Review of The Seven Year Itch (1955) by Paul B — 02 Aug 2009

Billy Wilder's humor remains as sharp as ever; it's really extraordinary. Today, the ways that Wilder pushes the envelope in "The Seven Year Itch" are hardly shocking anymore (nothing is).

Maybe that's just what makes the movie so great. Modern comedies don't seem to have much of anywhere to go, having explored every extreme of language and bodily functions. There will always be conservative audiences somewhere who can be caught off guard, but for the most part we've seen it all, and it doesn't even have the appeal of novelty anymore.

Comic filmmakers, given very few restrictions as to content, feel the need to show us everything with ephemerally shocking literalness. Fifty years from now, the vast majority of early 21st-century comedies will be absolutely useless.

Not so with Wilder. His films remain subversive in all the best ways. At every turn, "Itch" encourages the imagination to work. As the plot unfolds, it becomes easy to see why this is. The film is an impressive work of imagination that is also about imagination, and the control it can exert over a person's will if he doesn't control it first.

The story indulges a fantasy, as only Hollywood can, about a man who indulges his fantasies. It's a crash course on irony and how it can be used most effectively. Tom Ewell's character is a hopelessly boring individual who nevertheless dreams big and has a way, with the help of movie magic, or passing his dreams off as reality.

It comes as no small surprise when the most desirable woman in the world walks into Ewell's life, for real, and with apparently no qualms about spending an evening with him of all people. His family away for the summer, he is, incredibly, in the perfect position to have an affair.

That he doesn't really have one might be cause for some frustration on the audience's part if the film weren't so funny. Marilyn Monroe is actually quite terrific in the film: she's playing dumb, but with enough intelligence to know exactly what she's doing and how to capitalize on it.

As for Ewell, he masters the art of the monologue as few actors in movie history ever have. The script introduces jokes and situations that are hilariously repeated later, with interest. As the opening scenes illustrate, the core situation of the plot is eternally up-to-date, blowing up masculine vices and shortcomings to CinemaScope proportions.