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The Top 10 Billy Wilder Films

By Martin Keady · March 10, 2015

In a way, the Billy Wilder story is a tale of two Bills. Billy’s first name was actually Samuel, but he was nicknamed “Billie” or “Billy” by his mother and chose to make it his permanent moniker when he emigrated to America to escape the Nazis who would go on to claim most of the rest of his family. That was despite the fact that he actually had an older brother named William, who himself emigrated to America and became a B-movie director.

Billy, by contrast, was very much an A-movie director; in fact, he was a master writer-director. His finest films, especially his “famous five,” constitute perhaps the finest handful of films ever made by one director, and the best of them (including Some Like It Hot, Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity) are often the best in their genre.

Here are his Top 10 films.

Read More: Nobody’s Perfect: Explore the Movies of Cinematic Legend Billy Wilder

10. Ninotchka (1939)

Wilder began in movies as a screenwriter, first in Europe and then America, and like many writers he always claimed that he only became a director to protect his own words (and word-pictures) from being desecrated by others. In fact, he said that would never have become a director at all if he had always been able to have his scripts directed by the director of Ninotchka, Ernst Lubitsch, who directed classics such as To Be or Not To Be, Heaven Can Wait and, of course, Ninotchka itself.  Lubitsch, a fellow German émigré, was probably the greatest influence on Wilder. Wilder said later in life that he would always ask himself as a director, “How would Lubitsch do it?”, and then try to do the same.

Among the other major influences on Wilder were his stellar writing partners throughout his long career. The first, and probably most important of them, was Charles Brackett, his co-writer (along with Lubitsch) on Ninotchka and then on several classics, including Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard. In many ways, the two men were complete opposites: Wilder the recent immigrant; Brackett the epitome of upper-class East coast patrician attitudes. But their writing styles complemented each other so beautifully that they became a brilliant co-writing team, with Wilder directing and Brackett producing. Indeed, some critics (and some of Brackett’s heirs) have argued that the early Billy Wilder films ought to be credited as “Wilder-Brackett” movies.

Ninotchka was billed and sold as the film in which “Garbo laughs.” She was not the only one, as she played a Soviet envoy dispatched to Paris in the wake of the Russian revolution, who is initially dismissive of the West and capitalism, only to be slowly seduced by its treasures and pleasures.

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9. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

Wilder’s Sherlock movie was made in collaboration with the man who became his second great writing and producing partner, I.A.L. Diamond, who, like Wilder himself, was an emigrant to America from eastern Europe (in Diamond’s case, Romania). As a man who was so often part of great teams (Wilder was a true collaborator and often dismissive of the “auteur” theory of directors that developed in the wake of the French new wave), it was natural that he was drawn to the great Holmes-Watson double act. His movie purports to tell the “untold” story of Sherlock, in particular his great love affair with a woman who turns out to be a German spy intent on uncovering the truth about Britain’s first submarine (which, to prevent it from being spotted and copied, is often disguised as the Loch Ness Monster).

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a minor Wilder as opposed to a major one, but even minor Wilder movies have their delights and this is no exception. The acting, as in most of his films, is extremely good, with Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely as a fine Holmes and Watson; Christopher Lee as perhaps the best ever Mycroft Holmes (Mycroft is supposedly the better behaved and more responsible of the Holmes brothers, so it is ironic that Wilder cast Christopher Lee, one of the great movie villains, in the role); and the beautiful, brilliant Geneviève Page as the woman capable of winning Holmes’s heart.

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8. Sabrina (1954)

Has there ever been a finer love triangle in films than that in Sabrina, Wilder’s superb romantic comedy? How on earth was Audrey Hepburn supposed to choose between William Holden and Humphrey Bogart, two of Hollywood’s ultimate alpha males? In the end, she did not have to: she may have ended up with Bogey in the movie, but in real life she conducted a brief, infamous affair with the already married Holden. The story of that affair absolutely cries out to be made into a movie itself (ideally it would have been directed by Wilder himself), as Hepburn was apparently prepared to marry Holden until she discovered that he had had a vasectomy after siring three children.

The movie itself is a delight, with Wilder coaxing from Bogey one of his finest, or at least most unusual, screen performances, even though Bogey himself felt that he was miscast as the older and more responsible of two wealthy brothers who fall in love with their chauffeur’s daughter. On seeing the final results, Bogey was apparently won over and it remains one of his late, great performances. Within three years, he was dead and any hopes Wilder might have had of working with him again were dashed. The movies that Bogey and Billy might have gone on to make remain among the great cinematic “what ifs.”

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7. Stalag 17 (1953)

Stalag 17 is one of the great PoW movies, along with The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai. It was based on a hit Broadway play of the same name, and starred Holden as J.J. Sefton, a “wheeler-dealer” who ends up being suspected by his fellow prisoners of revealing their secrets to the prison guards, thus foiling any chance they have of escape. The only way he can clear his name and avoid reprisals from the other prisoners is to find the real “snitch,” which requires all of his trademark cunning and ingenuity.

Holden was often Wilder’s leading man and certainly most of Holden’s finest performances are in Billy’s films (including in Stalag 17, for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor). It was as if Holden (handsome, blonde and all-American) became a kind of idealized version of Wilder himself (who was diminutive, foreign and Jewish), the everyman who was capable of greatness.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQh3qoGYVTg]

 

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6. Ace In The Hole (1951)

“I’ve met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my time, but you’re 20 minutes,” is one of the greatest lines in a movie and the perfect description of Kirk Douglas’ cynical reporter, Chuck Tatum. He flagrantly manipulates a news story for his own ends, shamelessly holding up the efforts to rescue a man trapped in a cave until the story becomes so big that his “on the ground” reporting of it can win him back the job on a national paper that he had lost through his relentless boozing.

Ace In The Hole must have reminded Wilder of his own exploits as a newspaper reporter in Vienna between the two World Wars. He later claimed to have interviewed Freud, Schnitzler and Richard Strauss, and all on the same day, which sounds like one of the fanciful stories that Chuck Tatum himself might have concocted.  Beyond the autobiographical interest, however, Ace In The Hole is also the perfect Wilder movie in that it is ultimately about the battle between cynicism and idealism – in one man. Just like William Holden’s screenwriter in Sunset Boulevard, Fred MacMurray’s insurance agent and Jack Lemmon’s lowly office clerk in The Apartment, Chuck has to endure a battle between doing the right thing and doing the expedient thing – a battle for his soul between the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Such is Wilder’s insight into this classic dilemma that one cannot help thinking that he had personal experience of it, perhaps from the time he had to choose between leaving the Europe he knew and loved and the America that he dreamed about but had never visited.

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5. The Lost Weekend (1945)

Wilder was a great writer himself and also worked with numerous other great writers, including one of the very greatest, Raymond Chandler, on Double Indemnity.  Apparently, it was Chandler’s own experience with alcoholism (he claimed that the stress of co-writing Double Indemnity with Wilder drove him back to the bottle, which he had foresworn years before) that was at least partly the inspiration for The Lost Weekend.

The Lost Weekend is as much about the dangers of writing as the dangers of alcoholism, showing how the uniquely lonely nature of writing (spending long hours and days “chained” to a typewriter, as Wilder himself had done when he first arrived in Hollywood) often makes those involved in it susceptible to other vices, such as alcoholism, as a release from the pressures of perpetually having to come up with something “creative” or “imaginative.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-tefK9hkuM]

 

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4. Double Indemnity (1946)

Double Indemnity is not only one of the earliest film noirs but one of the greatest, and perfectly demonstrates Wilder’s ability to master an entire genre. His “hero,” Walter Neff, is not a policeman or private eye but an ordinary insurance salesman, who is drawn into a deadly plot to murder a wealthy man by the man’s wife, the gorgeous but amoral Barbara Stanwyck.

Double Indemnity is almost like a retelling of the original story about a crime, or sin – the Adam and Eve story. Fred MacMurray is the hapless Adam, seduced by Stanwyck’s Eve to go against his better nature and commit the terrible action that will condemn him forever. And the Devil is money, the lure of the “double indemnity” payout that will follow a supposed “accidental” death.

Double Indemnity is also an example of Wilder’s absolute mastery of narrative. So often in his movies – for example, here and in Sunset Boulevard – the act of narration is itself vital to the whole story. It is only when we reach the end of the story that we realise what has actually happened, and that we (the audience) have been as guileless as the police and others who are investigating the original crime.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKrrAa2o9Eg]

 

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3. The Apartment (1960)

The Apartment would make an unlikely but perfect double-bill with Brief Encounter, because Wilder always claimed that it was his viewing of the classic British romantic drama (written by Noel Coward and directed by David Lean) that inspired his own classic romantic comedy. On seeing Brief Encounter, he said, he found himself wondering about the man who had allowed Trevor Morgan to “use” his apartment for his romantic assignation with Celia Johnson. Of course, being Billy Wilder, rather than make the apartment-owner a world-weary cynic who is utterly unsurprised to find his apartment being used for such purposes (as he is in Brief Encounter), he makes him a naïf, a wide-eyed innocent (played by Jack Lemmon) who only belatedly realises that in agreeing to such a deal he has actually condemned himself to misery, as the woman he loves (Shirley MacLaine’s elevator girl) is one of the girls being taken to his apartment by his boss.

The Apartment is one of the greatest romantic comedies ever made and it almost beggars belief that it was Wilder’s very next film after Some Like It Hot, which was made the year before. Both were written with I.A.L. Diamond and they represent the absolute apogee of the genre: simultaneously broad and subtle, unbelievable and utterly plausible, and ultimately both as shocking and satisfying as the champagne-cork “explosion” with which Wilder ends The Apartment.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4OXm9-E8OQ]

 

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2. Sunset Boulevard (1950)

On its original posters, Sunset Boulevard was described as “a Hollywood story,” but of course it is the Hollywood story: the finest film about film-making (and what it does to people) ever made. Perhaps that is because it addresses the single most important moment in Hollywood history – the transition from silent movies to “talkies” – and does so through a marvellous prism: the odd, mutually exploitative relationship between a young, male screenwriter and the faded but still beautiful silent movie star.

Wilder himself arrived in Hollywood at the start of the “talking” era, having worked in Europe on silent movies, and so was utterly familiar with the world he was writing about and filming. Indeed, it is tempting to think of William Holden’s screenwriter, Joe Gillis, as Wilder’s vision of himself, and what might have happened to him, if he had not made it as a successful screenwriter and ultimately became a director, directing his own words and images.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMUJpec6Bdc]

 

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1. Some Like It Hot (1959)

The title implies relativism. Tony Curtis’s musician, Joe, when he is pretending to be a millionaire in order to win over Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar Kane, confidently asserts that all choice is personal: “Some like it hot, some like it cold…”  And yet, of course, Some Like It Hot is itself an absolute – absolutely the funniest film ever made. Even today, more than half a century after its release, it is still the undisputed holder of that title.

“Nobody’s perfect,” Joe E. Brown says at the end, when Jack Lemmon informs him that he is, in fact, a man, rather than the woman he has been dressing up as ever since he witnessed “the St Valentine’s Day Massacre” in Chicago. Maybe “nobody” is perfect, but if any film is deserving of the epithet “perfect,” it is Some Like It Hot.  It is warm, witty and wondrous.

One final thing – it is also worth wondering what Marilyn Monroe’s legacy might have been without Some Like It Hot. It is the one absolute undisputed classic movie that she made and without it she almost certainly would not be remembered as the greatest, sexiest female movie star ever. However, for all the supposed difficulties of filming Some Like It Hot (with Marilyn apparently endlessly fluffing lines), it would ultimately be her epitaph, allowing her to show the full range of her talents: not just her obvious sex appeal, but her rather less obvious comic timing.

And perhaps it is Wilder’s most fitting epitaph, too: his finest film, which remains the ultimate exploration of the great divide between men and women (or rather, the great chasm, into which so many of us fall). For all that we worship (and fear) Gloria Swanson in Sunset, and adore Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment, it is Tony, Jack and Marilyn (aka Joe, Jerry and Sugar) in Some Like It Hot who are the finest creations of one of cinema’s finest ever directors.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI_lUHOCcbc]

 

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