The film version of The Seven Year Itch<\/em> is no longer a story about a middle-aged married man who has an affair with his younger female neighbor while his wife and son are away for the summer. Instead, it\u2019s a story about a neurotic husband who\u2019s so terrified of even the slightest hint of impropriety with the attractive woman who\u2019s moved in upstairs that he works himself into a frenzy, while his ostensible temptress sits back, sips a cocktail, and luxuriates in the air conditioning. If some darkness or edge has been lost in translation between stage and screen, it\u2019s replaced by a sly puncturing of the male ego, in which the main character\u2019s sexist assumptions have little to do with his real-life prospects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not that book editor Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) is some kind of vile misogynist or lothario. He fancies himself an upstanding husband, who\u2019s never even considering straying from Helen (Evelyn Keyes), his wife of seven years. But Helen and their irritating young son Ricky (Tom Nolan) have barely been gone an hour before he starts fantasizing about the possibilities of being, as his building\u2019s janitor calls it, a \u201csummer bachelor.\u201d Like many businessmen in New York City, Richard has stayed behind to work, and he now has the apartment to himself, free to carouse all he likes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even Richard\u2019s fantasies involve his wife scoffing at him, though. He envisions scenarios in which his secretary, a nurse, and his wife\u2019s best friend all find him irresistible, but he also envisions Helen, sitting in the chair across from him and mocking his assertions of manhood. This guy couldn\u2019t enjoy having an affair if he tried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He does try, but only with a wary sense of obligation, once he meets the unnamed young woman (Marilyn Monroe) subletting the apartment above him. The Girl (as she\u2019s listed in the credits) is a 22-year-old spokesmodel who looks like, well, Marilyn Monroe, and Richard spends more time convincing himself that a fling is inevitable than he does actually interacting with her. He plays out the entire exaggerated drama of cheating and being discovered while she\u2019s offscreen, completely unaware of his existential crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monroe plays up the Girl\u2019s apparent na\u00efvet\u00e9, but she\u2019s not as ditzy as she seems. Acting innocent and oblivious is one way to negate potential sexual advances, and Richard is far too self-conscious to press himself on someone who appears not to even understand what he\u2019s desperately insinuating. Without the looming specter of a full-on sexual encounter, their interactions take on a sort of comic-strip wholesomeness, despite the lusty undercurrent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Richard is so besotted that he might as well be a cartoon wolf with his tongue lolling and his eyes popping out of his head, and that\u2019s about as naughty as anything in the movie ever gets. Even the iconic shot of Monroe\u2019s dress billowing up over a subway grate is tamer than its pop-culture reputation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have this appalling imagination,\u201d Richard tells the Girl, and part of her appeal is that, as she says, she has no imagination at all. She\u2019s exactly who she says she is, and she takes others at the same face value. If Richard says that he\u2019s married and would never cheat on his wife, that\u2019s all she needs to hear. She wears a fancy dress not to lure him in, but because she reasons that it only makes sense to dress up when drinking champagne \u2014 then she uses the champagne as potato-chip dip. While Richard is babbling about the nature of the subconscious, she\u2019s working out whether she can return the weak fan she bought for one that\u2019s more effective at cooling her apartment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wilder presents this farce with the energy of a Looney Tunes short, and while the majority of the movie is set within Richard\u2019s apartment, it never feels stagebound. Wilder frequently cuts away to Richard\u2019s compulsive daydreams, which have the heightened quality of the pulp-fiction book covers he oversees at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Richard\u2019s job, a new edition of Little Women<\/em> is sold under the tagline \u201cthe secrets of a girls\u2019 dormitory,\u201d but of course the text inside is the same old-fashioned Louisa May Alcott novel. Likewise, Wilder lures the audience in with the promise of something lurid, then delivers a bitingly funny comedy about a man who can\u2019t handle two days away from his beloved wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Seven Year Itch\u201d is streaming on<\/em> Amazon Prime<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> Tubi<\/em><\/a>, and<\/em> Pluto TV<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/7yearitch-still-1024x667.jpg\")
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