One, Two, Three

Billy Wilder, 1961, bw (8.6*)
One of Wilder's funniest films, a spoof of both capitalism and cold war politics. This is also the last film of James Cagney, and it's a fine one to bow out with - I can't think of any other comedy of his that is this funny from beginning to end, never marred by a message or anything serious (such as Wilder's The Apartment, or Cagney's other late comedy gem in Mister Roberts).

Cagney plays the Coca-Cola man in Berlin, and he's chomping at the bit to open up the "commie market" behind the Iron Curtain, and sell Coke to another 200 million people. At about this time, he gets the air-headed daughter of the Coke CEO, Pamela Tiffin as Scarlett, dumped into his care until her dad's arrival, along with her leftist slogan spouting boyfriend from East Berlin, Horst Bucholtz, who is dim enough to not really understand what he's talking about.

Cagney's dilemna is the impending arrival of the CEO (Howard St. John) - he's got to somehow either get rid of Bucholtz or convert him to capitalism quickly, so this puts a countdown timer on the film's plot. There are other plot twists I won't reveal here.

Cagney is quick and sharp in this, with perfect comic timing. There's plenty of rapid-fire dialogue to help, similar to the Howard Hawks gem His Girl Friday. The pace may seem a little exhausting, but it works in comic farce like this one. Wilder also gets to poke fun at both sides in this one, making them all look like caricatures of idealogical propaganda, as Cagney thinks getting communists to drink Coca-Cola will turn them into capitalists.

Wilder shot this film in Berlin (at one point using the Brandenberg Gate), and complete it just one year before the wall was built.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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The Apartment

Billy Wilder, 1960, bw (8.4*)
Best Picture (AA, BAA, GG)
One of Wilder's most successful films, one which netted him three Oscars® individually - as producer of the best picture, for director, and for his screenplay, co-written with I.A.L. Diamond. This was half of the six Oscars® he won in his career, and the only one for producer of the best picture.

Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, an insurance company employee going nowhere. But a single man with a bachelor pad has something a cheating married excutive can use for assignations, so he willingly loans out his apartment to further his career in the office, primarily to a sleazy Fred MacMurray, in another of his typecast-defying roles (like in Wilder's Double Idemnity, likely why he was included in this cast).

One night he's left with the problem of Shirley MacLaine to solve, and the two become platonic friends. It's this friendship that gives depth to an otherwise shallow story of marital infidelity. My only problem with this film is that Wilder is usually either clearly comic (Some Like It Hot), or clearly dramatic (Sunset Boulevard), with no gray area. In this film the tone primarily wavers, it begins kind of light, but turns pretty serious midway in. For this reason alone I don't consider this as highly among Wilder's filmology as do others, as the serious tone kills the humor, and vice-versa. I prefer the three others above that I've mentioned (with links to my reviews).

No. 91 on the IMDB 250. 5 Oscars® - picture, director, editing, screenplay, art direction (also BAFTA for best film and a Golden Globe for comedy film). Just to show the confusion of the film's tone, at the Laurel Awards, MacLaine won for dramatic actress, Lemmon for actor in a comedy! 22 awards overall

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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Witness For the Prosecution

Billy Wilder, 1957, bw (8.3*)  bw

This is my second favorite film of an Agatha Christie story (this was a short story, not a novel), after And Then There Were None from French director René Clair. I believe this story is unique for her, as it's a legal film, with the entire story unfolding in a courtroom, but it still has the Christie touch, meaning an unexpected plot twist that most can't see coming.

An excellent cast makes this film better than it would have been from the story alone. The impeccable Charles Laughton, a two-time best actor winner, here an aging attorney recovering from a near fatal heart attack, agrees to defend Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) in a murder case, in spite of the fact that his wife, Marlene Dietrich, is going to be a witness for the prosecution. Dietrich turns in one of her best dramatic performances, relying on acting in this film, not her beauty nor her sultry singing.

Though not one of Wilder's best (perhaps a little too 'Hollywood'), such as Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Some Like It Hot (perhaps if it had started with an 's'), or The Apartment, it's still a very good mystery, and a good courtroom drama, and Wilder's only work with Laughton or Dietrich. Fans of Christie, or Laughton, who was one of the best actors ever on film, will not be disappointed.

Nominated for 6 Oscars® (Picture, director, actor for Laughton, supporting for Elsa Lanchester, who won the Golden Globe), 5 Golden Globes, and 5 other awards, and ranked #129 on the IMDB top 250, with a rating of 8.4, the same as I gave it - not quite as high for me as And Then There Were None.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, The Fortune Cookie.

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The Seven Year Itch

Billy Wilder, 1955 (8.2*)
When the wife's away, will swinging cats play? That's basically the premise of this Billy Wilder screwball comedy, in which a temporarily stag husband, Tom Ewell in his best performance (a Golden Globe winner for best actor), whose wife and kids are away all summer on vacation, is tempted by the close proximity of blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe, who becomes his platonic pal.

Ewell has a constant pained look on his face (and we guys know where that comes from), while Monroe plays the innocent virginal girl to the hilt. The most famous scene is when she stands above a subway air vent and lets the warm air blow up her dress and blast her 'nether regions', a scene often copied in later films.



There's not much to think about here, as Wilder has given us the cinematic equivalent of repressed sexual frustration, and lets our fantasies do all the work. Maybe not his best comedy, but like any Wilder film, not only worth seeing but a level above all the others of his generation. One of Monroe's best, as she works as a parody of herself, a woman who's almost too hot to touch while seemingly begging to be ravaged by someone.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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The Fortune Cookie

Billy Wilder, 1966, bw (7.8*)
Ok, maybe not Wilder's best comedy, but it may well be the best performance by Walter Matthau, earning him a well-deserved Oscar® for supporting actor, after mostly undistinguished minor dramatic roles. This is also his first teaming with Jack Lemmon, as he plays the shyster lawyer brother-in-law of Lemmon's sideline football cameraman for CBS, injured on a punt return by Boom Boom Jefferson (Ron Rich). You can see the ambulance-chasing wheels turning in Matthau's every move as he seeks to extract a huge financial award from the insurance company for Lemmon's faked back injury.

For his part, Lemmon has to play mostly straight man with morals to Matthau's oily smooth orchestrations as nearly all the comedy comes from the parody of lawyers without any scruples when money is involved. The funniest scenes are when Wilder parodies our overly litiginous society, all the lawyers are hilarious caricatures of men with nothing but dollar signs in mind. The more serious issues injected here, such as Boom Boom's alcoholism, dampen the comedic flow somewhat and keep this from being as funny as it could have been.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution.

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The Major and the Minor

Billy Wilder, 1942, bw (7.6*)

This pleasant pastry is master director Billy Wilder's first as a director after several successful screenplays, with Ninotchka probably the best known. In the screwball tradition pioneered by Ernst Lubitsch, whom Wilder knew and admired, Hawks, Capra and others, this preposterous story has a thirty-something Ginger Rogers try to pass as 12-yr old Susan "Susu" Applegate in order to get a half-fare train ticket back home to Iowa from New York. On the train, she hides from the conductor in the sleeper berth of military major Ray Milland, who is not really a comic actor, on his way to a military academy though he'd rather be somewhere close to the impending war.

This plot is the perfect sitcom idea, even though it borders on tipping the prurience scale as Milland lets what he thinks is a 12 year old girl sleep in his cabin and hang out with him for several days, in spite of his fiance's suspicions that all is not as it seems. Of course, everyone falls for Ginger, including the 400 cadets at the academy, and of course Ginger slowly falls for Milland and is of course jealous of his fiance.

Not Wilder's best, and perhaps squeaky-voiced and petite Jean Arthur would have been a better choice for this role, but still a classic screwball comedy and one worth seeing. It's obvious that Wilder wanted to please the studio and audiences in his first film as director. He would, of course, soon shock the film world with the radical classics Double Idemnity, Sunset Boulevard, and Stalag 17 - and would make better comedies in Sabrina and Some Like It Hot, but this film is still a must for Wilder, Rogers, and screwball comedy fans alike.

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Stalag 17

Billy Wilder, 1953, bw (8.6*)
William Holden stars as a gritty POW in WW2 Germany in perhaps his finest role, winning an Oscar® for best actor. Apparently the barracks in which he's placed has a stool pigeon supplying information about prisoner's escape plans to the guards. Holden is a suspect because he's not only a loner, but appears to have a thriving black market exchange going on as well.

Another classic from master director Billy Wilder, who actually fled to the U.S. from Austria to escape the German invasion. Here he has made a psychological war film that's as much about what war does to men's minds as their bodies. Shot in a film noir style with many night scenes, a war classic. #208 on the IMDB top 250.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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Ace in the Hole

Billy Wilder, 1951, bw (8.2*)
Just another notch in the genius belt of director-screenwriter Billy Wilder. Though not one of his important films, it's still a small gem of a story, and based on the media saturation of the recent Chilean mining story, the journalism techniques it condemns are still in practice today, namely "maximize the story for ratings".

Washed up big city reporter Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) ends up in Albuquerque with no real stories, when by chance he stumbles onto one, as local Leo Minosa gets trapped in a cave behind some ruins of cliff dwellings in a town of seven people in the desert. Douglas and his photographer are passing by on their way to a rattlesnake hunt, and Douglas sees a chance to milk a story all the way back to the big time.

Wilder accurately shows how just any human interest story becomes a literal circus in America, as hordes descend on the area when the story hits the press, including circus tents, rides, vendors, anyone out to make a buck, and of course the national media. Admittance to the ruins starts out free, and doubles each time they show the sign! Jan Sterling, as Leo's bored wife at the end of her patience, won a National Board award for actress, while Wilder received one of his 20 Oscar® nominations for the screenplay (he won six, 3 for screenplay, 2 for directing), and a directing award at Venice. This is another must see for his fans.

Here is our own article on the films of Billy Wilder, posted in 2008. He's one of my favorite directors, perhaps the favorite.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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Some Like It Hot

Billy Wilder, 1959, bw (8.4*)
A ludicrious premise like this in the hands of anyone short of a master director like Wilder and this classic comedy could have been another forgettable farce, or even a tv show like Bosom Buddies, which obviously borrowed from this. Two musicians, played by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, witness a gangland slaying and flee to avoid being the next victims. Naturally, the best place to hide out? An all-female big band, with none other than Marilyn Monroe around to tempt the guys to shed their female impersonations and reveal their macho studliness. They occasionally forget and speak in deep male voices.

In a funny twist, to top off the insanity, the wealthy Joe E. Brown falls for Jack Lemmon as a woman, so we get some great gender-bending jokes about the aggressive male tactics in romance, as well as the film’s hilarious closing line. This is another Wilder gem, and they’re still trying to make a similar film today, as Tootsie and Big Mama and Mrs. Doubtfire all proved. How ironic that gay heartthrob Tony Curtis was both in drag and played the debonair playboy courting Marilyn on the side. This pokes great fun at the superficiality and materialistically driven American romantic ritual.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, Sabrina, The Apartment, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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Sunset Boulevard

Dir: Billy Wilder, 1950, bw (9.2*)

AFI Top 100

Billy Wilder was such a great director, can you think of another film that begins with the main character floating dead in a pool, narrating his own demise? Film noir elements blend with a silver screen story of aged star Norma Desmond, well past her prime as an actress, brilliantly portrayed by Gloria Swanson. William Holden is a screenwriting gigolo who ends up with Desmond, to write her autobiography.

Her devoted butler, played by legendary director Eric von Stroheim, adds the perfect cinema connection to Desmond's life, as he obviously respects her legendary stardom. Here he makes what could be a mundane character part into that of unforgettable imagery. Holden's character is just the opportunist that one suspects populates tinseltown, especially among its not quite so successful. Of course, the story funs full circle until we find out how he came to be floating in the pool. Hollywood’s self-criticism was never handled better, a bona-fide black & white classic.

Note: Wilder revealed in an interview that the shot shown above was done with a mirror in the bottom of the pool and the camera focused on the mirrored image - this is actually the beginning of the film, as it starts with the death of the main character.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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Double Indemnity

Billy Wilder, 1944, (9.0*)

AFI Top 100

Wilder's dark, erotic crime film is considered the birth of film noir, or "night film", a crime film using mostly scenes shot at night or in dark interiors, and whose lead character is usually criminal himself. The plot concerns a wife, Barbara Stanwyck, who hires an insurance salesman, Fred McMurray in an abrupt career defying role, to kill her husband for the insurance, double the amount if its an accident. Of course, the two set off sparks onscreen, and the implication, done through smoking after just a kiss, is that they are having an adulterous affair as well. McMurray took a part turned down by more famous actors, who didn't want to play a homicidal adulterer onscreen, while Fred saw a chance to escape typecasting.

Edward G. Robinson was also persuaded to take a rare supporting role, as an insurance investigator in McMurray's company, likely due to the strength of the script, by Wilder and pulp novel author Raymond Chandler, hired for his underworld dialogue. The two mixed like oil and water, as Chandler was an introverted alcoholic, while Wilder was an extrovert who needed people. He later penned The Lost Weekend as a critique of Chandler's lifestyle. Robinson nearly steals the movie, this would have been an excellent chance for the motion picture academy to have awarded him a supporting actor nomination at least, as he was never once nominated for an Oscar®.
7 Oscar® nominations, no wins

Quote: That's some ankle bracelet. [after one of the greatest entrances in cinema history]

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

Read more...