The Seven Year Itch

Summer in New York. Richard Sherman has sent his wife and son away on holiday and is alone in the flat. He meets the young woman who has just moved in upstairs, whose name is never given. The gap between the fantasy running constantly in Richard's head and what actually happens is where all the comedy comes from; he does almost nothing and feels guilty throughout. Billy Wilder directed. Tom Ewell plays Richard and Marilyn Monroe the woman upstairs. The best-known scene is the skirt lifting over the subway grate. It was filmed on the street in New York, and the whistling and noise of the crowd that gathered made the recording unusable, so Wilder had to rebuild and reshoot it on the Fox lot. The original street footage is largely lost, surviving mainly in photographs. Something else happened that night. Monroe was newly married to Joe DiMaggio. A columnist who heard about the scene summoned him to New York; humiliated by the spectacle in front of the crowd, he left the set in a rage. They argued violently at their hotel afterwards and he went home the next day. The censors also intervened. Much of the suggestion in the script was removed and scenes were trimmed, so that in the finished film the skirt rises above the knee only for a moment. Who it is for: viewers who like Wilder's comedies and fifties New York. Who it is not for: anyone wanting Monroe's character to have an identity. She does not even have a name, and the film ties that entirely to Richard's point of view.