The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Directed by Billy Wilder
When his family goes away for summer vacation, a hitherto faithful publishing executive with an overactive imagination is tempted by an attractive new neighbor.
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What critics compared The Seven Year Itch to
To say that this movie is a version of Billy Wilder's 1955 comedy "The Seven Year Itch"--about the fantasies Tom Ewell enjoys of the sexpot (Marilyn Monroe) who movies in upstairs while his wife is vacationing--would be a ludicrous analogy, to be sure, grossly trivializing Kubrick's themes.
He similarly lingers in his depiction of the famous subway grate moment from “The Seven Year Itch,” with Marilyn’s ivory halter dress billowing up around her as she giggles and smiles for the crowds and cameras.
Director Andrew Dominik constantly changes the screen’s aspect ratio, from 1.00:1 to 1.37:1 to 1.85:1 and 2.39:1, obviously wanting to duplicate some of Monroe’s more iconic moments; black and white for when she posed over the updraft of the New York subway grating while filming “The Seven Year Itch,” glorious widescreen color for her memorable “Diamond’s Are a Girl’s Best Friend” performance in “Gentleman Prefer Blondes,” and back to black and white again for her comic interactions with Jack Lemmon on the set of “Some Like It Hot.”
…with a little Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch…
Action movies undergo the Die Hard test, romcoms are stood alongside When Harry Met Sally or The Seven Year Itch and every sci-fi flick must inevitably endure the 2001: A Space Odyssey comparison instead of being considered purely on its own merits.
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Even though the film is still a part of classic Hollywood, and despite its decisively “tasteful” omission of what really goes on in Baxter’s apartment, one still can’t overlook how the film is remarkably ahead of its time with its handling of controversial material that involves sex and gender politics/roles–which Wilder is no stranger to, with his earlier films like Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, and The Seven Year Itch–as well as the desensitized corporate culture that numbs its inhabitants.
Think of Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson in "Double Indemnity", or Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard", Monroe in "The Seven Year Itch" and " Some Like It Hot ".