The Seven Year Itch

This 1955 movie is often thought of as Marilyn Monroe's best. Adapted from a popular play the movie was written and produced by Billy Wilder.

In the movie we meet Richard Sherman married to Helen. Richard is a publishing executive specializing in twenty five cent books. As the movie begins Mr. Sherman is sending his wife and son to Maine for the summer.

Telling himself that he will heed his Doctor and his Wife and not drink or smoke this summer he settles down for the evening. Soon his life is turned topsy turvy by the doorbell to his duplex. He lets a young blonde woman, played by Marilyn Monroe, into the building and learns that she is subletting the upstairs apartment for the summer.

A later introduction by way of a falling flowerpot and soon the two of them are sharing his air conditioning and drinks and Sherman is having daydreams about his relationship with the girl. A large part of the movie is made up of these fantasies.

Tom Ewell as the everyman Sherman does a good job but the star is clearly Marilyn. My wife had recently watched the NBC show Smash and as that focused on a musical about Marilyn she told me she found the voice of the real Marilyn distracting.

The movie features one of the twentieth centuries most iconic images, that of Marilyn with her dress blowing up from a passing subway.

With all that the movie while entertaining is not that good. The imagination scenes while frequent are more farcical than funny. Monroe is attractive, girlish and all the things that made her famous. The movie is one worth seeing but it is a stretch to call it that good, it is a classic in the sense that it displays all that made Marilyn Marilyn, it is not however a great movie.

The Apartment

This movie was a huge success winning Best Picture in 1960. A strong cast in this movie from Billy Wilder. I must admit that I found the cast to be strong, especially Fred MacMurray playing against type as a womanizing executive.

However I also found the movie to be unsettling and depressing. Jack Lemmon plays CC Baxter a young executive who has somehow allowed senior executives to use his apartment as a den of adulterous behavior.

Rising steadily through the company due to his flexibility with the executives Baxter is infatuated with an elevator attendant in the company played by a young and to me surprisingly attractive Shirley Maclaine. She however is currently the most recent girl on a string of the filandering HR Director played by MacMurray. Growing up watching him playing the Dad on My Three Sons made this a shock to the system.

A well done movie. An interesting story with some humor. Still as I find this shocking and unsettling, I can only imagine how this movie played in Middle America in 1960. Jack Lemmon is a wonderful actor but this movie was no hit for me.