The Seven Year Itch (1955) dir. Billy Wilder
Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell, Evelyn Keyes

By Alan Bacchus

We’re in Billy Wilder territory here, a coy sexual comedy constantly riding the edge of moral acceptability by the then-ancient Hayes code. Richard Sherman (Ewell) is saying goodbye to his wife and son, who vacation upstate in the summer. Left on his own, he waxes on about his own virility and his peers’ falling victim to the flirtations of women when on their own. For Sherman, he’s at the seven year point of his marriage, the seven year itch, thus the period when the allure of the opposite sex is most tempting.

And along comes Marilyn Monroe, the occupant of the apartment upstairs, who arrives like gang busters, hot and sweaty on the hottest day of the summer. Sherman has air conditioning and the girl doesn’t. And so begins the comedic courtship with Sherman desperately trying to stave off Monroe’s indirect but arousing sexual advances.

Watching Ewell’s uncharismatic fumbling, we can’t help but wonder why Jack Lemmon wasn't in this film. Tom Ewell was cast because of his performance on Broadway from where this film originated. In fact, as featured on the DVD, Walter Matthau auditioned for the part. Sadly we’re left with Ewell, mostly inert and dull.

It’s an extremely difficult part. Richard Sherman dominates the film, much of it with him alone on the screen imagining his relationship with Monroe and much of it literally talking to himself in soliloquy. Where a stage production could get away with this omniscient inner voice, the sight of Ewell expounding at length on his thoughts and actions in the first person is at times excruciating.

The film sizzles when Ms. Monroe is present. She admirably plays up her image as a sextress, playing Sherman’s neighbour as a dim blonde unaware of her magnetic effect on men. Monroe fits the skin of this character as well as her eye-popping, form-fitting outfits. And there are a number of them, from the white flowing sundress in the subway scene to the randy jungle-pattern dress in Sherman’s early fantasy sequence, Wilder maximizes Monroe’s presence.

Famously, Monroe was a difficult performer on set. Her marriage with Joe DiMaggio, who was present on set, disrupted a number of suggestive scenes. And her periods of depression helped billow production costs and the schedule beyond the original budget. But these effects are invisible to the final result, one of the iconic Monroe films, a landmark in the era of the Great American sex comedies of the '50s and '60s.

***

The Seven Year Itch is available on Blu-ray in the Forever Marilyn Collection from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

People on Sunday (1930) dir. Robert Siodmak
Starring: Erwin Splettstößer, Brigitte Borchert, Wolfgang von Waltershausen, Christl Ehlers, Annie Schreyer

****

By Alan Bacchus

What a pedigree of talent behind this remarkable landmark in experimental independent cinema. It’s a silent German film at the end of the famed ‘Weimar period’ of German cinema, directed by future ex-pats Robert Siodmak and his brother Curt, and co-written by Billy Wilder. The film was produced by Edgar Ulmer, who was the set designer for Metropolis and M and himself a future Hollywood emigrant. Look closely and you’ll find the great Fred Zinneman (High Noon, From Here to Eternity) as cameraman. All of these guys were hopeful filmmakers in the ‘20s, unable to break into the German film industry themselves and thus, like any young emerging filmmaker today, they were forced to make it on their own with guile.

The result is a film that meets the mark we’d expect from such young and talented collaborators, a freeform kind of neo-realism combining non-actors in an unsecured real-world setting with only a semblance of a narrative script. And it's intoxicating.

The vague title is an indication of the unrestrictive nature of the story at play. A taxi driver, a model, a film extra and a wine dealer, all young Berliners who float about the city as strangers, eventually meet up for a relaxing double date involving a paddleboat on the river on a Sunday afternoon.

The sexual tension between the four of them is palpable. Edwin, the taxi driver, for example, is engaged to Annie who spends her days moping around the house. On the day of their date he finds her sleeping on the bed, but he leaves anyway to meet up with Wolfgang. Together they pick up Christl and Brigitte for said 'double date'. Siodmak and his colleagues never pass judgement on Edwin for possibly cheating on his girlfriend. A carefree 'swinging' attitude is something we’d see in New Wave film or British kitchen sink dramas of the ‘60s.

The sexual liberties can also be seen in a number of suggestive metaphors with creative editing. At one point Wolfgang chases after Brigit, where they make out on the grass. The next scene begins with a shot of a nude mannequin implying they just had casual sex. Wolfgang, in fact, freely flirts with both women in an astute and playful battle of sexes.

Zinneman’s camera is always in a state of flux, capturing the flavour of the city with the same laconic style as the characters in the film. Siodmak’s placement of the 'actors' in real locations with unrehearsed real background crowds lends a remarkable production value to this very small film. And look out for the sharpness of the editing (which is not credited). The brisk pace from the variety of camera angles feels thoroughly modern, arguably taking some strong influence from the famed Soviet editing techniques. In fact, in the Criterion Collection liner notes, Dsiga Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera and the Eisenstein films seem to be the filmmakers’ prime influence.

Part of the joy of the film is the contention between all these great filmmakers about who the true author of the picture is. Robert Siodmak denies Wilder had any involvement at all, and Ulmer (the credited producer) worked just a handful of days on the film. In his older age Billy Wilder would once tell Cameron Crowe that ‘they all directed it.’ Much of these speculations are storied in the fine documentary produced in 2000, as well as the comprehensive liner notes included on the Blu-ray disc.

As usual, Criterion outdoes itself by introducing the cinema world at large to a rare gem featuring some of the greatest filmmakers – young, ambitious, carefree and passionate artists looking to make their mark in the great medium of film.

People on Sunday is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Double Indemnity (1944) dir. Billy Wilder
Starring: Fred McMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson

****

By Alan Bacchus

Billy Wilder’s noir classic has one of the best movie titles of all time - it’s razor sharp, like the efficient tone of the script and its execution, it also hints at the coiling and twisting narrative as well as the literal story plot point which is key to the motivation of its nefarious characters. Literally, it refers to the term in the insurance business of a double payout on a claim of accident death.

And it’s the insurance business in which this very cynical and seedy investigative plotter is set. It’s a terrific environment in which to set a crime film, one in which, as a claims officer, as Edward G. Robinson’s character puts it, “you’re a doctor, a bloodhound, a cop, a judge, a jury and a father confessor all in one.”

Walter Neff couldn’t possibly be categorized as the ‘hero’ of the picture, but as a film noir everyman who falls victim to his own lust and greed he‘s a prototypical antagonist. In the opening, he’s an innocent but smarmy insurance salesman, unmarried, no kids, living a Spartan existence. But when he goes to the renew the automobile claims of one his clients, he falls deeply in love with the man’s wife, Phyllis Dietrichson, played with maximum allure by Barbara Sandwyck (her large but trendy forehead curl not withstanding).

After some teasing double entendres and sexually subliminal dialogue Mrs. Dietrichson and Neff hatch a plan to set up her deadbeat husband for murder and claim a life insurance policy, and of course, with a double indemnity clause. As an insurance man who knows the business, Neff is like a surgeon with details, especially setting up his and her alibis. The husband is killed and everything goes as planned until Neff’s equally fastidious boss and claim officer Barton Keyes (Robinson) scratches the itch of his hunch and layer by layer strips away the cover stories causing Neff and Mrs. Dietrichson to unravel.

Wilder and his co-writer ahem.. Raymond Chandler!!..make terrific use of Neff’s voiceover into Keyes old fashioned Dictaphone to tell the whole movie as a flashback. Fred McMurray’s deep voice guides us through Neff’s journey from innocent nave to cold blooded murderer, through nerve racking fits of jealousy, betrayal and ultimately, however small, redemption. The apparent twist or femme fatale double cross doesn’t really come as a surprise, but it’s the very end, the reconciliation of Neff and Keyes, two old friends and colleagues whose broken paternal bond becomes a surprising moment of regret and the first real heartfelt emotion in the picture.

The effectiveneness of this moment reinforces how important Edward G. Robinson’s performance is to the picture. As always, he’s a marvel, a machine gun with words, able to spit out Chandler/Wilder’s dense dialogue with lightning quick rhythm. Just listen to his cadence and manner of his speech and you’ll see the influence on the Coen bros anachronistic films like The Hudsucker Proxy, Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There. Even his name, Barton, perhaps, was an influence on them.

If we’re to define film noir as a genre devoted to exploring the darker side of human nature, and the capacity of the common everyday man to get into crime, Double Idemnity does noir better than anything before or since.