences and timings/links held as a two-shot at eye-level to heighten the comedy - we see the reactions of • “Jello on springs” 23mins Osgood and Daphne simultaneously. • “I’m through with Love” and Sound “Nobody’s Perfect” 1hr 50mins • Sugar’s musical performances momentarily halt the narrative and function as both spectacle and an insight into Sugar’s inner feelings e.g. CORE STUDY AREAS 1 - STARTING “Runnin’ Wild” and “I Wanna Be Loved by You”. POINTS - Key Elements of Film Form (Micro Features) • “I’m through with Love” is used as a dramatic device to reunite Jo and Sugar. Cinematography • The film is shot in black and white to connote the historical period (1920s) and to make the costume CORE STUDY AREAS 2 - STARTING and make-up seem less garish and outlandish. POINTS – Meaning & Response • Sugar Kane is often in the centre of the frame Representations with a full light to display her features. The • Sugar Kane is first represented from a lighting often highlights Marilyn Monroe’s male perspective. The camera fetishizes blonde hair, wide eyes and cheekbones. the bottom half of her body from Jo and 1 A Level Film Studies - Focus Film Factsheet Jerry’s point-of-view. On the train, Sugar’s a new, more open attitude towards sex. body is further displayed as she removes Institutional the brandy flask from her garter. • The 1948 Paramount Decree marked the • However, the film then goes beyond presenting end of the dominance of the ‘Big 5’ studios. women simply as objects of desire, as Jo and As a result, smaller studios such as United Jerry/Daphne gain a greater sensitivity towards Artists (UA) took the opportunity to produce women and question their own roles as men. major pictures. UA was hugely successful • The film’s playfulness with gender roles in the 1950s, with increased profits and and the film’s ending can be read as A-list stars on non-exclusive contracts, a performative view of gender which such as Tony Curtis and Rita Hayworth. defies heterosexual romantic norms. Aesthetics (i.e. the ‘look and feel’ of the film including visual style, SPECIALIST STUDY AREA - Auteur influences, auteur, motifs) Starting points • Some Like it Hot is cine-literate, evoking • Billy Wilder wrote and directed a diverse range the gangster films of the 1930s with of commercial Hollywood films, including film black and white photography and generic noirs (Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard) iconography. It combines elements of and comedies (The Seven Year Itch, The gangster film, the comedy and the musical. Apartment). What unifies Wilder’s diverse films are the themes of deception and disguise, a tight script and witty, memorable dialogue. CORE STUDY AREAS 3 - STARTING • Billy Wilder cultivated Marilyn Monroe’s POINTS - Contexts star persona, having previously directed her Social in The Seven Year Itch (1955). This film, • Some Like it Hot reflects a changing, more along with Some Like it Hot, contributes permissive America and the decline in to Monroe’s persona as a combination adherence to the Hollywood production code. of naivety and alluring sexuality. Marilyn Monroe’s overt sexuality represented 2.

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