On what Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959) achieves that makes it the consensus greatest American comedy.

Some Like It Hot wins the 'greatest comedy' designation in most polls and it's worth asking why, specifically. The answer involves the film's relationship to its own genre constraints.

The film was made in a period when homosexuality was not representable in mainstream American cinema. The cross-dressing premise — two musicians who witness a mob murder and escape by disguising themselves as women — creates a situation where the film can address desire, performance, and identity with a freedom that would have been impossible without the disguise.

The character of Jerry/Daphne, played by Jack Lemmon, is the film's formal experiment: a man performing femininity who begins to enjoy it and ends the film having genuinely embraced it in ways that go beyond the practical necessity of escape. The film treats this with warmth and without condescension.

The final line of the film — 'Well, nobody's perfect' — is the most perfectly placed final line in American comedy. It's a logical ending to a scene, a punch line, a statement about the film's relationship to convention, and, if you've been watching closely, something more specific than that.