The Seven Year Itch is showing at 4 pm tomorrow, July 30th, at the Cleveland Institute of Art, as part of an ongoing Billy Wilder retrospective – with Some Like It Hot following on August 26-27, as John S. Matuszak reports for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“Even if you’ve never seen the films of Billy Wilder, one of the greatest writer-directors of all time, you likely are familiar with the dialogue and images that have become part of our culture … Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grating as her skirt billows up, in The Seven Year Itch. And Some Like it Hot, with Jack Lemmon in drag, confessing to his ‘fiancé’ that he is really a man, and Joe E. Brown matter-of-factly responding ‘Nobody’s perfect.’
These screen gems, and other Wilder films from the 1950s, will be the centerpiece of the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque’s summer movie series, Billy Wilder’s 1950s. The Wilder films will be screened on weekends from July 1 through Aug. 27.
‘I think it’s his greatest decade,’ commented John Ewing, director of the Cinematheque, of writer-director Wilder’s nine films from the ‘50s. ‘All of them are memorable, and a handful are real masterpieces.’
Wilder’s credits are notable for their variety. They include the serio-comic POW movie, Stalag 17; the courtroom drama Witness for the Prosecution; romantic comedies Sabrina and Love in the Afternoon, both starring Audrey Hepburn; The Seven Year Itch, a sex comedy ‘without any sex,’ according to Wilder; James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis; and Some Like it Hot, starring Lemmon, Monroe and Tony Curtis in what is widely considered the best film comedy ever made.
Many of the films haven’t been screened locally for many years, Ewing noted, and some are being revived here for the first time. And even if you’ve seen them on television, you’ll enjoy them even more with an audience, on a big screen, the Cinematheque director added.
All films will be screened in the Peter B. Lewis Theater of the Cleveland Institute of Art, 11610 Euclid Ave., Cleveland.”
The Marilyn Report 