The "You Must Remember This...A Kiss Is Just a Kiss" Blogathon

Happy Valentine's Day! To celebrate, Lesley over at Second Sight Cinema is hosting a blogathon where the whole objective is to cover a famous locking of lips from a classic movie. Now the one I've chosen is more of a series of kisses within one scene. The scene in question?

The yacht scene from Some Like It Hot (1959, dir. Billy Wilder)

Oh, Joe. You just couldn't follow your strict rule to Jerry of "No pastries, no butter and no Sugar" very well, could you? (Then again, that devilish glint in Tony Curtis' eyes says it all.) With his posh accent (Curtis nicked that from Cary Grant) and thick glasses (Joe nicked those from Beinstock), his second disguise of Junior is admittedly a cheap ploy to seduce an innocent woman. (Thankfully, he realizes before film's end that he was acting like a heel.) But boy, that scene on the yacht is charged with a sexual energy that could only come from a picture during the 1950s. (Then again, when the likes of Curtis and Marilyn Monroe are involved, this is inevitable.)

The whole scenario begins when he tells Sugar that girls tend to leave him cold. Curious, she asks if he's tried fixing the problem. Cue demonstration from him.

He then goes into a sad story about how the love of his life died in a horrible accident and left him completely numb. ("Like my heart was shot full of novocaine!") He continues by saying his family has tried their best to help him.

"Have you ever tried American girls?" she asks.

"Why?" he asks back. Cue demonstration from her.

He complains that he's used the likes of Freud and mineral baths to no avail. ("If I wasn't such a coward, I'd kill myself.") She offers to try to help him with his problem, and this kiss clearly has some effect on him. (The foot popping was a little idea of Curtis' before shooting the scene. Boy, Freud would've had one hell of a field day with that.)

"Anything this time?" she asks.

His reply is "I'm afraid not." (He says that before loosening his tie, mind you.) She then tries to make the mood more romantic with soft music and champagne. "Don't fight it. Relax..."

"It's like smoking without inhaling," he bemoans afterwards.

"So inhale!" she replies. Another kiss, and the scene cuts to Daphne and Osgood's somewhat awkward date.

The scene cuts back to Junior and Sugar and it's clear in that short time things have heated up. (At this point, I start to envy Monroe.) After several torrid kisses (and exchanges you can only find in a Billy Wilder script), we get this:

"I think you're on the right track."

"I must be – your glasses are beginning to steam up." Cuts back to Daphne and Osgood's date.

Cuts back to Junior and Sugar and her remark about his glasses turns out to be very true. (Hey, Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond could only go so far without the whole scene resorting to actual sex. It was the fifties after all.)

"Where did you learn to kiss like that?"

"I used to sell kisses for the Milk Fund."

"Tomorrow, remind me to send a check for a hundred thousand dollars to the Milk Fund." And there Wilder leave the rest up to the viewer's imagination...