“What blonde in the kitchen? Wouldn’t you like to know! Maybe it’s Marilyn Monroe!”
I’m getting quite a taste for the films of Golden-Era Hollywood Director Billy Wilder after watching some of his early gothic Noir masterpieces. Now I fancy watching some of the light comedies that he’s also famous for. So I come on to 1955’s ‘The Seven Year Itch’, a sexy comedy starring Marilyn Monroe as a temptress known only in the script as ‘The Girl’. The title alludes to the period of time that supposedly elapses when a married man begins to look at other women. So when Richard Sherman’s (Tom Ewell) wife goes to Maine for the summer the neurotic Manhattan Advertising exec promises himself he will be faithful. That’s until he runs into his new neighbour upstairs, a younger jaw dropingly beautiful girl who is seemingly oblivious to the effect she has on men.
Of course this is the film with the iconic scene of Marilyn’s white dress getting blown up by air from a passing subway train rushing between her legs, a wildly suggestive idea. For 1955 this film is racy, naughty and even downright rude with scenes like the one featuring an obviously naked Monroe peeking out from the bushes and saying lines like “When it’s hot like this, you know what I do? I put my undies in the Ice Box!” to a flabbergasted Sherman. Tom Ewell’s performance as Sherman seems to be channelling the pent-up energy and sexual frustrations of the archetypal Woody Allen leading character, only 15 years before Woody did it. Throughout the movie poor Sherman has fevered dreams about the women in his life and by the end you are left wondering if ‘The Girl’ upstairs is entirely a figment of his overactive imagination.
“I just met a wonderful new man. He’s fictional but you can’t have everything”
As soon as I read about the plot of Woody Allen’s 1985 film ‘The Purple Rose Of Cairo’ I had to see it. The story is set in the depression and follows an absent-minded waitress called Cecilia (Mia Farrow) who spends the little money her boorish husband doesn’t waste on booze and dice, on going to the movies. Her local cinema shows a film a week and this week it’s called ‘The Purple Rose Of Cairo’, a film-within-a-film featuring an archaeologist character called Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels). As her grim real life falls apart she retreats into the world of the film, viewing it every night after work, until one evening Tom Baxter literally steps out of the screen and takes her out on the town.
Interestingly Woody Allen treats this incident as no mere flight of fantasy but as a freak real life occurrence. So we get to see what farcical things would happen if a movie character really did come to life, leading to some hilarious scenes. Allen and his two stars play the tender romance to perfection bringing to mind the captivating magic of films like ‘Life Is Beautiful’ and ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’. If you played ‘The Purple Rose Of Cairo’ alongside ‘Nuevo Cinema Paradiso’, you’d have powerful double bill about the transporting power of cinema.
Here’s a brief clip of Jeff Daniels talking about the film at the BFI:
“I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics”
Up to this point I’ve seen a few of Woody Allen’s zany early pictures and some of his interesting later films but ironically I’ve only seen a few of his most celebrated mid-career works. So I sat down to watch what must be one of his most famous pictures, 1979’s ‘Manhattan’. The first thing that strikes you is the stunning Black & White cinematography, all the way through its backlit to moody perfection. The dialogue retains the punchy Groucho-esque one liners from his earliest films but also the script is more focused, rich and thoughtful. The film follows the mixed up love lives of a group of New-Yorkers amidst the hustle and bustle of Manhattan set to evocative George Gershwin music. The final romantic revelation sneaks up and socks you in the face and then like Allen’s character, you realise it was obvious all along. At the end, I was left thinking back on all the scenes and what they meant. A gorgeous and charming film.
Take Me To Your Cinema 