Billy Wilder

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domino harvey
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Re: Billy Wilder

#76 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 06, 2016 12:20 am

domino harvey wrote:Well, now I just need to watch the Front Page and I'll have seen all of Wilder's output! Though, technically I've already seen it a couple times...
And now, a year and change later, and I have seen the Front Page and thus completed my Billy Wilder dance-card. I don't know why Wilder or any director felt compelled to tackle this material after Hawks' literally perfect film adaptation, but here's Wilder with a lot of mild swears to show he's with it... whatever he thinks that means, at least (as evidenced by Buddy Buddy, it might literally just be second degree swears). I hardly hated it but man alive, it's just not funny and it's just not His Girl Friday (or even the first the Front Page).

And, because I now can, here's how I'd rank Wilder's entire Hollywood and beyond oeuvre, in order of preference:

MASTERPIECE
the Apartment
Sabrina

GREAT
Irma la Douce
Kiss Me, Stupid
Five Graves to Cairo

PRETTY GOOD
the Emperor Waltz
Stalag 17
Witness for the Prosecution
Ace in the Hole
the Spirit of St. Louis

EH
the Major and the Minor
Avanti!
Double Indemnity
Sunset Boulevard

NOT GOOD
Buddy Buddy
the Front Page
the Lost Weekend
A Foreign Affair
Mauvaise graine
the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Fedora

GOODNESS THIS SUCKS
Some Like It Hot
Love in the Afternoon
One, Two, Three
the Seven Year Itch
the Fortune Cookie

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Billy Wilder

#77 Post by knives » Fri May 06, 2016 1:35 am

Where's the beyond? I demand to know if Bad Seed is a masterpiece. :wink:

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domino harvey
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Re: Billy Wilder

#78 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 06, 2016 12:30 pm

Ask and ye shall receive (spoiler alert: it isn't)

jdcopp
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Re: Billy Wilder

#79 Post by jdcopp » Fri May 06, 2016 3:01 pm

Harold J. Kennedy, who directed a successful revival of the play "The Front Page" in the late '60s, wrote in his memoir "No Pickle, No Performance" (Well, that's another story!) that he felt that Wilder's film version of the Hecht-MacArthur play failed because Wilder had his actors play it for laughs when the comedy should be played straight and the laughs should flow from that.

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domino harvey
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Re: Billy Wilder

#80 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 06, 2016 5:00 pm

I think that's a problem a lot of Wilder's weaker comedies have, but I'm not sure it's as rampant here as it is elsewhere in his works. The heritage Wilder inherited here with the source material stops him from slowing down too often to have his actors bask in the glow of their overwritten lines, so it certainly comes off better/zippier than it could have. Still, again, the biggest problem is that it's not funny and His Girl Friday is-- and the Hawks film wasn't hurting for painfully misguided scenes like Matthau in this version trying to convince Susan Sarandon that Jack Lemmon is a flasher or David Wayne's nancying around with the principals.

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senseabove
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Re: Billy Wilder

#81 Post by senseabove » Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:17 pm

Someone over on that other forum is claiming (and has been for a while now) that a film historian friend of theirs is working on the lost Private Life of Sherlock Holmes footage. Today's additional claim, after the KL insider quashed any speculation that they knew anything about it or would have plans to release it even if they did, is that it was all found overseas, save one scene that's still audio-only. Which is just another internet rumor as they go, but it seems like a really odd one to commit to...

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tenia
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Re: Billy Wilder

#82 Post by tenia » Sat Jul 20, 2019 5:24 am

I know Jérôme Wybon in France was working on those some time ago but the company is mostly working with finally released the movie without them because he couldnt locate them.
Not sure if this is the same film historian person.

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FrauBlucher
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:28 pm
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Re: Billy Wilder

#83 Post by FrauBlucher » Mon Aug 29, 2022 7:26 pm

Holy smokes, Wilder's first choice was Mae West to play Norma Desmond! Sunset Boulevard would've been an entirely different film and not in a good way

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Billy Wilder

#84 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Aug 29, 2022 8:59 pm

Huh, I think that may have actually been interesting, if only conceptually. I don't get Mae West's sex appeal, so seeing her as a pathetic delusional woman trying to sex up others with faux-confidence would resemble my impressions of her objective value divorced from the milieu somehow magnetized towards her in her heyday. It would have played well into the film's themes of myths via icons and the self-constructed value markers propagated by these systems that infect our beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. Anyways, I can't stand West's screen presence, so it would surely be unwatchable on a purely sensational level. Still, much like how Fred MacMurray's entire career of smarmy schtick led him to the pitch-perfect casting of The Apartment, I can see how Mae West's image could've served the same purpose here.

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knives
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Re: Billy Wilder

#85 Post by knives » Mon Aug 29, 2022 10:11 pm

I’m not a fan of West, but I’m pretty sure much of her humor and sex appeal was intended ironically like a drag show, which is where she got her start. I don’t think she was ever a real sex symbol.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Billy Wilder

#86 Post by FrauBlucher » Wed Aug 31, 2022 5:58 pm

I can't see Mae West delivering those lines the way Gloria Swanson did. It would've come across more humorous without the dark edginess that Swanson delivered them with. MacMurray reluctantly took the part after Montgomery Clift turned it down because he thought it would hurt his career. MacMurray clearly showed his acting chops where Mae West was a one trick pony.

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bottlesofsmoke
Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2021 12:26 pm

Re: Billy Wilder

#87 Post by bottlesofsmoke » Wed Aug 31, 2022 7:17 pm

Based on how many references the film has to Swanson's career, I'm guessing Brackett and Wilder would have tailored the role to fit whomever the star was. West probably would have made it a different film, she'd be more grotesque and less tragic. Swanson was a really good actor of both comedy and drama.

I'm reading Joseph McBride's book on Wilder right now and I found it interesting that although Wilder, Brackett and later Diamond we're sticklers that their screenplays be performed word-perfect (Diamond's job was to sit on the set and listen to make sure not a word was out of place) they did write their screenplays with certain actors in mind, even down to their ways of speaking. Sturges did the same, especially with character actors.

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domino harvey
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Re: Billy Wilder

#88 Post by domino harvey » Wed Aug 31, 2022 8:07 pm

Though the part wasn't written for him, Paul Douglas was offered MacMurray's role in the Apartment only a few days before he died

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bottlesofsmoke
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Re: Billy Wilder

#89 Post by bottlesofsmoke » Wed Aug 31, 2022 10:07 pm

That's really interesting, I always think of Paul Douglas as playing sort of genuine, secretly lovable guys. And not in that slightly phony way that MacMurray did, which made him so perfect for the two Wilder films. But maybe the idea was to do something similar with Douglas. George Cukor said that Douglas was better on stage in Born Yesterday than Broderick Crawford was in the movie, because when Douglas punched Judy Holliday is was more painful and erotic(!) and that Crawford punched like a policeman.

Apparently, Wilder was constantly trying to cast Cary Grant in every movie, but Grant always turned him down. The two that McBride mention that seem the most like they could have happened were the Bogart role in Sabrina and the Cooper role in Love in the Afternoon. He'd probably improve the latter film, which I really don't like, but I don't know, Grant doesn't really seem like he'd fit in a Wilder film.

ballmouse
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Re: Billy Wilder

#90 Post by ballmouse » Wed Aug 31, 2022 11:13 pm

bottlesofsmoke wrote:
Wed Aug 31, 2022 10:07 pm
Apparently, Wilder was constantly trying to cast Cary Grant in every movie, but Grant always turned him down. The two that McBride mention that seem the most like they could have happened were the Bogart role in Sabrina and the Cooper role in Love in the Afternoon. He'd probably improve the latter film, which I really don't like, but I don't know, Grant doesn't really seem like he'd fit in a Wilder film.
Isn't for that reason such a pairing would be intriguing? And I can sort of picture it.

Tony Curtis sort of played a parody of Cary Grant and it worked. Also, The Major and the Minor probably could have worked with Grant as well.

Now, a pairing of Cary Grant in an Orson Welles flick is something I can't imagine. Actually, it sounds disastrous.

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bottlesofsmoke
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Re: Billy Wilder

#91 Post by bottlesofsmoke » Thu Sep 01, 2022 12:23 am

ballmouse wrote:
Wed Aug 31, 2022 11:13 pm
Isn't for that reason such a pairing would be intriguing? And I can sort of picture it.

Tony Curtis sort of played a parody of Cary Grant and it worked. Also, The Major and the Minor probably could have worked with Grant as well.
I don't know, Curtis is doing a fake Grant, but only when he is roleplaying a different character than what he actually is in the film. The joke is that he is imitating Grant but that no one in the film would actually knows who Grant is, since it is set before Cary Grant even existed. I couldn't really see Grant playing Curtis' actual character.

With The Major and the Minor, you have to believe that the character is so distracted or oblivious that he doesn't notice that a grown woman is pretending to be a little girl. Grant is too knowing and clever a personality for me to really buy it, especially when is playing a military man and not a bookish professor. The dirty secret of the film is that is joking about pedophilia, which doesn't really work if you don't believe that man thinks Ginger Rogers is actually a little girl.

All that said, we were just talking about how Wilder often wrote to with his actors in mind, so he could certainly tailor a role to fit Grant. You're right, it would be interesting to see how they would make it work, but Wilder had enough miscastings and misfires that I can also see it not working.

I guess what I mean is I just don't see him matching up with what I think of as the typical Wilder characters, the protagonists from his noir, or Stalag 17, The Apartment, and Hold Back the Dawn. Holden (and Kirk Douglas) in the darker films/roles, Lemmon in the comedy-dramas are the ideal Wilder leading men, they are either charming, cynical opportunists or goofy, lovable outsiders, neither of which really seem like Grant to me.
ballmouse wrote:
Wed Aug 31, 2022 11:13 pm
Now, a pairing of Cary Grant in an Orson Welles flick is something I can't imagine. Actually, it sounds disastrous.
I could maybe see Destination Tokyo-esque stoic Grant playing Edward G. Robinson's character in The Stranger, but just barely, it would be fun to see them matching wits. But that's hardly typical Welles.

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