YMMV / The Seven Year Itch

• Adaptation Displacement: The film is based on a stage play, but it is much better known due to it starring Marilyn Monroe.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Believe it or not, champagne is recommended as an accompaniment to snack foods, since the carbonation cleanses the palate of salt and grease. The Girl almost certainly didn't know this, though, making her discovery more a case of Genius Ditz in action.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The film is remembered more for the publicity shot of Marilyn Monroe having her skirt lifted by a subway vent than any actual scene.
• Common Knowledge: A lot of people probably watch this movie to see the famous scene of Marilyn Monroe standing over the subway grate, but here's the thing... it's not in the film. A version of it can be seen, but it was re-shot on a soundstage (as opposed to on location, which is where the famous photographs come from) and edited so that her skirt is never seen above her waist.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Helen (in a fantasy) shooting Richard to death several times in the back and twice in the stomach. With his dying breath, Richard begs for a cigarette - which leads to...
  "A cigarette? You know what Dr. Murphy told you about smoking!"
• Harsher in Hindsight: A character played by Tom Ewell contemplates having an affair with a much younger woman, begins to feel tremendous guilt about his feelings toward her, and briefly entertains the thought of murdering her to stop her from "tempting" him. Forty-six years later, California Congressman Gary Condit - who looks almost exactly like Ewell - had an affair with a much younger woman and was accused of murdering her. (Condit was eventually cleared, but it's still pretty eerie.)
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When The Girl and Richard go see Creature from the Black Lagoon, they lament that the movie is a tragedy and that the Creature was a victim. Sixty-two years later Guillermo del Toro would agree.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Admit it guys... and some girls. There's only one scene you care about in this film. A scene, as mentioned, that's technically not in the film.
• Memetic Mutation: Has anyone in the culture not spoofed the skirt-blowing subway grate at some point?
• Once Original, Now Common: The many elements of lascivious and edgy humor tend to get overlooked by many modern viewers, who enjoy the film for being "innocent."
• Signature Scene: The skirt-blowing scene, of course.
• Spiritual Successors: Somewhat surprisingly, this film has yet to be remade for modern-day cinematic audiences.^note An attempted remake in the 1980s came to nothing after Al Pacino turned down the Richard Sherman role; meanwhile, it was remade as a TV movie in Germany no less than twice, and an unidentified project called Seven Year Switch is supposedly in development. However, its basic themes have inspired quite a few films in its wake, including 1984's The Woman In Red (which even paid tribute to the Marilyn Maneuver scene) and 1999's Best Picture Oscar winner American Beauty (which took the basic theme, made it even kinkier, and wrapped it up with a Downer Ending).
• Unintentional Period Piece: The film is a time capsule of the mid-1950s due to Values Dissonance and other reasons. For starters, the entire plot is set in motion when the wives and children of New York City leave for New England to escape the summer heat, which would not be necessary just a few years later when air-conditioning became more prevalent and reliable. The female characters, almost without exception, are seen wearing the high-waisted, long-skirted "New Look" style of dress that was already starting to pass out of fashion when this movie was made. The script is littered with subtle and not-so-subtle references to the popular culture of the time period, some of them bordering on (and in one case even crossing) the Celebrity Paradox: the characters going to a theater to see Creature from the Black Lagoon and a pretty blatant parody of From Here to Eternity. Perhaps most striking, however, is the characters' discussion of the Marilyn character wearing nothing but a bikini for a U.S. Camera photo shoot: we are told that police had to show up on the beach to keep the crowd under control, and until we actually see the photo, the way the characters refer to it leads us to believe that The Girl had actually been posing nude.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The Girl mentions that she posed for an "artistic" picture (called Textures) in an issue of the photo anthology U.S. Camera. Richard has a copy of this issue on his bookshelf, so he pulls it out and he and The Girl peruse it. We are not permitted to see the photograph in question at first, and the context of the film (especially Richard's mentioning that there must have been a large, gawking crowd) implies that the photo probably shows The Girl nude. But then Richard shows off the photo again - this time to one of his clients at work - and Billy Wilder finally permits the audience to see it as well. It shows The Girl wearing a bikini. (In the mid-1950s, the bikini, which was a French invention, was banned in some parts of the United States, particularly in the Northeast.)
  • The moment where Richard "terrorises" the Girl on the piano bench, which nowadays comes off as straight-up sexual aggression, even if he is immediately regretful. What's particularly awkward is the way the Girl shrugs off the incident by casually mentioning that this kind of thing happens to her all the time.
  • The very first scene of the movie features white actors in red-face make-up portraying Native Americans and referring to them as "Indians". The scene itself is pretty tame as far as this stuff went but it's still jarring to a modern audience.

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