There are some film images that are so iconic that they have become entirely divorced from their original context. One is Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock; everyone knows the image, but few could tell you how Harold got up there or the name of the movie in which he does so. A second is Marilyn Monroe standing over a grille with hot air blowing up her white dress. The first image occurs in Safety Last! (1923), the second in this film – The Seven Year Itch (1955).

Billy Wilder famously said that working with Marilyn Monroe was like visiting the dentist – painful at the time and wonderful afterwards. Their finest collaboration is undeniably Some Like It Hot (1959), but this, their first partnership, runs a close second.

The protagonist of The Seven Year Itch is Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell), a middle-aged book editor whose wife and son are away for the summer. He starts work editing a manuscript discussing a common complaint of married middle-aged men just like him: 'the seven year itch'. This titular irritation draws Richard towards his new neighbour, the blondely stunning Marilyn Monroe.

Although Richard narrates the film in an externalised interior monologue, Marilyn's character is at the heart of the film – and it is the familiar 'Marilyn' character, the same iconic exaggeration familiar from Groucho Marx or Woody Allen's screen personas. She is the anonymous 'girl', a projection of all the voluptuousness and carefree fun that Richard thinks is missing from his wife. We watch Richard battle with his conscience; will he remain a dutiful husband, or will he scratch that itch?

For 1955 The Seven Year Itch is racy stuff, but fifty years on it seems a little like an extended episode of Bewitched. There are many laughs and charming moments, but the film as a whole feels a little drawn out.

The special edition DVD features a crisp anamorphic transfer that does full justice to Saul Bass's magnificent credit sequence, and comes with a second disc that includes a documentary on the film, a 90 minute featurette narrated by John Huston (who directed Marilyn in her last completed film, The Misfits), a look at her unfinished film Something's Got to Give, plus deleted scenes and a clip of classic Movietone News. A must for Marilyn's many fans on the 80th anniversary of her birth.

Clovis

The Seven Year Itch is available to buy from 5th June 2006 from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. A 'Best of Marilyn' box set, and 14 individual Marilyn films are also available, see the 20th Century Fox website for details.