1959. Ashton Productions. Directed By Billy Wilder. Written by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan. Script by I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder. With Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe.

1929: A saxophone player and a bass violin player are desperate for jobs and for their lives. They have just lost their new jobs in a Chicago after a raid. Fate finds them a one-night job in a St. Valentine's Day dance but they find themselves witnesses to a crime in a garage. To escape from the gangsters, they take the job at Society Syncopaters, but they must endure one thing: how to become a woman. In no time, Joe becomes Josephine, and Jerry (impulsively) becomes Daphne. The two find a new friend in Sugar Kane, a beautiful singer. Eventually, the man behind the dress and wig of Josephine falls in love with Sugar, and Daphne's "woman" charms attracts an old rich man.

The formal system of the film is, as manifested, narrative. The plot follows the causal chain of action after the massacre in the garage on St. Valentine's Day. From there, we are led to the train to Florida, where the Society Syncopaters, now with Joe and Jerry in disguise, ride aboard to play at the Seminole-Ritz Hotel.

The start of the movie would make a viewer think of it as a gangster film, because the film is a spoof of the gangster film genre, complete with the goons, the guns, raid, car-chasing and police-running-after elements. The two main characters become involved with the gangsters, after witnessing a murder, in effect having the gangsters after them. This leads them to the unexpected twist of events, when they are forced to join the all-female band, put on dresses, wig and make-up.

Two lines of action revolve around the story: the gangster-chase at the beginning, and at the end of the film, and the romance. Under women's clothing, they manage to get away from the mob for a while, but they are given an unfathomable unique trouble. Joe, dressed as Josephine, falls for Sugar, and he takes another disguise, now as a man of spectacles, shells, yacht, and oil. Gullible Sugar, who dreams of a man exactly like Shell Junior (Joe), gives in. Daphne has a problem on Osgood Fielding, a rich old man and the real owner of Junior's yacht, who doesn't know Daphne is a man and who falls for him.

The film highlights the contrasts and parallelisms between the romances of the two men. Jerry, who stays on her woman attire completely catches the heart of old Osgood. Joe, on the other hand, puts on the naval suit and the glasses he stole from Beinstock to meet Sugar as Junior, and rushes to go back being Josephine to hear her stories about her date with Junior. Also highlighted is how Joe benefits from and takes advantage of Osgood's attraction to Jerry. He gives to Sugar the roses that Jerry/Daphne received from Osgood. He asks Jerry/Daphne to take Osgood away from his yacht so he can spend a night with Sugar aboard it. In cross-edited scenes, as Sugar tries to seduce Junior, Jerry/Daphne dances with Osgood. As a farewell present, Joe has Jerry/Daphne's box of orchids "delivered" for Sugar, with Jerry/Daphne's diamond bracelet from Osgood.

Timing is important in the film, and everything happens in a fast pace. At the start of the film, the two are saved only because Toothpick Charlie distracts Spats who is about to shoot the two. In her plan to get Sugar, Joe manages to steal Beinstock's luggage, and makes use of Osgood's resources while the old man grows fond of Jerry/Daphne. Toothpick Charlie's movement, the available job at the Society Syncopaters, Osgood's invitation to the yacht, the roses, the white orchids, the diamond bracelet - talk about perfect timing.

Music has a remarkable role in the film. In fact, the main characters meet and stick together, in a way because of music. Joe and Jerry are musicians who have just found a job in a club, and then are forced to find another after the raid and the massacre. They meet Sugar Kane also through music. She sings with the Society Syncopaters where the two find new jobs, new identities, new looks, and refuge. For most part, songs played in the film mark important events. Sugar Kane sang I Wanna be Loved by You after meeting "one of them" - the four-eyed millionaire with a yacht that she's been dreaming of, not knowing Shell Junior is Josephine (or Joe). The day "Shell Junior" bids goodbye for a "marital merger," she sings I'm Through With Love. Music works in a different way for Daphne/Jerry, too. After heeding to Josephine/Joe's request, Jerry/Daphne goes out with Osgood. They dance tango all through the night. Osgood goes home in love, and Daphne has accepted his proposal not minding "her" being a man.

Some Like It Hot is an effective comedy for the winning one-liners, the witty dialogues, the gullibility of the leading lady character of naive, soft-hearted Sugar, and the misfortunes of the two men who always find a way out, either by luck or by ingenuity. In a much deeper reading of the film, we find a lot of Freudian references suggestive of repressed feelings but taken lightly as sources of laughter. Even the dominant theme of cross-dressing and role-reversing is taken from a Freudian point of view that break gender stereotypes and give a whole new look at gender politics. Even the characters develop a sensibility of how it is like living a woman with men - "rough, hairy beasts" who don't care if you're pretty or not, "so long as you're wearing a skirt."