Some Like It Wilder: A Retrospective
Aug. 15th, 2008 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakStill in a nostalgic "Youtube is great for paying homage to your favourites in movie history" mood. This time, you get some highlights of the films of the late great Billy Wilder, scriptwriter and director extraordinaire, creator of one liners, icons and and some of the most memorable movies in film history. Born in Austria (when it was still imperial), had his first successes as a young scriptwriter in the Weimar republic (with Menschen am Sonntag), emigrated in 1933 for the usual reason (he was to lose all family members who didn't emigrate in concentration camps, which was why Humphrey Bogart calling him a Nazi during the shooting of Sabrina was in spectacular bad taste), arrived in Hollywood, fell in love with the English language and went on to prove it on screen and off. Have some examples:
Wilder's idol Ernst Lubitsch, who also went the Berlin to Hollywood route but as opposed to Wilder in the 20s and because he was asked to, hired him as a scriptwriter for Ninotchka, the one comedy Greta Garbo made. Here's Russian commisar Garbo being charmed against her will by Parisian sellout Mervyn Douglas (note: if it's a Wilder movie, chances are the men are selling themselves one way or the other):
Years after graduating from scriptwriter to director in his own right, Wilder was to work with another great star of the silent movie era, in what is still the best "Hollywood dissects Hollywood" movie ever made, Sunset Boulevard. In which not too successful scriptwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) meets silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson, who of course was the genuine article), and we get this much quoted clash between old and new Hollywood:
Speaking of clashes: those between Europeans and Americans show up in more than one Wilder movie, usually sparing neither party in their wit. The first time he returned to Berlin was as part of the film team that made the documentaries of concentration camps. Three years after the war, he came back to Berlin to make a movie called A Foreign Affair, which is deceptively light hearted (American congress woman is part of a committee to investigate soldier's morale, falls in love with G.I. who also has a German mistress, played by Marlene Dietrich, as most American soldiers did at the time), with the just recent past lurking in the shadows. Here's Marlene Dietrich singing "Black Market" (written by fellow emigré Friedrich Holländer, another case of Weimar-to-Hollywood):
Flashfoward to 1961, just before the Berlin Wall was build, and Billy Wilder was in Berlin yet again, this time to film the comedy One, Two, Three, loosely adapted from a play by Ferenc Molnar. In which the representative of Coca Cola in West Berlin, James Cagney, discovers to his horror that his bosses' daughter has married a young East German communist. He has just 24 hours to transform him into the perfect capitalist son-in-law. On that occasion, Wilder worked with some of the young German-speaking actors on the rise at the time, such as Horst Buchholz and Lieselotte Pulver, as well as some older ones. The opening sequence with Cagney's character entering his office and chatting with his German sidekick is, shall we say, dead-on in its satire (which is why the film was a flop in Germany at the time, but is a cult movie now):
Back to the states. If you happen to be watching the tv show Mad Men, and are already familiar with Wilder's work, you might have noticed it pays some homages The Apartment in its first season. If not: The Apartment tells the story of an office worker (Jack Lemmon) who loans out his apartment to his boss for the later's string of sexual infidelities. Until the elevator girl (Shirley McClaine), whom Lemmon's character has crushed on for a long time, turns out to be one of them. Which is when this happens:
Still with the Mad Men subject: Marilyn Monroe's character in The Seven Year Itch works for an ad agency, and the most famous scene of the film was to be iconized and used for ads ever since. It's actually not the most memorable Monroe scene in a Wilder movie, imo, but I would be remiss if I didn't include it here, because it is that famous:
(If you're wondering, my favourite Marilyn scene in a Wilder movie is her singing I'm through with love in "Some Like it Hot, followed by Tony Curtis, who in his male form is the guy she's mourning for but who is still in disguise as a woman at this point, kissing her on the lips in honesty and remorse and saying "no man is worth this". One critic called this "the most tender kiss Marilyn Monroe received on screen" and he was right. But Youtube doesn't have that one.)
Wilder co-wrote his scripts either with Charlie Bracket or I.L. Diamond, but there was one exception. For Double Indemnity, his film noir, he teamed up with novelist Raymond Chandler. And they hated each other's guts. Really, truly, passionately. Not a good word either had about the other. The result, though, was one of the most famous film noirs, complete with ruthless femme fatale and slashy subtext. Have a scene:
And what better film to end a Billy Wilder retrospective with than Some Like It Hot, which has the most famous and most often quoted ending of any Wilder film?
Wilder's idol Ernst Lubitsch, who also went the Berlin to Hollywood route but as opposed to Wilder in the 20s and because he was asked to, hired him as a scriptwriter for Ninotchka, the one comedy Greta Garbo made. Here's Russian commisar Garbo being charmed against her will by Parisian sellout Mervyn Douglas (note: if it's a Wilder movie, chances are the men are selling themselves one way or the other):
Years after graduating from scriptwriter to director in his own right, Wilder was to work with another great star of the silent movie era, in what is still the best "Hollywood dissects Hollywood" movie ever made, Sunset Boulevard. In which not too successful scriptwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) meets silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson, who of course was the genuine article), and we get this much quoted clash between old and new Hollywood:
Speaking of clashes: those between Europeans and Americans show up in more than one Wilder movie, usually sparing neither party in their wit. The first time he returned to Berlin was as part of the film team that made the documentaries of concentration camps. Three years after the war, he came back to Berlin to make a movie called A Foreign Affair, which is deceptively light hearted (American congress woman is part of a committee to investigate soldier's morale, falls in love with G.I. who also has a German mistress, played by Marlene Dietrich, as most American soldiers did at the time), with the just recent past lurking in the shadows. Here's Marlene Dietrich singing "Black Market" (written by fellow emigré Friedrich Holländer, another case of Weimar-to-Hollywood):
Flashfoward to 1961, just before the Berlin Wall was build, and Billy Wilder was in Berlin yet again, this time to film the comedy One, Two, Three, loosely adapted from a play by Ferenc Molnar. In which the representative of Coca Cola in West Berlin, James Cagney, discovers to his horror that his bosses' daughter has married a young East German communist. He has just 24 hours to transform him into the perfect capitalist son-in-law. On that occasion, Wilder worked with some of the young German-speaking actors on the rise at the time, such as Horst Buchholz and Lieselotte Pulver, as well as some older ones. The opening sequence with Cagney's character entering his office and chatting with his German sidekick is, shall we say, dead-on in its satire (which is why the film was a flop in Germany at the time, but is a cult movie now):
Back to the states. If you happen to be watching the tv show Mad Men, and are already familiar with Wilder's work, you might have noticed it pays some homages The Apartment in its first season. If not: The Apartment tells the story of an office worker (Jack Lemmon) who loans out his apartment to his boss for the later's string of sexual infidelities. Until the elevator girl (Shirley McClaine), whom Lemmon's character has crushed on for a long time, turns out to be one of them. Which is when this happens:
Still with the Mad Men subject: Marilyn Monroe's character in The Seven Year Itch works for an ad agency, and the most famous scene of the film was to be iconized and used for ads ever since. It's actually not the most memorable Monroe scene in a Wilder movie, imo, but I would be remiss if I didn't include it here, because it is that famous:
(If you're wondering, my favourite Marilyn scene in a Wilder movie is her singing I'm through with love in "Some Like it Hot, followed by Tony Curtis, who in his male form is the guy she's mourning for but who is still in disguise as a woman at this point, kissing her on the lips in honesty and remorse and saying "no man is worth this". One critic called this "the most tender kiss Marilyn Monroe received on screen" and he was right. But Youtube doesn't have that one.)
Wilder co-wrote his scripts either with Charlie Bracket or I.L. Diamond, but there was one exception. For Double Indemnity, his film noir, he teamed up with novelist Raymond Chandler. And they hated each other's guts. Really, truly, passionately. Not a good word either had about the other. The result, though, was one of the most famous film noirs, complete with ruthless femme fatale and slashy subtext. Have a scene:
And what better film to end a Billy Wilder retrospective with than Some Like It Hot, which has the most famous and most often quoted ending of any Wilder film?
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 05:46 pm (UTC)And I'm glad you're enjoying these trips into Hollywood glory as much as I do!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 06:43 pm (UTC)"Your mirror its cracked."
"I like it that way - it makes me look the way I feel."
(And next to heroes Mad Men is my other favorite show on tv - that and How I Met Your Mother) Nice job!!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-16 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-16 05:25 am (UTC)What I also love to bits: her first scene, when Johnny comes in and she's brushing her teeth. The relaxed playfulness there.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-16 12:14 am (UTC)... and yayyyy! Wilder goodness!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-16 01:12 am (UTC)I just wanted to say thanks for sharing this. I haven't seen all of Wilder's movies but Sunset Boulevard and Some Like it Hot are some of my favorite movies and this is good motivation to go see the rest. (Actually one of the Wilder movies I want to see most is "Arise My Love", but they haven't come out with it on DVD yet and no one has put it up on youtube, unfortunately.)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-16 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-16 02:43 pm (UTC)It blew my mind. I had no idea what was coming at any point, and the whole thing was just devilishly clever and poignant and witty and edge-of-your-seat, and...
*sighs*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-16 02:49 pm (UTC)Btw, I remember an essay that argued the twist was predictable because the legs of a certain actress are unmistakable, but the first time I watched this, I didn't think so!