For those who haven’t seen Billy Wilder’s classic 1959 comedy, Some Like it Hot, (if I’m describing you, rectify that mistake immediately), the film follows the misadventures of two musicians who inadvertently end up on the run from the mob after they witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Needing to tie up all loose threads, the crew of gangsters, lead by the apparently fashion conscious ‘Spats’ (George Raft), prompt our unlikely heroes, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) to travel across the country from Chicago to Miami under the guise of female musicians, Josephine and Daphne. Fleeing upon a train across the states, the pair meet Sugar Kane, played by the iconic Marilyn Monroe, and so begins Wilder’s superb comedy of mistaken and multiple identities.

Much of the comedy of the film originates from the drag performances of Curtis and Lemmon struggling to pass as women: grappling with make-up and the new-found vulnerability brought on by wearing a dress: ‘it’s so drafty! they must be catching a cold all the time!’ An inevitable broken ankle seems only moments away as the duo attempt to adjust to high-heels. As the pair continue their charade, alternating between Joe and Jerry, Josephine and Daphne and then later, ‘Junior’, the love-lorn heir to the Shell Oil fortune invented by Joe in an attempt to win the heart of Monroe’s Kane; Wilder creates his comedy through clever stereotype and cliched surface representation. The impromptu use of a specific name or an emphasis placed on an item of clothing or personal belonging, come to evoke and represent a whole identity.

All it takes for Joe and Jerry to pass as women are high-heels and earrings, and despite their muscular builds and peculiar voices, no one bats an eye as long as the familiar female identifiers are all in place. Similarly, Jerry affects the playboy image of Junior through the simple addition of glasses, a hat and a vocal impersonation of Cary Grant. Each character or personality is symbolised and made real, often only through the use of a very simple prop, change of name or exaggeration of performance. There is no complexity in characterisation here, but that is no criticism, rather a compliment on the film’s ability to create comedy through the simple satire of cliched characters and one-dimensional personalities. Character/gender roles and expectations of such roles are even simplified to the extent that Jerry comes to understand what is expected of him through Joe’s instruction that he is either a boy – ‘I’m a boy, I’m a boy, I’m a boy’ – or a girl – ‘I’m a girl, I’m a girl, I’m a girl’ – depending on which performance of either gender will reap fewer consequences for the pair.

Perhaps the most interesting example of this type of simplified, satirical characterisation can be seen in the gangsters. Whilst the mob are only present in a few scenes, mostly bookending the film’s narrative, the comic potential of their portrayal is near-flawless. Here, Wilder plays with the simple trope of each gangster being identifiable by some basic representational element. Spats is named as such, it would appear, simply due to his habit of wearing Spats, which in the opening scene are desecrated by a spilled drink, an insult to the status of the character and all he stands for. ‘Toothpick’ Charlie, the rival mobster-turned-informant, who tipped off the police about Spats’ speakeasy, is similarly synonymous with his namesake item of affection, so much so that after he is killed, the mob boss Little Bonaparte, humourously has the toothpick Charlie was using when he died gold plated as a memento.

We come to understand and identify such characters through these items, as insignificant as they may be, but they may also be tossed aside for another item or choice of costume to form an entirely new identity.