Christmas Day movies
My Christmas Day television viewing yesterday was dominated by re-runs of two classic movies – Some Like It Hot (1959, black and white, produced & directed by Billy Wilder, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, screenplay by Wilder and I.A. L. Diamond) and The Italian Job (1969, produced by Michael Deeley, directed by Peter Collinson, starring Michael Caine, Noël Coward, Benny Hill, John Le Mesurier, John Forgeham and Irene Handl to name but a few).
I must have watched Some Like It Hot at least a dozen time since I first saw in the late Sixties – I once owned a DVD version of it – and still return to it each time I get the opportunity without any sense of “familiarity breeds contempt”.
Instead I am embraced by a warm, comfortable feeling as I greet each classic line in the script, each scene, each individual acting performance more like an old friend.
None of them grate in the slightest, no matter how often they get replayed.
Who can forget the first sight of Curtis and Lemon struggling in high heels and “drag” in their attempt to escape the attention of the Mob in 1929 by arriving at a railway station in order to join an all-girl band on their way to a short season in a Florida hotel … and then being stunned by Monroe sashaying past in time-honoured style?
“Like jello on springs …” breathes the incredulous Lemmon before then proceeding in a passable but exaggerated imitation of similar.
Or the girl band rehearsing the up-tempo song Runnin’ Wild on the train, with Monroe ace-ing the vocal and “the boys”, entranced by her charisma/sex appeal, playing their hearts out under orders from the female musical director … until Lemon, strumming his double bass, swings it around again and again, eventually only by chance noticing at one point that he’s playing the back of his instrument, not the strings?!
Or the seduction scene on board the private yacht when Curtis (then, playing it by doing an impression of Cary Grant, pretending to be the supposedly impotent son of the owner Shell oil company) lets Monroe (as Sugar, the ‘ditsy’ singer in the band) try to “cure” him by kissing him so passionately that eventually his glasses steam up?
Or even the last scene in the movie, when Lemon – by then “engaged” to Joe E. Brown (the multi-millionaire owner of the aforementioned private yacht) – finally decided to come clean and tell his fiancé that he’s actually a man … but then, frustrated that Brown doesn’t mind, finally accepts the situation with a resigned throwaway quip “Nobody’s perfect …”?
If anything, the broadcast of The Italian Job on Channel Four yesterday was even more interesting from my personal point of view.
I never saw the movie during its cinema release and – as far as I can remember – have never before seen it from start to finish on its various television appearances since.
To be honest – as I watched it right from the opening credits through to the end – although I was able to appreciate many of its positive qualities, including the highly-impressive location set-ups and filming in Italy (not least the stunt driving of those at the steering wheels of the Minis), I found myself settling into what I’d describe here as a semi-detached state of mind.
The primary reactions I had to the narrative – and many of the scenes – were directed more to the “quaintness” (dated?) nature of the fashions, the style of the 1960s cars, the buildings, the hair styles – even the “conversational exchanges” between the sexes and the different male characters.
To the extent that I was looking out for diversity – only the driver of the coach that ended perched precariously over the edge of the mountain was black.
The other thought I came away with afterwards was upon the passing of Time.
This was as much a reflection of my own lost youth as theirs – in the form of a slight sense of regret and sadness upon appreciating that the actors in The Italian Job are now inevitably so much older: Michael Caine (in his early pomp in 1969) will be 88 upon his next birthday in March.
