The Seven Year Itch Reviews

Entertaining Billy Wilder outing, adapted--and toned down--by George Axelrod from his hit Broadway play. 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. Tom Ewell plays a book publisher who has been married for seven years, and who stays behind in Manhattan for the summer when his wife (Keyes) and son (Bernard) leave on vacation. Ewell's small building has an upstairs apartment which has been sublet to Monroe, a flighty commercial actress/model who becomes the object of his (mostly imaginary) amorous advances. Ewell's lively imagination sends him into flights of fancy involving both his conquest of Monroe, and the humiliation which would result from the exposure of his infidelity (Monroe appearing on a local TV show to openly discuss his proclivities, etc.). The picture ends with no adultery having been committed, except in Ewell's mind. This was Monroe's 23rd movie and Ewell's eighth, since he broke in opposite Judy Holliday in ADAM'S RIB. Monroe was falling in and out of depression during filming, as her marriage to Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio was ending. Oscar Homolka has a bit part as a psychiatrist.