Quando la moglie è in vacanza

In the 'fifties Hollywood created its biggest, best-loved and most powerful sex symbol of all—Marilyn Monroe…

Marilyn's appeal was, perhaps, in her weakness, in that revealing look of innocence and confidence, in her intense desire to be loved…

The 'seven year itch' points out the instinctive desire to be disloyal after seven years of matrimony, with a longing to satisfy one's sexual needs…

This amusing film was adapted from a Broadway play of the same name by George Axelrod, with Tom Ewell reprising his Broadway role, walking, worrying, and sweating…

Tom and Evelyn Kayes have been married for seven years… While he remains in Manhattan on business, Evelyn and their son Ricky (Butch Bernard) go off to Maine to escape the sweltering summer…

The apartment upstairs has been rented to a television blonde model (Marilyn Monroe). When she forgot her front door key, she had to ring Ewell's bell to let her into the building…

When Marilyn accidentally knocks a tomato plant onto Tom's terrace, the happily man invites the luscious young beauty downstairs for a drink, indulging in fantasies about taking her in his arms and kissing her 'very quickly and very hard'…

Marilyn comes in, explaining that she feels safe with married men... He makes a clumsy pass while they are at the piano but both fall off the seat… He stammers an apology, but she pretends it is nothing…

When Marilyn returns to her apartment, Tom envisions his wife having an affair in Maine with their big neighbor, Tom McKenzie (Sonny Tufts)… Then he sees himself lost between foolish fantasies of seduction, and terrible ideas of his wife capturing him in action… Finally he decides to put an end to his visions and asks Marilyn out to a movie...

On their way home, they stop on a subway…

As the trains go by underneath, Marilyn's skirts billow up…

It is so hot in the city she presumably loves the rush of air on her thighs…

Marilyn plays the scene in innocent delight… And Billy Wilder's shot shows a strapping blonde with a white skirt blown out like a spinnaker above her waist…

For this famous shot alone, the movie is a must see

Peak Marilyn. She's funny, sexy, and absolutely charming, and it's also of course got that iconic moment over the subway grate. I've also always liked Tom Ewell in this. As silly as his character is and as stagey as his monologues are, I think he's funny and satirizes married men with wandering eyes pretty well. He has ridiculous fantasies, clumsily tries to put the moves on a younger woman, and is wracked by guilt. I absolutely love the scene where he plays Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #2 to set the mood (both in fantasy and reality), and how it was incorporated into the soundtrack. Another nice little moment is when he's fixing a couple of Tom Collins for the two of them, going on about how it couldn't have been chance for them to have met, while she's talking to herself about needing to return a fan to a store. I like how spare the story is, and the various one-liners in the script. Director Billy Wilder lamented making the film under the Production Code, and it is a shame that some things were censored, but Monroe's appeal can't be denied. I like it for what it is, a product of its time for sure, and a harmless sex comedy.

Favorite line: "Miss Morris, I'm perfectly capable of fixing my own breakfast. As a matter of fact, I had a peanut butter sandwich and two whiskey sours."

Even after sixty years, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH retains its freshness and bounce - a delightful testament both to the script (by Billy Wilder and playwright George Axelrod) and the quality of the performances.

The story is a simple one: left on his own during a hot New York summer, Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) tries his best to avoid the temptations of drink, tobacco and an extra-marital affair. However his best intentions are frustrated by the presence of The Girl (Marilyn Monroe), who has moved into the apartment above him. Nothing actually happens, but the promise persists ...

Ewell gives a stellar performance, the best in his forty-five year acting career. In his rumpled gray suit, with tie askew, he embarks on a series of monologues where his better nature competes with his carnal desires. Most of them are shot in single takes in the Shermans' apartment: Ewell's India-rubber face changes rapidly as he debates the morality of inviting The Girl down for a drink. He walks from side to side of the frame, his shoulders hunched, almost as if he is bearing the cares of the world on his back.

The fantasy-sequences are extremely funny, with Ewell imagining himself as the protagonist in a comic reworking of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, rolling about on the beach with a woman not his wife. Later on he casts himself as a Noel Coward-like figure speaking in a cod-British accent, as he plays Rachmaninov on the piano while trying to seduce The Girl (a reference to BRIEF ENCOUNTER).

When the latter scene is re-enacted for real, The Girl is completely uninterested in Rachmaninov. Sherman tries to embrace her, and the two of them end up falling off the piano bench in an ungainly heap. Although Sherman imagines himself as the Great Lover, he will never be able to fulfill his role.

Monroe is equally memorable in her role as the not-so-dumb blonde from Denver. It's clear she is attracted to Sherman - not because of his physical attributes, but because at heart he is an extremely sweet man. On the other hand she respects his love for his wife Helen (Evelyn Keyes), and thus refrains from making a pass at him. THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH contains the memorable sequence where she stands over a grille and lets the wind from a subway train beneath blow up her white dress. Wilder shoots this sequence very discreetly, leaving everything to the viewer's imagination. Monroe is far more seductive in an interior sequence, where she hides behind a chair and stretches out one leg, and then another. The janitor Mr. Kruhulik (Robert Strauss) witnesses what happens, and promises to leave Sherman alone.

Wilder's and Axelrod's script fairly crackles with one-liners, as well as a series of in-jokes referring to Charles Lederer (Wilder's fellow-scriptwriter), as well as a reference to Monroe herself.

THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH is one of those comedies that never loses its sparkle, even after repeated viewings.

A conclusion I came to some time ago (and that doesn't seem to be reflected in any of the other reviews here) is that the whole story is a dream, a waking fantasy, on the part of Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell). There were no scenes where there is any objective confirmation of the existence of the Marilyn Monroe character, where anyone else could confirm any of the events between them; even the scene where Kruhulik (Robert Strauss) walks in is just the three of them, and Kruhulik is drunk, thus unreliable as a witness. Add to that the fact that Marilyn's character has no actual name, and is only referred to in the credits as "the girl", leads me to believe that the whole thing is Sherman's fantasy, that "the girl" never actually existed, that it's all a guilt-driven fantasy on the part of a 39-year-old middle-class white guy confronted with a "summer bachelorhood" in the City without his family. 🤔😉😊

In Some Like it Hot, Marilyn was the hottest she ever was. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she's the Woman of all Women. But in The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn is the prize of all treasures. She is timeless in every frame of the film. Coming across as this unique, cute, and innocent little woman, Marilyn makes your mind race, your heart thump, and your youth return.

No one else but Marilyn Monroe could play "The Girl" in the movie. She is just that, a girl, but much much more. Most of the physical comedy in the film is executed by Monroe herself. A lot of us don't realize this as we expect most of the comedy to come from the comedian in the film, Tom Ewell. A must see if you are a fan of America's first Dream Girl, the amazing Marilyn Monroe.