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Billy Wilder |
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Director / Screenwriter /
Producer |
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1906 - 2002 |
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Born June 22,
Sucha beskidzka, Poland |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres:
Comedy, Romantic Comedy, Romance, Comedy Drama, Sex Comedy, Drama, Farce, Satire,
Comedy of Manners |
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Key
Collaborators: I.A.L. Diamond
(Screenwriter), Alexander Trauner (Production Designer), Jack Lemmon
(Leading Player), Daniel Mandell (Editor), Hans Dreier (Production Designer), Charles Brackett
(Screenwriter/Producer), Doane Harrison (Editor), Arthur Schmidt
(Editor), Miklos Rozsa (Composer), Charles Lang
(Cinematographer) |
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Highly
Recommended: Five
Graves to Cairo (1943), Double Indemnity (1944)*#, The Lost
Weekend (1945)#, Sunset Blvd. (1950)*#, Ace in the Hole (1951)*# |
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Recommended: The
Major and the Minor (1942), A Foreign Affair (1948), Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954), Witness
for the Prosecution (1957), Some Like it Hot (1959)*, The Apartment
(1960)*, Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) |
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Worth a Look: The
Seven Year Itch (1955), Love in the Afternoon (1957), The Spirit of St.
Louis (1957), One, Two, Three (1961), Irma la Douce (1963), The Fortune
Cookie (1966), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)* |
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Approach with Caution:
Avanti! (1972)*, The Front Page (1974) |
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Duds: Fedora (1978) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section; #
Listed in TSPDT's
250 Quintessential Noir Films
section. |
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Links: [
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
TCMDB ] [
Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Billy
Wilder at Reel Classics ] [
American
Masters ] [
Images -
About Film Noir: An Interview ]
[
Bright
Lights Article ] [
CNN
Obituary ] [
Film
Critic.Com Obituary ] [
Senses
of Cinema Article (2002)
] [
Audience Article (2005) ] [
Los Angeles Times Article (2007) ] |
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Books: [
Conversations
with Wilder ] [
Billy
Wilder: Interviews ] [
On
Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder ] [
Nobody's
Perfect: Billy Wilder, A Personal Biography ] |
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"For
all its wittiness, Wilder's hard-boiled scepticism was regularly
undercut by sentimentality, and only in the utterly cynical Ace
in the Hole (aka The Big Carnival) and the wholly
romantic The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was his tone
consistent and truly persuasive - films in which, respectively, a
grimly unglamorous mid-Western landscape and the splendour of the
Scottish Highlands mirrored the protagonists' inner torments." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"Along
the way, in fifty years, Wilde had some great picture ideas,
visions of men as pretty (and pretty-talking) reptiles, drunks,
fantasists, and sexual wrecks. Of course, he was correct. But with
that knowledge, if he'd had a pinch more courage and grace he
could have been a great man - instead of just a scathing observer.
As it is, too often I feel he's dead, or lost, to the life of his
films, a grinning corpse floating on top, preserved by sardonic
fluids and voice-over." -
David
Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002) |
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"By
his own admission, Wilder became a director only to protect his
scripts, and his shooting style is essentially functional. But
though short on intricate camerawork and stunning compositions,
his films are by no means visually drab. Several of them contain
scenes that lodge indelibly in the mind: Swanson as the deranged
Norma Desmond, regally descending her final staircase; Jack Lemmon
dwarfed by the monstrous perspectives of a vast open-plan
office...No film-maker capable of creating images as potent - and
as cinematic - as these can be readily written off." -
Philip
Kemp (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991) |
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"Wilder re-creates, mourns, and satirizes the Old World in his
comedies and dramas. Like Stroheim, he can find the seamy
underside of just about any culture, character, or situation.
But he is also something of a romantic idealist, which gives his
films a fascinating balance." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"An audience is never wrong. An
individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles
together in the dark - that is critical genius." -
Billy Wilder |
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"Now, what is it which makes a
scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it
means nothing. If you see him coming through a window - that is at
once interesting." -
Billy Wilder |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include The Emperor Waltz (1948), The World's
Greatest Lover (1977), and Buddy Buddy (1981). |
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"Although
known for their caustic wit, Wilder’s films fluctuate
between two polarities—the utterly romantic and the utterly
cynical. The best of his work—Avanti (1972), The
Apartment (1960), Sunset Boulevard (1949)—blends
the two. At the extremes, however, we have the romantic
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1969) and the
cynical Ace in the Hole (1951) and Kiss Me Stupid
(1964). But all of Wilder’s films share the director’s idea
that the very existence of his characters is at stake." -
Ken Dancyger, The Director's Idea: The
Path to Great Directing |
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●
Top 250 Directors |
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●
Key
Noir Filmmaker |
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●
Less
Than Meets the Eye |
| ●
100 Essential Directors (Pop
Matters) |
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●
The
15th Most Influential Director of All Time (2002 MovieMaker
Poll) |
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●
501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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●
Richard Brooks |
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Cameron
Crowe |
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Blake
Edwards |
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Lawrence Kasdan |
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Ernst
Lubitsch |
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Rouben
Mamoulian |
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Joseph
L. Mankiewicz |
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Richard
Quine |
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Robert
Siodmak |
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Preston
Sturges |
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William
Wyler |
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Fred
Zinnemann |
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Billy Wilder's Favourites |
| The
Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
William Wyler,
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Vittorio De Sica,
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
David Lean,
The Conformist (1970)
Bernardo
Bertolucci,
Les Diaboliques (1955)
Henri-Georges
Clouzot,
La Dolce vita (1960)
Federico Fellini,
42nd Street (1933)
Lloyd Bacon,
La Grande illusion (1937)
Jean Renoir,
Seduced and Abandoned (1964)
Pietro Germi,
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Ernst Lubitsch.
Source: Time Out (1995) |
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