Fourty years after it was produced, it is still obvious that Some Like It Hot depicts the theme of ambiguous sexuality, but this is not all. The original title already sounds ambiguous because of the undefined “It” eventhough it can be related to Shell Jr. telling Sugar when she says she plays “hot” Jazz that “some like it - the music - hot, but I prefer classical music.” Still, anyone can see through the sexual connotation of “hot”. Let’s not forget about the etymology of “Jazz” that reminds of sexual exitation, and that, as the movie tells itself, sexuality (sometimes prostitution) and alcohol are linked in the image.

All this leads to an urge to hide: costumes, transvestites and dissumulation become the theme of the film. Only the first scene of the movie tells the audience a lot about the rest: the funeral car is followed by the police; we already can see the lie appearing, which also reaveals after the firing the liquid pouring out of the coffin, and then the alcohol. Shortly after, the funeral house which the police officer enters turns out to be a cabaret which is the exact opposite as far as the sound is concerned (silence/music) as well as the image (loneliness/crowd, calm/movement, etc.). The dissimulation somehow reveal a certain chain: death (the coffin, ...) hides the alcohol, which leads to death again (the firing sequences) and so on for the rest of the film.

This is the reason why when dissimulation takes place, a conflict happens: the fake pallbearers disguise themselves to hide from the police, the policemen act as clients against the gangsters... But this fight also takes place under the shape of seduction: the second significant costume, Joe being Shell Jr. enables him to seduct Sugar. Everyone gets the truth of the dissimulation: becoming a tranvestite is breaking a code to achieve something more easily. Joe disguised as a millionaire acts as Spats Colombo who covers up his cabaret as if it was a funeral house: he only shows the socially acceptable facade. Trafficing and seducting are only two different faces of changing the course of implicit social codes, which assumes a knowledges of these codes: this is Joe’s case as he gathered Sugar secrets.



For a long time, moral censorship forbid every kind of homosexuality references in movies during American classical cinema. Transvestites are never really serious yet and this is comfirmed in Some Like It Hot. However, it does not prevent B. Wilder from creating very special and troubling effects introducing men acting as women: for instance, Laurel and Hardy remind us of the same situation, and according to B. Wilder, Joséphine and Daphnée are only perpetuating this example. The effect the create does not lie on a parody, but on an ambiguous sexuality. Indeed, these characters are starting love relationships with the characters of the same sex.