Some Like It Hot

A Hollywood remake of the 1935 French movie Fanfare d'Amour, Some Like It Hot is widely regarded as amongst the funniest and most cherished films in the history of cinema. Written, Produced and Directed by one of cinema’s finest, Billy Wilder, it stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as destitute musicians, eking out a living in prohibition era Chicago. Having accidentally witnessed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the two men go on the lamb and hop on a train to Florida. In order to go unnoticed by the Mob they disguise themselves as women and join an all female band heading to Miami. Amongst the band members is Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) who both men (obviously) fall for.

I’ve wanted to see Some Like It Hot for a long time and having finally got around to it last night, I can report that I wasn’t disappointed. Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s script is rich, saucy and hilarious while full of the sort of bawdy double entendre that would have been impossible to get passed censors in the years before. In fact, along with the likes of Hitchcock’s Psycho and Wilder’s own The Apartment, it was just this sort of movie which saw to the decline and eventually dismemberment of the dreaded Hays/Breen Code that had constricted Hollywood since the early 1930s.

Angels with Dirty Faces

Angels with Dirty Faces is a Hays Code era gangster film which stars James Cagney as Rocky Sullivan, a notorious gangster with a good side. Rocky grew up what appears to be the Lower East Side with his friend Jerry (Pat O’Brien) getting up to all sorts of misdemeanours and petty crime. One day the boys are being chased through a train yard when Jerry slips and falls in front of a moving train. Rocky saves his friend but as the boys make their escape Rocky is caught and sent to reform school which leads to a life of crime. Years later Jerry is a Priest and having been released from a stint in jail Rocky returns to the old neighbourhood to claim his share of loot from his crooked lawyer Frazier (Humphrey Bogart) but Frazier ain’t taking too kindly to Rocky walking back up in here, you get me, you mutz.

The film features a great central performance from Cagney as well as some brilliant set design and cracking dialogue. It feels a little diluted when compared to earlier pre-Code films but you get the picture of the world in which the characters are living. What is obvious although sometimes too obvious is the message. Sometimes it’s not who you are but where you are that makes you and the film’s black and white telling of this idea is laid out very clearly.