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Jonathan Coe: Mr. Wilder and Me (Book Review)
I had come across a good review of Mr. Wilder and me by Jonathan Coe and decided to read it. It's a short, gentle novel about guess whom, both funny and moving, and a love declaration to the movies of Billy W. and his scriptwriting partnership with IAL Diamond.
The basic premise: our narator, Calista, half Greek, half English, as a young girl through various plot circumstances lands a job as an interpreter and then as a gofer when Billy Wilder is shooting his penultimate (and today nearly forgotten, as it was a resounding flop) movoie Fedora. As far as Calista is concerned, it's an obvious coming of age novel - she changes through the experience, she falls in and out of love (with another fictional young character), she finds her own calling - but while she is a sympathetic presence, she's also a plot device so the story can be told from an outside pov that does not feel too intrusive. Mind you, the story complicates things in this regard somewhat in that the narrating Callista is not the young student, it's a woman looking back decades later, so her pov is basically two folded - her younger and her older self.
Coe knows his movie history and for my taste strikes a good balance in not using too many nor too few cameos and namedroppings (very unlike, say, Mank) - for example, Emeric Pressburger shows up repeatedly - waves at![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay - and that is incredibly characterisation and plot relevant, but Raymond Chandler does not get mentioned, because Double Indemnity and his effective but tempestous one and only cooperation with Wilder is very much not where the focus of this story is. Nestled in a linearly told "making of a movie becomes character exploration of people creating it" tale is an audacious set piece and change of format, when Billy Wilder, mid- press conference in Munich (where he and the rest of the team are because Fedora was partly financed with German money), suddenly goes into a long flashback in script format about his flight from Germany when the Nazis took over, his early, pre-America exile and his post 45 return when he had to view concentration camp footage and edit it into a movie.
It's not just a sudden switch of genre, so to speak, but also makes the contrast between young Billie (sic, remember the early spelling) and old Billy, whom we've gotten to know through Calista's eyes so far, especially startling. (Though there are, of course, ongoing traits.) And it seems fitting that the horror and the tragedy at the core of the witty persona can only be expressed in irony and satiric form. And once the lengthy script format flashback is over, we're back to linear prose and our young pov character telling it.
Naturally, Coe works in a lot of actual Wilder quotes from various interviews, and some, according to his afterword, from IAL Diamond's unpublished memoirs. If this were a different type of biographical novel - one aiming at covering the entire life - I would nitpick (for example, the wives are also characters and are written ad smart and charming, but both Audrey Wilder and Sandra Diamond agreeing that really, their husbands are closer to each other than to them and that they're totally cool with this smacks of wish fulfillment and not wanting to get into Front Page territory, to stay with Wilder films) - but it's not: it's a portrait through the double focus of one particular twilight moment and hidden within in it the past, and as such, it succeeds beautifully.
Does it also work if you haven't seen at least some of Billy Wilder's movies and know nothing about his life? I think so, due to Calista herself being written as a Wilder ignoramus when she first encounters the film team (she quickly catches up, though), but then I went in knowing a lot, so I can't really say.
Definitely read the credits, err, the afterword and thank yous, since one particular Billy Wilder statement I hadn't been sure of (as in, fictional or not) is sourced there to Volker Schlöndorff.
Weirdest review complaint I've seen so far: that Calista, in a story that takes place largely during the production of a film made in the 1970s, isn't molested, lusted after or otherwise exploited by anyone who has power over her despite being a young woman. (Her romance with someone her own age is entirely consensual.) This is deemed as writerly chickening. Good grief. Must we?
There is a point in the story - now everyone is in Paris - where young Calista watches a movie of Wilder's idol Ernst Lubitsch for the first time, and is charmed not just by the obvious - the wit, and the elegance - but also by the sense of kindness she gets from the film. And that's just how this novel feels when you read it. (Without being sentimental about it. Older Calista freely admits there's a reason why Sunset Boulevard became a classic and Fedora did not.) It's one of several reasons why I recommend it.
The basic premise: our narator, Calista, half Greek, half English, as a young girl through various plot circumstances lands a job as an interpreter and then as a gofer when Billy Wilder is shooting his penultimate (and today nearly forgotten, as it was a resounding flop) movoie Fedora. As far as Calista is concerned, it's an obvious coming of age novel - she changes through the experience, she falls in and out of love (with another fictional young character), she finds her own calling - but while she is a sympathetic presence, she's also a plot device so the story can be told from an outside pov that does not feel too intrusive. Mind you, the story complicates things in this regard somewhat in that the narrating Callista is not the young student, it's a woman looking back decades later, so her pov is basically two folded - her younger and her older self.
Coe knows his movie history and for my taste strikes a good balance in not using too many nor too few cameos and namedroppings (very unlike, say, Mank) - for example, Emeric Pressburger shows up repeatedly - waves at
sovay - and that is incredibly characterisation and plot relevant, but Raymond Chandler does not get mentioned, because Double Indemnity and his effective but tempestous one and only cooperation with Wilder is very much not where the focus of this story is. Nestled in a linearly told "making of a movie becomes character exploration of people creating it" tale is an audacious set piece and change of format, when Billy Wilder, mid- press conference in Munich (where he and the rest of the team are because Fedora was partly financed with German money), suddenly goes into a long flashback in script format about his flight from Germany when the Nazis took over, his early, pre-America exile and his post 45 return when he had to view concentration camp footage and edit it into a movie. It's not just a sudden switch of genre, so to speak, but also makes the contrast between young Billie (sic, remember the early spelling) and old Billy, whom we've gotten to know through Calista's eyes so far, especially startling. (Though there are, of course, ongoing traits.) And it seems fitting that the horror and the tragedy at the core of the witty persona can only be expressed in irony and satiric form. And once the lengthy script format flashback is over, we're back to linear prose and our young pov character telling it.
Naturally, Coe works in a lot of actual Wilder quotes from various interviews, and some, according to his afterword, from IAL Diamond's unpublished memoirs. If this were a different type of biographical novel - one aiming at covering the entire life - I would nitpick (for example, the wives are also characters and are written ad smart and charming, but both Audrey Wilder and Sandra Diamond agreeing that really, their husbands are closer to each other than to them and that they're totally cool with this smacks of wish fulfillment and not wanting to get into Front Page territory, to stay with Wilder films) - but it's not: it's a portrait through the double focus of one particular twilight moment and hidden within in it the past, and as such, it succeeds beautifully.
Does it also work if you haven't seen at least some of Billy Wilder's movies and know nothing about his life? I think so, due to Calista herself being written as a Wilder ignoramus when she first encounters the film team (she quickly catches up, though), but then I went in knowing a lot, so I can't really say.
Definitely read the credits, err, the afterword and thank yous, since one particular Billy Wilder statement I hadn't been sure of (as in, fictional or not) is sourced there to Volker Schlöndorff.
Weirdest review complaint I've seen so far: that Calista, in a story that takes place largely during the production of a film made in the 1970s, isn't molested, lusted after or otherwise exploited by anyone who has power over her despite being a young woman. (Her romance with someone her own age is entirely consensual.) This is deemed as writerly chickening. Good grief. Must we?
There is a point in the story - now everyone is in Paris - where young Calista watches a movie of Wilder's idol Ernst Lubitsch for the first time, and is charmed not just by the obvious - the wit, and the elegance - but also by the sense of kindness she gets from the film. And that's just how this novel feels when you read it. (Without being sentimental about it. Older Calista freely admits there's a reason why Sunset Boulevard became a classic and Fedora did not.) It's one of several reasons why I recommend it.
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