Giunti Odeon presents the third installment of the “Marilyn 100” retrospective, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth (June 1, 1926), with Billy Wilder’s legendary The Seven Year Itch. Richard Sherman, who works at a small publishing house in New York, is left alone in the city while his wife and son leave for their summer vacation. Returning home after seeing them off at the train station, he discovers that a commercial actress has moved in upstairs. He is immediately taken with her, and the situation becomes complicated when he reads the galleys of a book in which a psychologist discusses the seven-year marriage crisis. From that moment on, Richard begins to fantasize about his own power of seduction, and when a tomato plant falls from upstairs, a new encounter is in store for him with the neighbor who has just told him that she keeps her underwear in the fridge because of the intense heat. François Truffaut claimed that this is Billy Wilder’s most wicked and scandalous film. Scandalous because it is rife with sexual innuendo, and wicked because the male character comes across as sordid, consumed by his erotic passions and steeped in petty-bourgeois vice. Marilyn, the embodiment of the male fantasy, is nonetheless too beautiful, too clever, and too brilliant for him. A dream that surpasses the dreamer.

Francois Truffaut sosteneva che si tratta del film più cattivo e scandaloso di Billy Wilder. Scandaloso perché le allusioni sessuali si sprecano, e cattivo perché il maschio fa una figura sordida, preso dalle sue passioni erotiche e intriso di vizio piccolo-borghese. Marilyn, materializzazione del sogno maschile, è comunque troppo bella, furba e brillante per lui. Un sogno che supera il sognatore.