Some Like It Hot

In an elegant little speech at the Academy Awards imbroglio the other night, Jacques Tati modestly observed that he was Hollywood's nephew, not its uncle. His gracious self-deprecation probably escaped much of the audience, so mightily absorbed in figuring its scores and misses in terms of lucre.

Yet Tati's tribute to early filmland farce, which differed generally from the modern product because it was not altogether unconscious, was apt as well as flattering. Some Like It Hot, unlike most recent domestic attempts, follows the tradition of Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin that Tati revered. It's a welcome arrival on the local scene.

Billy Wilder, the producer, director, and co-author of the script, probably took some sort of commercial chance when he chose a transvestite setting for his sex spoof. Except for occasional shifting of buttocks, however, the usually queasy Boston audience has little trouble transcending its sidewalk morality-so broad is the funny business, so obvious the references.

Wilder took much less of a commercial chance in signing up Marilyn Monroe for her first role in two years. In Some Like It Hot, she proves what the psychiatrists, the social critics and press agents have been saying throughout the lengthy hiatus: she qualifies as one of the remarkable public personalities of the day. Her talent, as revealed in the film, lies in an ability to say every line as a double entendre-meanings that are not smutty because the listener thinks of both of them simultaneously. Her presence is like the telling of a dirty joke whose punch line everyone knows, and thus she is a clean, nay immaculate, dirty joke.

A sophisticated script, which gets such a good shake from Wilder's direction, concerns the flight of two musicians, played by Tony Curtis and Harvard's Own Jack Lemmon, from certain liquidation by Chicago mobsters. Witnesses to a gangland slaying reminiscent of the St.Valentine's Day Massacre, the disguised Curtis and Lemmon light out for Miami with an all-girl band. As gents of lusty instincts, the proximity to pulchritudinous musicians strains their ambition to remain disguised, but somehow they persevere. Curtis eventually executes some fancy footwork to win Miss Monroe, and despite every effort to avoid it, Lemmon wins Joe E. Brown-in the role of a vacationing millionaire.

While the movie lasts longer than is necessary, it never really becomes tiresome because things move at such a frenetic pace. To Miss Monroe's chagrin, Wilder announced to the New York Herald Tribune's Joe Hyams (if memory serves) that he would never, positively never, make another movie with Miss Monroe. She should promise to be a good girl forever and ever on the studio lot, because Wilder and Monroe are a stunning combination.