27 Days With Billy Wilder And Me

Every Movie He Directed…From Mauvaise Graine to Buddy Buddy

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Day Seven: The Emperor Waltz

July 6th, 2011 · 1948, Bing Crosby, Charles Brackett, Color, Emperor Waltz, Joan Fontaine, Lucile Watson, Musical, Richard Haydn, Roland Culver

Emperor WaltzBilly Wilder’s seventh movie, The Emperor Waltz, is a light comedy starring Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine. It was released in 1948. Billy was 42 years old.

The title card at the start of the movie sets the stage…

On a December night, some forty-odd years ago, His Majesty Francis Joseph the First, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, and so for and so forth, was giving a little clambake at His palace in Vienna.

Well, that tells me what we’re about to see. “Clambake” is a word rarely associated with royalty. So this must be some kind of comedy, right?

And in color, too. This is the first movie Billy Wilder directed in color. The color is weird, though. Bing looks embalmed.

Joan Fontaine is a hottie. But she’s so prim, smug, and proper in this movie — and she speaks with such a tight-lipped English accent — that she’s irritating.

Thankfully, she’s not mousy like she was in Rebecca and Suspicion. I can’t stand mousy women. My biggest pet peeve when I watch a movie is seeing characters on screen who are emotionally stunted in some way, meek, passive, and prone to making decisions that I just wouldn’t make in those same circumstances. Joan Fontaine in Rebecca drove me up the wall.

Gee, whiz. Bing just broke into song — a yodel, no less. In the Alps.

I haven’t a clue what this movie is [Read more →]

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Day Six: Death Mills

July 5th, 2011 · 1946, Concentration Camps, Death Mills, Documentary, Ed Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard

Death MillsBilly Wilder’s sixth movie, Death Mills, is a documentary about Nazi concentration camps released in 1946. Billy was 40 years old.

I’m glad this was film only 21 minutes long. Despite it’s brevity, I feel like I just lost half my life.

Or, rather, I feel like half of my soul was sucked out of my body.

I was physically ill watching this. And in tears.

If you want to know more about Death Mills, including what it is and how it came to be, see its listing on the IMDB web site.

Or read about it on pages 233-250 in the superb book On Sunset Boulevard On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, by Ed Sikov.

I really have nothing more to say about this film.

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Day Five: The Lost Weekend

July 4th, 2011 · 1945, Adaptation, Charles Brackett, Charles R. Jackson, Doris Dowling, Howard Da Silva, Jane Wyman, Lost Weekend, Miklos Rozsa, Phillip Terry, Ray Milland

The Lost WeekendBilly Wilder’s fifth movie, The Lost Weekend, starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman, was released in 1945. Billy was 39 years old.

The story is about an ersatz writer named Don Birnam (Ray Milland), an alcoholic who goes on a drinking binge and loses a weekend; hence, the title of the movie. The Lost Weekend won four Academy Awards: Best Actor (Milland), Best Director (Billy Wilder), Best Picture, and Best Writing, Screenplay (Wilder and Charles Brackett). The movie deserved every award. The acting is riveting. The writing is whip-smart.

For example, there’s a particular scene that never ceases to amaze me. It’s when Don Birnam is sitting in a bar talking to Nat (Howard Da Silva), the bartender. The ensuing 60 seconds (16:44-17:40) offers some of the most intelligent, finely crafted dialogue to be found anywhere. Feast your eyes on this (Milland is speaking):

It shrinks my liver, doesn’t it? It pickles my kidneys. Yes. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I’m above the ordinary. I’m competent, supremely competent. I’m walking a tightrope over Niagra Falls. I’m one of the great ones. I’m Michelangelo moulding the beard of Moses. I’m Van Gogh, painting pure sunlight. I’m Horowitz playing the Emperor Concerto. I’m John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I’m Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I’m W. Shakespeare. And out there it’s not Third Avenue any longer. It’s the Nile, Nat, and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra. Come here. “Purple the sales, and so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with them, the oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke…”

This is a dark movie that is, essentially, about a guy’s live unraveling. Who wants to watch something like that? Yet, the movie isn’t maudlin. It doesn’t wallow. It’s [Read more →]

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Day Four: Double Indemnity

July 3rd, 2011 · 1944, Adaptation, Barbara Stanwyck, Double Indemnity, Ed Sikov, Exposition, Film Noir, Fred MacMurray, Miklos Rozsa, On Sunset Boulevard, Raymond Chandler, Woody Allen

Double IndemnityBilly Wilder’s fourth movie, Double Indemnity, a classic film noir starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, was released in 1944. Billy was 38 years old.

Now, Double Indemnity is a movie.

And a half.

This is a movie I can watch again and again and again — and never get tired of it. It crackles and sizzles and simmers with sensuality and wit.

Woody Allen (another favorite director of mine) is quoted in the book Woody Allen, by Eric Lax, as saying: Woody Allen

I love it, it has all the characteristics of the classic forties film as I responded to it. It’s in black and white, it has fast badinage, it’s very witty, a story from the great age. It has Edward G. Robinson and Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray and the tough voice-over. It has brilliantly written dialogue, and the perfect score by Miklos Rozsa. It’s Billy Wilder’s best movie — but practically anyone’s best movie.

Even Billy Wilder knew the film was special. According to the superb book On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, by Ed Sikov,
On Sunset Boulevard

Billy knew it was good when he made it. He began one day of shooting by announcing to his cast and crew, “Keep it quiet! After all, history is being made.”

The story is about an insurance salesman named Walter Neff (MacMurray) who pays a house call to a client one afternoon, hoping to get him to renew an expired policy. Instead of speaking to Mr. Dietrichson, Neff instead encounters [Read more →]

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Day Three: Five Graves to Cairo

July 2nd, 2011 · 1943, Adaptation, Anne Baxter, Charles Brackett, Erich von Stroheim, Five Graves to Cairo, Franchot Tone, World War II

Five Graves to CairoBilly Wilder’s third movie, Five Graves to Cairo, a World War II tale starring Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, and Erich von Stroheim, was released in 1943. Billy was 37 years old.

Opening title card:
In June 1942 things looked black indeed for the British Eighth Army. It was beat, scattered, and in flight. Tobruk had fallen. The victorious Rommel and his Afrika Korps were pounding the British back and back toward Cairo and the Suez Canal.

Principle Cast:
Cpl. John J. Bramble / Paul Davos……………….Franchot Tone (1905–1968)
Mouche……………………………………………………..Anne Baxter (1923–1985)
Farid…………………………………………………………Akim Tamiroff (1899–1972)
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel……………………..Erich von Stroheim (1885–1957)
Lt. Schwegler…………………………………………….Peter van Eyck (1911–1969)

Once again, Billy Wilder teamed with Charles Brackett to write the screenplay, which isn’t particularly compelling.

I don’t know what to say about this movie. If not for the presence of famed actors Anne Baxter and Erich von Stroheim, [Read more →]

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Day Two: The Major and the Minor

July 1st, 2011 · 1942, Adaptation, Charles Brackett, Day Two, Ginger Rogers, Inciting Incident, Major and the Minor, Mid Point, Plot Point I, Plot Point II, Ray Milland

The Major and the MinorBilly Wilder’s second movie, The Major and the Minor, a light comedy starring Ray Milland and Ginger Rogers, was released in 1942. Billy was 36 years old.

The Major and the Minor is Billy Wilder’s American-movie debut. According to film historian Robert Osbourne, Billy chose a light comedy — with a sure-fire box-office cast — to ensure that he’d be given subsequent opportunities to direct. It worked.

Billy co-wrote the script with Charles Brackett (1892–1969), Billy’s writing partner before his long association with co-writer I.A.L. Diamond.

Principle Cast:
Major Kirby………………………………..Ray Milland (1907 – 1986)
Susan Applegate…………………………Ginger Rogers (1911 – 1995)

I like the synopsis of the movie on the Internet Movie Database. It’s succinct and descriptive: “A woman disguises herself as a child to save on a train fare and is taken in charge by an army man who doesn’t notice the truth.” (By the way, the reason why I’m watching Billy Wilder’s movies is [Read more →]

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Day One: Mauvaise Graine

June 30th, 2011 · 1934, Bad Seed, Danielle Darrieux, Day One, Directorial Debut, French Film, Mauvaise Graine

Mauvaise GraineBilly Wilder directed his first movie, the French film Mauvaise Graine (“Bad Seed”), in 1934. He was 28 years old.

Despite the movie’s age, and the hammy way actors often portrayed characters on film in the early 1930s, the movie is remarkably watchable. It holds up.

According to its entry on Wikipedia, Mauvaise Graine was co-directed by Billy Wilder and Alexander Esway, although (says the Wiki entry) “the leading lady Danielle Darrieux recalled Esway was involved with the project in some capacity but clearly remembered she never saw him on the set. In her opinion the film, which marked Wilder’s directorial debut, was his alone.”

“The screenplay by Wilder, H.G. Lustig, Max Kolpé, and Claude-André Puget focuses on a wealthy young playboy who becomes involved with a gang of car thieves,” says the description on Wiki.

I took a look at its entry on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and noted two things about the actors:
[Read more →]

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