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Billy Wilder Films (Part 2)
“I’M A WRITER
but then
NOBODY’S PERFECT.”
– Billy Wilder, inscription on his gravestone at Westwood Memorial Park
cemetery (Los Angeles); “Nobody's perfect” is the punchline from Some Like It Hot
Billy Wilder’s Hollywood Films
As writer/director in the USA:
(Continued from Part 1)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Many people in Hollywood resented this film noir about Hollywood, mostly because it came too close to the truth. Nevertheless, the picture won an Academy Award for its screenplay by Wilder and Brackett. William Holden plays the unsuccessful screenwriter Joe Gillis. Gloria Swanson is Norma Desmond, a faded silent movie star. (“All right Mr. De Mille, I’m ready for my close-up.”) Former director Erich von Stroheim plays Norma’s butler Max. Remade as a Broadway musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1993.
DVD > Buy Sunset Boulevard (Centennial Collection)
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder DVD Collection (Special Collector's Collection: Sabrina, Stalag 17, Sunset Boulevard)
Ace in the Hole (1951, aka The Big Carnival)
Kirk Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a cynical, disgraced reporter who will stop at nothing to try to regain his job with a major New York newspaper. Some of the cynicism surely comes from former newspaperman Wilder. This is Wilder’s first project as writer, producer, and director – and his first without long-time writing partner Charles Brackett. Filmed on a huge outdoor set built near Gallup, New Mexico.
DVD > Buy Ace in the Hole (Criterion Collection)
Stalag 17 (1953)
Produced, directed and co-written by Wilder, this dark comedy is based on a play written by two former POWs. Starring William Holden (who won a Best Actor Oscar) and Peter Graves, the film focuses on a group of World War II American airmen held in a German prisoner-of-war camp and what happens when they discover a traitor in their midst. The Austrian actor/director Otto Preminger plays the camp’s ruthless commandant. - DVD > Buy Stalag 17 (Special Collector’s Edition)
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder DVD Collection (Special Collector's Collection: Sabrina, Stalag 17, Sunset Boulevard)
Sabrina (1954)
Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn (as Sabrina) and William Holden star in this romantic comedy (remade in 1995 with Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond and Greg Kinnear). Bogart was successfully cast against type in the role of Linus Larrabee, originally offered to Cary Grant.
DVD > Buy Sabrina (The Centennial Collection)
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder DVD Collection (Special Collector's Collection: Sabrina, Stalag 17, Sunset Boulevard)
The Seven Year Itch (1955)
A classic Wilder comedy with Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell. Ewell reprises his Broadway role in the play from which the film is adapted. The film may be best remembered for its iconic scene of Monroe’s white dress billowing above a subway grate.
DVD > Buy The Seven Year Itch
The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)
James Stewart stars as the legendary Charles Lindbergh in this biopic. The film focuses on Linbergh’s famous 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic. In between his take-off from Roosevelt Field in New York and his landing at Le Bourget Field in Paris, flashbacks tell the story of how Lindbergh came to be an aviation pioneer. Three replicas of Lindy’s “The Spirit of St. Louis” aircraft were used for filming.
DVD > Buy The Spirit of St. Louis
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Set in Paris, this romantic comedy is based on the Claude Anet novel Ariane, jeune fille russe, previously filmed in 1928 and in 1932 (Scampolo, ein Kind der Straße, with a screenplay co-written by Wilder). Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier star in this tale of a May-December romance between the young French girl Ariane (Hepburn) and the older American Frank (Cooper). This is the first in a series of films written by Wilder with I.A.L. Diamond.
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Based on a short story and play by Agatha Christie, this murder mystery and courtroom drama – with a Hitchcockian surprise ending – stars Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton.
DVD > Buy Witness for the Prosecution
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder Collection (9 films, including Witness)
 |
DVD set: A collection of nine of Billy Wilder’s best films. - Buy the DVD |
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon star in this hilarious comedy written by Wilder and Diamond, loosely based on a 1951 German film (Fanfaren der Liebe, directed by Kurt Hoffmann). In 2000, the American Film Institute declared Some Like It Hot the greatest American comedy film of all time. With a strong supporting cast (George Raft, Joe E. Brown, Pat O'Brien), Curtis and Lemmon in drag and Curtis’s wonderful imitation of Cary Grant, this outstanding film is a true comedy classic – now on Blu-ray. Wilder used the closing punchline from this film (“Nobody’s perfect”) on his gravestone.
BLU-RAY > Buy Some Like It Hot
DVD > Buy Some Like It Hot
DVD > Buy Billy Wilder Gift Set (The Apartment, The Fortune Cookie, Some Like it Hot, Kiss Me Stupid)
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder Collection (9 films, including Some Like It Hot)
The Apartment (1960)
A Jack Lemmon tour de force with a young Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray. Three Academy Awards (best picture, directing, screenplay); made into the musical Promises, Promises on Broadway in 1968 by Burt Bacharach; For Love or Money (1993), with Michael J. Fox as a concierge, is a variation of the Apartment story set in a ritzy hotel.
DVD > Buy The Apartment (Collector's Edition)
DVD > Buy Billy Wilder Gift Set (The Apartment, The Fortune Cookie, Some Like it Hot, Kiss Me Stupid)
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder Collection (9 films, including The Apartment)
One, Two, Three (1961)
Filmed in part in Berlin. One of Wilder’s best and most underrated comedies. Bad timing made this Cold War comedy fall flat in 1961 (when the Berlin Wall went up), but since then it has been better appreciated. Stars James Cagney (as Coca-Cola boss C.R. MacNamara), Horst Buchholz (The Magnificent Seven, 1960), Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, Liselotte Pulver and Leon Askin.
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder Collection (9 films, including One Two Three)
Irma la Douce (1963)
Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine star in this comedy about an ex-gendarme who falls in love with a Paris prostitute.
DVD > Buy Irma la Douce
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder Collection (9 films, including Irma)
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)
This sex comedy stars Dean Martin, Kim Novak, and Ray Walston. Reviews varied from "pitifully unfunny" to "fascinatingly original," but it’s not really one of Wilder’s best efforts.
DVD > Buy Billy Wilder Gift Set (The Apartment, The Fortune Cookie, Some Like it Hot, Kiss Me Stupid)
The Fortune Cookie (1966)
TV cameraman Harry Hinkle (Jack Lemmon) is injured when a football player crashes into him while he is covering a game. Hinkle’s injuries are minor, but his conniving lawyer brother-in-law "Whiplash Willie" Gingrich (Walter Matthau) wants him to fake paralysis in order to win a big settlement.
DVD > Buy Billy Wilder Gift Set (The Apartment, The Fortune Cookie, Some Like it Hot, Kiss Me Stupid)
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder Collection (9 films, including Fortune Cookie)
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)
Stars Robert Stephens as Sherlock Holmes and Colin Blakely as Dr. Watson – also with Geneviève Page and Christopher Lee.
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder Collection (9 films, including Holmes)
Avanti! (1972)
This comedy, starring Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills, was adapted by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond from a 1968 Broadway play. Filmed in Italy, Wilder (and most critics) was disappointed by the results, but Lemmon won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
DVD > Buy The Billy Wilder Collection (9 films, including Avanti!)
The Front Page (1974)
A Wilder remake of a 1928 play that had already been made and remade cinematically (in 1931 and as His Girl Friday in 1940). Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett star. Wilder later said he should have stuck to his rule against remakes in this case.
Fedora (1978)
Following the failure of Front Page, Wilder needed a hit. Unfortunately, this film was was far from a hit, even failing to get wide release. William Holden, Marthe Keller (as Fedora/Antonia), Hildegard Knef and José Ferrer star. Cameos by Henry Fonda and Michael York.
Buddy Buddy (1981)
Wilder’s last film. With a script by the Wilder-I.A.L. Diamond team, and stars like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, it’s surprising that this comedy was such a dud. “It hurts to strike out on your last picture,” said Wilder.
BACK > Films - Part 1
MORE > Billy Wilder - Part 1
MORE > Billy Wilder - Part 2
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Books about Billy Wilder
- See the recommended books in Billy Wilder - Part 2
Related Pages
- Famous Germans, Austrians and Swiss
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