Wild About Wilder

It would be near the end of his illustrious career, that Billy Wilder's films would pale in their knife-sharp edge, in what distinguished his comedies and crime efforts, and it was then that Mr. Wilder became vociferously embittered regarding the young "beards" who had taken Hollywood by storm ( the contemporaneous generation of Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas). Wilder's thorough disenchantment was not just an old détrôné roi's  jealousy, Billy Wilder's iconoclastic, pariah's view of American society, had also been thematic in his classic movies, with a German respect for the word.

                 Could this guy be any Wilder at the camera?

Wilder was born in the South of Poland,  then, actually, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Fresh out of university, Wilder transplanted to Berlin where he landed jobs as both a dancer, and as a newspaper journalist, before he would get his start in the realm of celluloid as a scriptwriter. Coupled with Curt Siodmak, he would pen the evocative People On Sunday (1929). This film would be a poetry in motion of a day in the life of a Berliner. Both  Richard Siodmak and Edgar Ulmer would be at the helm of this production. Wilder would partner with Siodmak once more with a lugubrious crime comedy Der Mann, der seiner Morder sucht (Looking For His Murderer, 1931). Wilder, of Jewish extraction, fled for France in 1933 during the Nazi occupation, and this would be where he would have his directorial debut with Bad Seed  (1934), the very same year he that he would arrive in America. Ironically, and given that his whole reputation hinged on his being brilliant in the wordsmith department, his English was underwhelming when he arrived in the States. This would not dissuade him however, and not long after his arrival he was penning scripts along with Charles Brackett, with whom he shared a creative partnership for a dozen years. It would be this collaboration that would prove the most fruitful, producing some of the most impressive efforts of his prolific career, two of the most noted films in fact were produced in this period - The  Lost Weekend (1945), and Sunset Boulevard (1950), respectively.

                                         Poster for Looking For His Murderer, 1931.

Considered to be his finest achievement in film noir was Double Indemnity (1944) which was written with the iconic Raymond Chandler, whose signature was ever present in the erotically charged repartee between insurance man Walter Neff and scheming housewife Phyllis Dietrichson. It would be the insidiousness of the vision and at the same time the humanity, that made it entirely Wilder's baby. Of Wilder's quick dalliance with noir, with only four films that were considered of the genre, above all  The Lost Weekend would be the most noteworthy.  With a narrative that is rooted in what is veritably the real world, given that the visual aesthetics are so powerful (three of the four noir films were beautifully lit and photographed by the otherworldly John F. Seitz) it is astounding that they never obtrude and overtake the characters.

                                                         One of Wilder's few, but finest noir moments.


After Double Indemnity, Wilder's career would see sardonic visions of human avarice with almost equally black comedies, of which Some Like it Hot (1959) was truly the apogee. Although not considered a crime film per se, The Lost Weekend was informed with a profound noir sensibility as hedonistic writer Ray Milland watches his life fall apart at the seams. Similarly, in Sunset Boulevard (1950), Wilder turns his unflinching gaze on the film business itself - Gloria Swanson plays a once noted movie star, who dreams of her comeback, and hires a hack scriptwriter to help enable her delusions of grandeur. In the while he loses his own self-respect. A year after this defining moment, Wilder would return to the scene with his most intensely sadistic film Ace In the Hole (1951). Here Kirk Douglas gives a penetrating performance as an impervious journalist who would perpetually manipulate and doctor situations and facts; putting human lives in harm's way, anything he could maneuver for that one 'perfect story'.

                                               Let this one definitely go to voice-mail.

In Witness For The Prosecution (1958) there was an altogether different wrinkle on the crime genre for Billy Wilder, with a perfunctory but satiating plot that was animated by husband and wife duo - Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, playing a barrister and his persnickety nurse, respectively. It would be at this point that Wilder would partner with I.A.L. Diamond, who was formerly a math genius. Wilder would focus all energies on comedy with some of the greatest ever to date, and quite often featuring two of his personal favourites Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.