Some Like It Hot is showing in the original English (with German subtitles) at Kino im Kasten – a university cinema open to all – in Dresden on Thursday, April 23 at 8pm. A German dubbed version will follow on Tuesday, April 28, at 8 pm.
“Performativity is of course central both to Marilyn Monroe as well as her role as Sugar Kane. Sugar’s overemphasised femininity—super-blonde and super-curvy—is as much beyond the natural as the men in drag. As we learn from Sugar, her stage name is derived from Kowalczyk, revealing a Polish ancestry which she is trying to leave behind (together with a few other things). Monroe, in Billy Wilder’s second film with her, is a curious picture of vulnerability and sexuality, unusual in the Wilder world (though shared perhaps by Shirley MacLaine). If Wilder played with Tony Curtis’s on-screen sex appeal as the already established Hollywood actor, as well as his off-screen origins of Bernie Schwartz from the Bronx, with Monroe this layering becomes even more complex. While some liked her hot (as Wilder did in The Seven Year Itch), here he emphasises Monroe’s talent as comedienne … ‘I’m Through With Love‘ is worth all the Method performances she never gave; it encapsulates a tawdry childhood, three disappointing marriages, the adulation-mockery of curious fans, even a final, abortive phone call.”
– Gert Gemünden, A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder’s American Films
The Marilyn Report 