MOVIE · 1955

The Seven Year Itch

ComedyRomance105 min

With his family away for the summer, Manhattan publishing executive Richard Sherman starts fixating on the idea of the “seven year itch” when an attractive young neighbor moves upstairs. Tom Ewell is Richard, a faithful husband whose overheated imagination turns flirtation, guilt, and daydreams into a private melodrama. Marilyn Monroe is the neighbor at the center of his fantasies, breezing through the apartment building and into one of the film’s most famous New York images on a subway grate. Directed by Billy Wilder, the comedy keeps its focus on marital temptation and the stories Richard tells himself about it.