THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH: Relating to and Transcending the Insecurities of Both Men and Women — duck eyes (2024)

Billy Wilder’s 1955 film, The Seven Year Itch, explores through his protagonist, Richard, the male gaze, male fantasy in regards to women, and male fantasy in regard to what type of man they believe women would be attracted. By juxtaposing Richard’s fantasies about not only his fantasy woman, the Girl, but also himself against reality, Wilder reveals to the audience the folly in attempting to imagine what could be and implementing one’s fantasies in reality and analyses the ways in which men and women interact with one another. Though, through male fantasies Wilder addresses and creates the male ideal of femininity, something which seems paradoxical until he deconstructs and evaluates this concept in the final touching moments of the film. Ironically, the public’s reception, both upon its release and continuing into today, and the studio’s advertisem*nt for the film warped Wilder’s ultimate point of the film. While Wilder sought to deconstruct with The Seven Year Itch the way men view women, the way men view themselves, and the ways women and men are expected to engage with one another, the deification of Marilyn Monroe separated her from the role of the Girl and elevated her to the level of fantasy rather than human being, an idea the exact opposite of what Wilder presented in his film.

Considering the social context of the 1950s United States, a time when “pre-marital sex was the great debate in all the books on morality, adolescence and sexuality. . . and other violence-and-sex paperbacks [were] selling widely and the media were trumpeting the horrors of teddy boys’ and beatnik’s sexual promiscuity,” Wilder immediately snubbed the concept of sexual conservatism by not only making the central theme of The Seven Year Itch adultery and sexual desire, but also in casting Marilyn Monroe, one of “the sex symbols of the day,” as the Girl (Birmingham Feminist History Group 18). In simultaneously creating an environment in which sexuality is explored while casting an unattainable standard of beauty for the majority of his audience in the lead female role, Wilder creates a conundrum for female filmgoers, one which forces them into a category named by Ruby Rich as “‘ultimate dialectician’” (Mayne 15). Rich states that “‘for a woman today, film is a dialectical experience in a way that it never was and never will be for a man under patriarchy. . . As a woman going into the movie theater, you are faced with a context that is coded wholly for your invisibility, and yet, obviously, you are sitting there and bringing along a certain coding from life outside the theater’” (Mayne 15). She further elaborates that “‘[T]he cinematic codes have structured our absence to such an extent that the only choice allowed to us is to identify either with Marilyn Monroe or with the man behind me hitting the back of my seat with his knees. How does one formulate an understanding of a structure that insists on our absence even in the face of our presence?’” (Mayne 15).

While one may initially categorise Wilder’s presentation of women in his film as being inherently categorical and exclusionary to both women in film and the women who watch film, what is crucial to consider is that Wilder presents these categories through the male gaze of a man who in fundamentally insecure about himself and therefore throughout the film fantasises about being wanted by women who he believes would never want him by reimagining himself as someone who is fit to occupy the role of an attractive male. Throughout the film, Richard’s sense of inadequacy is hinted at through his fantasy sequences, most notably the sequence in which he passionately and exaggeratedly plays Rachmaninoff’s second concerto on the piano. This sequence is best analysed by considering how Richard views his dream self versus how he is in reality and how Richard views his dream girl versus how she is in reality. In the Rachmaninoff dream sequence, Richard wears a distinguished haircut with a touch of grey; a deep raspberry silk robe; and speaks in a sophisticated, deep English accent and flippantly reacts to the Girl’s leaning seductively against the piano with “You came. I’m so glad.” This dream sequence is comedically deconstructed when the Girl actually arrives in his apartment and Richard sits at the piano and plays chopsticks then, after speaking in the deep, English accent in which he spoke in his fantasy, sends the two of them falling off of the piano bench when he attempts, unsuccessfully, to kiss her. In Richard’s imagining of the Girl in this sequence, he imagines her descending the stairs in an extravagant and gaudy evening gown and long, sparkly black gloves. The image enters the frame in fade in, superimposed over a medium-long shot of the apartment’s front door, as if the audience has laser vision and can see through it, watching as the Girl glides down the stairs slowly, taking her time, as if entering an important event rather than a stranger’s apartment for a casual drink.

What is interesting to note is that even Monroe’s character, the woman who, according to the “ultimate dialectician” feminist theory creates a filmic characterisation of women which “insists on [a woman’s] absence even in the face of our presence,” is subject to alteration in Richard’s fantasy, calling into question what can even be considered fantasy or unattainable or exclusionary if a woman that is ogled at by men in and outside of the film can also be subject to changes in male fantasy (Mayne 15). This fantasy reconstruction of the Girl takes form in her being more sophisticated than she is in reality, with a fascination in Rachmaninoff, referring to his second concerto, “It isn’t fair. . . Because every time I hear it, I go to pieces,” and her having a more sophisticated, deeper voice. In reality, when the Girl arrives for drinks to Richard’s apartment, she arrives in a fairly conservative two piece pink outfit, pants and a three-quarter long sleeve top, much more reserved and plain than Richard imagined her to be dressed and simply says when he answers the door, “Hi! It’s me.” Although later in the scene, when the Girl has returned to Richard’s apartment after getting champagne and potato chips, she is wearing an evening dress, and therefore part of Richard’s fantasy has come to fruition, reality is nowhere near as sensual as he imagined. This is best exemplified by Richard’s finger getting stuck in the champagne when trying to stop it from overflowing after he opened it, leading to him having to grasp onto the piano, rather than play it, as the Girl attempts to yank it off of his finger. Furthermore, the Girl has an extremely basic understanding of what classical music even is, saying to Richard when he puts on the Rachmaninoff on his turntable, “This is what they call classical music, isn’t it? I could tell because there’s no vocal.”

In Wilder’s reality, there is no perfect man or woman, something which his leading man, Richard, does not comprehend until the end of the film. In this touching final scene, Richard and the Girl have a conversation which is sparked by him saying that no pretty girl would want to be with him, musing “Why should Helen be jealous of me? How can anybody be jealous of somebody with a briefcase, who’s getting a little pot, who gets so sleepy by 9:30, he can’t keep his eyes open. . . No pretty girl in her right mind wants me.” In this scene, the Girl displays an intelligence which transcends Richard’s and caring which was hinted at throughout the film, but is cemented in her response to Richard’s depressing moment of self-reflection. The Girl, in her response, addresses directly what men think women want and deconstructs this idea entirely, saying to Richard, “How do you know what a pretty girl wants?” Through Richard’s response to her, “Well, I don’t really know, but I imagine-,” Wilder addresses the futility of the male imagination and how it is destructive to not only women, but also men and how they view themselves and therefore also how they envision how the ought to relate to women. The Girl, although she goes unnamed, resolutely and eloquently defines the film and stabs at the social constraints which bind men and women as she responds to Richard as follows:

“You and your imagination. You think every girl’s a dope. You think a girl goes out to a party, and there’s some guy, a great big lunk in a fancy striped vest, strutting around like a tiger, giving you that ‘I’m so handsome you can’t resist me’ look, and from this, she’s supposed to fall flat on her face. Well, she doesn’t fall on her face. But there’s another guy in the room, way over in the corner. Maybe he’s kind of nervous and shy, and perspiring a little. First, you look past him, but then you sort of sense he’s gently and kind and worried and he’ll be tender with you, nice and sweet. That’s what’s really exciting. If I were your wife, I’d be very jealous of you. I’d be very very jealous.”

Wilder finally subverts the audience’s expectations of the Girl and how they may have viewed her as a typological dumb blonde without emotion or intellect, by having her repurpose “elegant,” a word which she used multiple times throughout the film, suggesting not only how intelligent she is but also how the seemingly complex issue of the way men and women relate to one another can be reduced in such simple manner. To end her monologue, the Girl kisses Richard tenderly and says simply, “I think you’re just elegant,” punctuating a nuanced soliloquy with a simple ending.

In The Seven Year Itch, Wilder creates a fascinating dichotomy in the way men see themselves and the way men see women, something which is reflected in the way both male and female movie goers see themselves in the film itself. While one sect of feminist theory postulates that women endure a dialectical experience when watching films such as these, which result in them feeling as if they are neither seen by the men in or making the film or represented in film, men, conversely, are able to be seen in The Seven Year Itch, though this does not have positive or flattering connotations. The man with which male movie goers have to relate to is a man who has little to no self confidence, and because of this lives in a fantasy which blends seamlessly in and out of reality. Richard is a man who has to lie about who he is in order that he feel that he is worthy to exist in his environment, something that is addressed in the last moments of the film when, in a moment of honesty, he tells the Girl that no pretty girl would want to be with him. It is this confession which provides context to the Richard who fabricated lavish and outlandish trists with multiple women, thereby allowing the audience to feel empathy and understanding for him, because he as a character allows himself none. While Richard tells an imagined version of his wife about how women he encountered, the night nurse from his appendix procedure, Miss Finch; his secretary, Miss Morris; and his wife’s good friend, Elaine, threw themselves at him, these cut away sequences parody other romantic films, wherein Richard is shoved in as the male romantic lead. This nod to other romantic films leads one to consider how society and the language of film has influenced men and how they view themselves. The idea that filmic language and heteronormative coding is so subtly entrenched in society’s collective awareness is directly reflected in the depressing reality that even Richard’s fantasies are not his own; rather, they have been molded and sculpted by the media he has consumed, all of which continually told him that he was not enough of a man and thereby instructed him on how he ought to behave in society.

While women have to contend with the idea that they are not represented at all in The Seven Year Itch, men have to contend with the reality that if they identify with Richard, then they are inherently relating to an idea of self which is self-deprecating, neurotic, and unworthy of love. The man which male movie watchers have to identify with is one who is entirely emasculated; one whose wife sees lipstick on his collar and is certain it is something else, not even considering the possibility that another woman may find her husband attractive. Richard is a man who cannot even be considered enough in his dreams, as best exemplified by Richard’s imagined version of his wife, Helen, laughing when Richard says that he could have had plenty of women. Then when Richard retorts, saying “For your information, I happen to be tremendously attractive to women,” she replies, “You’re attractive to me, darling, but, then, of course, I’m used to you.”

The concept of the male romantic lead who is not the type of man one would expect to attract the woman who is coded in the film to be beautiful, nevertheless winning the woman’s affections by the end of the film is something which was typical for Marilyn Monroe in her films. As stated by Lois W. Banner in her article “The Creature from the Black Lagoon: Marilyn Monroe and Whiteness,” “In many of her films, Marilyn was cast opposite a short, effeminate man” (Banner 19). Citing Richard from The Seven Year Itch as an example of this trope, Banner provides context to this concept, explaining that “[p]artnering a beautiful woman like Monroe with a comic or effeminate man drew from an old tradition in burlesque and vaudeville that mocked both male sexual impotence and female sexual power” (Banner 20). She further elaborates that this pairing acted as a mirror to Western society and fear of sexuality, specifically the sexuality of women, as “[t]he comic persona of the comedians subverted the sexual order, turning erotic desire into laughter and overcoming the underlying fear in Western culture of the power of sexuality and the overtly sexual woman” (Banner 20). A character such as the Girl, even going to far as to be unnamed in the film, acts as a character to whom male viewers can be attracted and yet not intimidated by because they feel she is unattainable. Since male viewers are able to superimpose themselves into Richard’s place in their viewing experience, they are comforted by the presence of the Girl, who acts as “a joking woman,” thereby rendering “the danger of female sexuality out of control. . . dissipated by laughter, especially when the joking woman was a dumb blonde” (Banner 20).

Though what is fascinating about the Girl as a character is that neither she nor her actress, Monroe, were simply dumb blondes. The moments where the Girl is removed from the fantasy, such as the scene in which, sitting by Richard’s fan after returning from seeing Creature From the Black Lagoon, she muses about how she will stay cool in her apartment, finally arriving at the conclusion that she will ask Richard if she can spend the night, and the scene in which she explains to Richard what women really want, are a refreshing reminder that the Girl is not a fantasy, she is a human being. This concept was something that was lost, especially in the taping of the now famous scene wherein, standing over the subway grate, the Girl’s skirt flies up and the subsequent advertisem*nt for the film on its initial release.

In the initial filming the scene subway grate scene, which Douglas Brode described as one in which “Monroe proved herself to be the most authentic blonde bombshell to hit the screen since Jean Harlow,” because of the crowd that surrounded the crew on the New York street, the majority of the footage was unusable (Phillips 197-198). When the air blew through the grate, “[e]ach time Marilyn’s skirt blew upward, the spectators roared like the crowds at the Roman circus,” enraging Monroe’s husband of eight months, Joe DiMaggio as he looked on (Phillips 198). Mortified by what he considered her “indecent display,” he was further ridiculed by a friend of his who responded to his anger by saying, “‘Joe, what can you expect when you marry a whor*?’” (Phillips 198). In the middle of takes, DiMaggio apparently “whispered something in Monroe’s ear and marched away in a huff” (Phillips 198). Speaking in his defense, Billy Wilder stated “‘I would have been upset if I had been her husband’. . . considering the raucous comments that were being made that night by some of the bystanders, including one of DiMaggio’s friends” (Phillips 198). Her first biographer, Fred Lawrence Guiles remarked that “‘within hours after the famous scene was shot. . . the marriage was over;’” only two weeks later, Monroe filed for divorce (Phillips 198).

This dehumanising experience, made worse considering she did not have the support of her husband, was made exponentially humiliating for Monroe and further negated Wilder’s resounding message made clear by the end of the film through the way in which the way the film was advertised. George Axelrod stated that “‘We used the original location shots of Marilyn,’ which were more revealing than what was filmed in the studio, ‘in the ads’” (Phillips 199). In the film, when the gust of wind lifts the Girl’s skirt, the camera cuts to her face reacting to the wind then cuts to her legs, the skirt billowing around them, creating the sense that “her legs in effect are detached from her person and become abstracted and disembodied [and]. . . [m]ost importantly, Monroe’s underpants are not shown” (Smith 218). This technique, though it separated the Girl into different visual parts, allowed for the audience to in one shot look at her face in close up and in another shot look at her legs in a medium shot. In constructing the sequence in this manner, rather than showing the Girl’s entire body in one frame, the audience has no choice but to consider the Girl as a person and then as a sexual being. This clever breaking up of the Girl into separate parts allows the audience to consider her as a whole person with multi-faceted feelings; someone who can be in one sense a sexual being while simultaneously also being playful.

Through displaying the Girl and Monroe in a “colossal twenty-five-foot billboard that was installed in Times Square over Loew’s State Theater for the première of The Seven Year Itch [that] was a full-length image of Monroe with her dress billowing around her to reveal a glimpse of her underpants,” any sense of humanity is removed from the character and the actress playing her (Smith 218). Through literally objectifying Monroe and engaging in publicity stunts such as the “Movietone ‘sneak’ preview of the film [which] focused upon this billboard and zeroed in on the ‘appearance,’ lingering erotically on the patterned border of Monroe’s panties,” neither Monroe nor the Girl had the opportunity to be humanised in the film at the time of its release because both had already been dehumanised either subconsciously or consciously in the minds of the viewers before they even saw the film. The sad irony of The Seven Year Itch is that while Wilder attempted to show that the Girl had humanity, this is something which was not permitted to her actress and therefore not to her, so she was doomed to be the dumb blonde and Wilder’s message, lost. Even when, by the end of the film, the Girl is removed from her male fantasy and shown to be a real person with feelings and thoughts, through the way in which the film was advertised, she, like Monroe, had already been stripped of her humanity. Nowhere is this more evident than in the remark made by Marilyn Monroe, who Wilder described as someone who “‘loved the crowds’”; she was at heart an exhibitionist,” when seeing her image blown up and plastered above the Loew’s State Theatre on Broadway “grumbled, ‘That’s what they think of me’” (Phillips 198, 203).

In a film which fundamentally lacks a moral center, especially considering the social context of the 1950s, Wilder does not pass judgement on the adulterous Richard and the Girl, his fantasy woman. Although his comedic sense is dark and cynical, seeping into the film his “disenchanted vision of today’s world, dominated by Americans with ‘kissing sweet’ toothpaste grins, who haven’t the slightest shred of culture or refinement of elegance,” he relates to and empathises with his flawed lead characters (Farmer 11). While Wilder succeeded in creating a character with whom audiences could relate on a level of human understanding in Richard, this concept was completely lost on his character of the Girl, despite his attempt to give her a nuanced and subtle personality. Audiences at the film’s release were captivated by the spectacle of Marilyn Monroe, and thereby inherently the Girl also, and therefore the Girl could never have a humanity in the same sense as her male love interest. This is an issue which continues into today, made especially clear by the Girl’s subway grate skirt moment being parodied in a plethora films, with or without reverence, and its persistence in being referenced in popular culture, as evidenced by the 2016 New York Daily News article “Skirt-wearing spoofers on the anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s infamous subway grate photo” (Smith 220, Lisi). In its continued reception, the most transgressive statement of The Seven Year Itch, that women are more than sexual objects, was completely lost on its audience, and therefore, Wilder’s film was ultimately stripped of its inherent meaning and purpose.

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