The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Genre: Comedies
Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell, Sonny Tufts, Evelyn Keyes, Robert Strauss
Producer: Charles K. Feldman
Screenwriter: Billy Wilder, George Axelrod
Story: George Axelrod
Producer: Billy Wilder
Composer: Alfred Newman
DVD Info
Release:
May 30, 2006
DVD Features:
- Keep Case - Sensormatic
- Pan & Scan - 1.33
Audio:
- (unspecified) - English
Additional Release Material:
- Additional Footage - Movietone News: New York Premiere/Sneak Preview
- Deleted Scenes (2)
- Featurette - "Back Story: THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH"
- Trailers - 1. International Original Theatrical Trailers
- 2. Bonus Trailers
Interactive Features:
- Interactive Menus
- Scene Selection
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
What counts is that laughs come thick and fast, that the general entertainment is light and gay.
This is probably Monroe's best known film, largely thanks to the scene in which a rush of air from a subway grating sends her skirt flying up around her shoulders.
Although it was directed by Billy Wilder, this 1955 CinemaScope classic sometimes seems presided over by Frank Tashlin, with its satire of 50s puritanism and its use of wimpy Tom Ewell.
Ruined by too much interference from insiders and outsiders.
Monroe flaunts her attributes too blatantly, and seems less human because of it, while George Axelrod's play, fresh and risqué in the '50s, now appears a little obvious and over-plotted.
So arresting is Monroe's presence that when she's not on-screen, we wait impatiently, wondering, Where have you gone, Mrs. DiMaggio?
I find this movie to be a definitive Marilyn Monroe movie that happened to also have a pretty witty script.
The Seven Year Itch is certainly a key film for the classic Monroe image...
All told, the screenplay's butchery lends a mesmerizing vagueness to the proceedings...


Top Critic