Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder (U.S., 1959)

If cleavage comedy aroused the fifties, Some Like It Hot brings on the falsies. Director Billy Wilder cross-dresses his comedy, freely mixing slapstick antics with screwball frantic, and a crime caper dragging down a musical farce. On the lam from the Chicago mob, jazz musicians Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon get gigs in an all-gal group, featuring the singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), and head, incognito, for Florida. Tony and Jack, now Josephine and Daphne, find themselves surrounded by jazzy women, but dressed in kind. The gender gags are pitch-perfect as the band heads south, playing along with this most modern of arrangements. Ranked #1 by the American Film Institute’s 100 Years . . . 100 Laughs and rated “C” (Condemned) by the Catholic Legion of Decency.

—Steve Seid

• Written by Wilder, I. A. L. Diamond, suggested by a story by Robert Thoeren, Michael Logan. Photographed by Charles Lang, Jr. With Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft. (120 mins, B&W, DCP, From Park Circus)