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 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. 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. 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. 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. How does one formulate an understanding of a structure that insists on our absence even in the face of our presence?’” (Mayne 15). She further elaborates that “‘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.
#The seven year itch movie
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). 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.
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). and other violence-and-sex paperbacks 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).
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.Ĭonsidering 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. Ironically, the public’s reception, both upon its release and continuing into today, and the studio’s advertisement for the film warped Wilder’s ultimate point of the film. 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.
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. 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.
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