Disguises and role-playing were key features in the work of director Billy Wilder, who also liked to cram his films with cinematic references, often combining and parodying different generic conventions in the same work.
The classic Some Like It Hot, now celebrating its 50th anniversary, is an excellent case in point. It begins as a pastiche of vintage Warner Bros gangster movies. The first things we see are a hearse, a gun battle and a raid on a speakeasy fronting as a funeral parlour. Before long we have segued into the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon), who accidentally witness the massacre, are dead ducks unless they flee to Miami disguised as members of an all-female band. The Miami section of the film is concerned with the blurring of sexual identities and develops into a frantic romantic roundelay. Band member Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) is out to hustle a millionaire. Joe and Jerry are both after Sugar but are handicapped by their transvestism. At once hilarious and subversive, this masterpiece also has the best punch-line in cinema history. — Peter Walsh.