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| Billy
Wilder |
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| Director
/ Screenwriter / Producer |
| 1906 - 2002 |
| Born June 22,
Sucha beskidzka, Poland |
| Key
Production Country: USA
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Key Genres:
Comedy, Romantic Comedy, Romance, Comedy Drama, Sex Comedy, Drama, Farce, Satire,
Comedy of Manners |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| Links: [
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) ] |
| 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 ] |
| DVD's:
[ Amazon
] |
| 1,000
Greatest Films: Double
Indemnity (1944), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), Some Like it Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960),
One, Two, Three (1961), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970),
Avanti!(1972) |
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250 Quintessential Noir Films:
Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset Blvd. (1950),
Ace in the Hole (1951) |
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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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