Review: One Day Only
The Seven Year Itch | Billy Wilder | USA | 1955 | 105 min
Sundance Cinemas, Wednesday, March 18, 1:50pm and 7:45pm»
Manhattan has a tradition dating back for centuries where the wives and children are sent away for the summer, and the men stay back and withstand the heat for business, explains the narrator at the beginning of Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch. With the wives gone the men become bachelors. When Richard (Tom Ewell) sends his wife and son away, he is determined to resist all urges, including cigarettes, alcohol and women. However, with a neighbor like The Girl upstairs (Marilyn Monroe), overcoming the seven-year itch is nearly impossible.
On the first night left alone he is determined to make all the right decisions. He eats at a vegetarian restaurant. He locks the cigarettes in a drawer and hides the key. He chooses a raspberry soda instead of a scotch on the rocks. And he attempts to get ahead in work by reading a client’s massive manuscript. But Richard’s weakness is his overly active imagination, and this is the driving force of most of the plot.
As he sits at home waiting for his wife’s nightly call, he starts to wonder why she assumes he wont be busy at 10pm. Does she assume he wont have anything better to do? His imagination starts picturing his wife laughing as he insists that he is alluring and approached constantly by attractive women. This delusion preempts his initial willingness to invite his new upstairs neighbor in for drink after her tomato plant almost drops on his head. But from the time of his initial invitation, until almost the end of the film, his bipolar imagination drives him to bounce back and forth in his feelings towards her. At first he lusts for her, then he believes she is manipulating him for his money, then he imagines she is badmouthing him on television, and then believes she an innocent that needs help.
The plot almost in its entirety is centered on Richard while he fights his consciousness, trying endlessly to figure out what is right and wrong. Richard has Jack Lemmon-like characteristics; he is goofing, almost delusional but sensitive. His skittishness and anxiety is necessary for the production of drama. The audience can’t relax very long, because within seconds Richard is onto a new imagined scenario.
The film is outdated in many respects, like the overall set-up of women leaving for the summer, the very innocent naiveté of Marilyn Monroe’s’ character, and the opening sequence with the “Indians.” But the portrayal of the vegetarian restaurant is almost spot on to satire seen today, except now it is unique vegans and other special diets. First off the menu: for dinner, Richard eats a soybean hamburger with french-fried soybeans, soybean and peppermint tea. He also has a cocktail, sauerkraut juice on the rocks. His waitress lets him know that his cocktail was only 240 calories. When he pays, the waitress insists that they don’t take tips but asks Richard to donate to a nudists fund. She then rants about the uselessness of clothes and how being naked could end war.
Billy Wilder’s films diverge from the typical, formulaic Hollywood films of the 1950s. He has become one of my favorite directors after I watched Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot, and Sabrina. The stories he utilizes are unique, some heavier than others but The Seven Year Itch ranks among the lightest. The film is intended to be somewhat silly, based on a somewhat ridiculous tradition.
Not only does this film have qualities of Wilder, but Monroe brings the same magnetism that she brings to all her performances. Though this film is not nearly up to par with Some Like It Hot, including Monroe’s performance, the film does outdo many Monroe films that I have merely seen because she was in them, like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire. And though she has the same innocent blonde persona as other films, some of the scenarios Richard imagines forces her to act a bit out against type. For instance, as he fantasizes about seducing her with Rachmaninoff she takes on a sophisticated persona, who speaks with a lower smooth voice and whose body is overtaken with the music.
The Seven Year Itch is a classic for Wilder and Monroe fans. The story is simple, fast-paced and entertaining, and the alternative screening at Sundance allows viewers to see this enjoyable film with a crowd on the big screen.
