Farewell Tony Curtis

The press and media have been full of the death of Tony Curtis.  A late film of his that I enjoyed enormously, but which was little mentioned, was Nic Roeg's Insignificance, which I must write about sometime.  However, most commentators wanted to remember Some Like It Hot, and ITV pulled off something of a coup by showing the film after the news on Friday.

So we watched it.  It is, of course, astonishingly good, and still funny.  The script sparkles, Wilder's direction is fine, and all three leads - despite the stories of difficulties with Marilyn on set - sparkle on the film.  And the supporting cast, including George Raft ('Spats' Colombo) and Joe E Brown (Osgood Fielding III - he gets the film's punchline) are also wonderful to watch.   But in a way - despite how terrific Curtis and Jack Lemmon etc are (and the improvised Tony Curtis impersonation of Cary Grant is still achingly funny) - the real star is the script.

So we settled down to see at least part of it, and I realised I knew it - almost but not quite scene-by-scene. Rather like Kind Hearts and Coronets, School for Scoundrels and The Mouse that Roared which I wrote about a year or so ago, but less intensely.  In any case, Some Like It Hot is faster, and doesn't really allow for that kind of reflection.

Anyway, it was late and we were tired and we had a busy day the next day, and although it was good we knew we would have to switch it off before the end...

So we watched it all the way through. No choice at all really.