Polling the films of director Billy Wilder
The rules:
- your list can include no more than half of the Wilder films you've seen, up to a maximum of 5. So if you've seen seven of his films, for example, you can list only a top 3. It's only if you've seen ten or more of his films than you can list the maximum of five.
- i'll assume ballots are ranked unless you tell me otherwise. unranked ballots are fine.
- deadline for ballots: next Friday, in seven days, whatever day that is
- if anyone is watching films for these polls, then i'll extend the deadline up to three days, if someone requests an extension
- next poll: whoever posts the first ballot in this thread is free to nominate the director we poll next, unless you've nominated in this round already (everyone should get a chance). Already nominated this round: oscarwerner, greennui, mesnalty, bure, ofrene, arkheia, brian d, rischka, twodeadmagpies, john ryan
umbugbene created an index on letterboxd of all of our previous polls here: letterboxd.com/umbugbene/list/index-of-all-scfz-director-polls/
one rule for nominees: at least 3 scfzers need to have seen 10+ of a nominee's films, or at least 4 scfzers need to have seen at least 8 of the nom's films, so if it isn't clear if that will be the case, we'll confirm that's true before moving forward
if 24 hours pass after a poll opens, and no one eligible to nominate has posted a ballot, then i'll nominate someone, and then we'll start over, and everyone will be able to nominate again
SCFZ poll: Billy Wilder
The Major and the Minor
One, Two, Three
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Ace in the Hole
The Apartment
seen 23
One, Two, Three
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Ace in the Hole
The Apartment
seen 23
not my favorite director at all, but machine says i seen 15:
sabrina
ace in the hole
double indemnity
stalag 17
witness for the prosecution
sabrina
ace in the hole
double indemnity
stalag 17
witness for the prosecution
Have a look at all the picnics of the intellect: These conceptions! These discoveries! Perspectives! Subtleties! Publications! Congresses! Discussions! Institutes! Universities! Yet: one senses nothing but stupidity. - Gombrowicz, Diary
Seen 20+
1. The Apartment
2. Ace in the Hole
3. The Lost Weekend
4. Avanti!
5. Witness for the Prosecution
1. The Apartment
2. Ace in the Hole
3. The Lost Weekend
4. Avanti!
5. Witness for the Prosecution
Seen 15
The apartment
Witness for the prosecution
Ace in the hole
Avanti!
The major and the minor
The apartment
Witness for the prosecution
Ace in the hole
Avanti!
The major and the minor
Thought I don't like the guy, but it's just his comedies, I can't stand (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, One two three, The Seven Year Itch, etc.).
Wilder I love:
01. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
02. Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
Wilder seen: 8
Wilder I love:
01. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
02. Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
Wilder seen: 8
"I too am a child burned by future experiences, fallen back on myself and already suspecting the certainty that in the end only those will prove benevolent who believe in nothing." – Marran Gosov
1. SUNSET BOULEVARD
2. THE APARTMENT
3. DOUBLE INDEMNITY
SOME LIKE IT HOT I like a lot, except for the tedious gangster bits at the beginning and end that really just take way too long, and that really dumb joke about the gangster named Little Bonaparte, I mean really. Room for the fourth spot? Dunno...
2. THE APARTMENT
3. DOUBLE INDEMNITY
SOME LIKE IT HOT I like a lot, except for the tedious gangster bits at the beginning and end that really just take way too long, and that really dumb joke about the gangster named Little Bonaparte, I mean really. Room for the fourth spot? Dunno...
Last edited by Roscoe on Sat Nov 30, 2019 11:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
These matters are best disposed of from a great height. Over water.
seen 9
stalag 17
private life of sherlock holmes
ace in the hole
some like it hot
stalag 17
private life of sherlock holmes
ace in the hole
some like it hot
"Most esteemed biographer of Peter Barrington Hutton"
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Evelyn Library P.I.
- Posts: 1370
- Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2018 10:36 pm
Only seen 10! I'm surprised, he was a major early director love when I got into classic Hollywood, but I guess the local library didn't have that many DVDs. I have more mixed feelings about Wilder now, but Some Like It Hot remains very dear to me. I'd have to rewatch the rest to know for sure how I feel, but herein lies a guesstimated top 5:
1. Some Like It Hot
2. Double Indemnity
3. A Foreign Affair
4. The Seven Year Itch
5. The Major and the Minor
1. Some Like It Hot
2. Double Indemnity
3. A Foreign Affair
4. The Seven Year Itch
5. The Major and the Minor
Seen 10:
1. Double Indemnity
2. Ace in the Hole
3. The Apartment
4. Sunset Boulevard
5. The Major and the Minor
1. Double Indemnity
2. Ace in the Hole
3. The Apartment
4. Sunset Boulevard
5. The Major and the Minor
1. The Apartment
2. Sunset Boulevard
3. Double Indemnity
(seen 7)
2. Sunset Boulevard
3. Double Indemnity
(seen 7)
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oscarwerner
- Posts: 319
- Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2019 9:13 am
- Contact:
seen 12.
1. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
2. Some Like it Hot (1959)
3. The Apartment (1960)
4. Stalag 17 (1953)
5. Sabrina (1954)
1. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
2. Some Like it Hot (1959)
3. The Apartment (1960)
4. Stalag 17 (1953)
5. Sabrina (1954)
for some reason i have no response to billy wilder (seen 7, absolutely loathed one, neutral on the rest)
what makes a film a wilder film? it's been ages (decades?) since i've seen a film of his, and perhaps wasn't paying any attention back then
what makes a film a wilder film? it's been ages (decades?) since i've seen a film of his, and perhaps wasn't paying any attention back then
Which was the one you loathed? And what were the rest, if you feel like saying?
Wilder adored Lubitsch to the point of having a note posted on his office wall saying What would Lubitsch do? That kinda informs how he films some of his movies, but he almost never really gets Lubitsch's feel for people and his acceptance of them for what they are. Wilder is too jaded for that, he can't help but draw out the weaknesses of his characters, sometimes with more than a bit of sourness or cynicism in the portrayals. His romances often carry this feeling of there being something of a mismatch or corrupted pleasure underlying the matches. In some movies this is pretty much on the surface, like The Major and the Minor or Sunset Blvd. where in others its there but can get overlooked for the alternatives being equally unacceptable. It can work when the actors are fluid enough to convey both the sour and the sweet, like I think Shirley MacLaine and Ginger Rogers are able to do, or when there is enough extra stuff to make the romance seem just another ridiculous element in a larger ridiculous world, like in Some Like It Hot and One, Two, Three. Avanti! is a late film that kinda avoids the pitfall for being about a somewhat older couple, but I personally think it turns Love in the Afternoon and Sabrina a bit too sour to take as Audrey Hepburn is required to do too much heavy lifting in romancing Cooper, Bogart, and Holden. She tries, but there isn't enough there other than absence of reasonable alternatives to make sense of it. I remember liking A Foreign Affair, for presumably some of the same reasons as Avanti!, though less directly stated perhaps, but can't recall the details well enough to say more. Kiss Me Stupid has Novak doing her best, but its stuck with Dean Martin and Ray Walston so it has some built in limitations, but the comedy is screwier than the Hepburn ones, so it sits between the Some Like it Hot, One, Two, Three broad comedies and the Hepburns and Avanti! in that regard.
Stalag 17, Ace in the Hole, Witness for the Prosecution and The Fortune Cookie all lean much harder into the cynical side, that Wilder made good use of in Double Indemnity. (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes kinda does too, but in a much lighter way where it reads as demystifying instead of caustic.) With Stalag 17 the sourness makes sense, and some feel that way about Ace in the Hole as well, Witness is more a character thing, so it just reads as "adult" for those who like it and Fortune Cookie I guess must read that way too, but the attempt at making it funny pushes the attitude towards ugly instead of everyone has their dark little foibles. That's true too for Buddy, Buddy, but basically dropping the woman from the relationship between Lemmon and Matthau and leaving their paring front and center. Spirit of St Louis and Lost Weekend are quasi-sincere, but feel more like filmmaking challenges than entirely felt. They mostly succeed in those challenges, but they feel a bit by the book emotionally rather than something Wilder really wanted to say, for good or bad.
WIlder's best film I think is The Apartment for managing to capture the widest range of emotional context and still mostly avoiding condescension to its characters, save for perhaps MacMurray's, but Double Indemnity is also hard to beat within its own noiry world as Stanwyck is pretty much perfect and MacMurray is an ideal foil for her, able to seem both upright and sleazy in equal measure and just smart enough to not realize he's being really stupid. Some Like it Hot is its own thing that people love and has that nifty ending, but I'm not so enamored of it and how Monroe is used. I think One, Two, Three is hilarious as much for its pacing and Wilder's way of handling it as the material itself, but the cast is excellent as well. Wilder is generally really good with his actors when they suit his needs, most of his films feature some really inventive performances, which only sometimes get swallowed by the tone of the movies. Wilder also worked with some top notch screenwriters and the dialogue in his movies is often quite clever and "adult" in ways many movies are not, for all his jadedness with some of his characters and situations, Wilder didn't talk down to the audience or sell the characters short in expression most of the time, so that's generally a plus for his films and basically the only way some of them work at all, much less as well as they do. I mean The Major and the Minor is treading a mighty fine line and manages to stay on the right side of it, or so I think anyway. At his best Wilder's films are more "sophisticated" than most Hollywood movies both in construction, visually and acting/dialogue, and in theme, where there can be more complex emotions or ideas at play than in most other Hollywood-like mass appeal films. The movies can leave a bad aftertaste when they miss, even if or maybe especially if there were some laughs along the way, but that seems to come from pushing the movies to a place most directors don't in their mix of themes. One thing is certain, he ain't Lubitsch, but he's definitely a step up from Blake Edwards. (I bet no one expected I'd have a long winded response to the question. Nope, I'm sure I caught everyone completely off-guard.)
After some brief thought, I guess it might be simpler to say that Wilder learned the value of insinuation from Lubitsch, having the dialogue and action suggest more than is actually said, but Wilder isn't able orchestrate that as well as Lubitsch, partially from Wilder's own attitudes being a bit less forgiving than Lubitsch and partially because Lubitsch fit the attitudes to his characters where Wilder tries to fit the characters to the attitudes he wants to convey. When it works, it's quite good, but when it doesn't it feels like an unpleasant imposition.
The Apartment
Double Indemnity
One, Two, Three
The Major and the Minor
Avanti!
Wilder adored Lubitsch to the point of having a note posted on his office wall saying What would Lubitsch do? That kinda informs how he films some of his movies, but he almost never really gets Lubitsch's feel for people and his acceptance of them for what they are. Wilder is too jaded for that, he can't help but draw out the weaknesses of his characters, sometimes with more than a bit of sourness or cynicism in the portrayals. His romances often carry this feeling of there being something of a mismatch or corrupted pleasure underlying the matches. In some movies this is pretty much on the surface, like The Major and the Minor or Sunset Blvd. where in others its there but can get overlooked for the alternatives being equally unacceptable. It can work when the actors are fluid enough to convey both the sour and the sweet, like I think Shirley MacLaine and Ginger Rogers are able to do, or when there is enough extra stuff to make the romance seem just another ridiculous element in a larger ridiculous world, like in Some Like It Hot and One, Two, Three. Avanti! is a late film that kinda avoids the pitfall for being about a somewhat older couple, but I personally think it turns Love in the Afternoon and Sabrina a bit too sour to take as Audrey Hepburn is required to do too much heavy lifting in romancing Cooper, Bogart, and Holden. She tries, but there isn't enough there other than absence of reasonable alternatives to make sense of it. I remember liking A Foreign Affair, for presumably some of the same reasons as Avanti!, though less directly stated perhaps, but can't recall the details well enough to say more. Kiss Me Stupid has Novak doing her best, but its stuck with Dean Martin and Ray Walston so it has some built in limitations, but the comedy is screwier than the Hepburn ones, so it sits between the Some Like it Hot, One, Two, Three broad comedies and the Hepburns and Avanti! in that regard.
Stalag 17, Ace in the Hole, Witness for the Prosecution and The Fortune Cookie all lean much harder into the cynical side, that Wilder made good use of in Double Indemnity. (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes kinda does too, but in a much lighter way where it reads as demystifying instead of caustic.) With Stalag 17 the sourness makes sense, and some feel that way about Ace in the Hole as well, Witness is more a character thing, so it just reads as "adult" for those who like it and Fortune Cookie I guess must read that way too, but the attempt at making it funny pushes the attitude towards ugly instead of everyone has their dark little foibles. That's true too for Buddy, Buddy, but basically dropping the woman from the relationship between Lemmon and Matthau and leaving their paring front and center. Spirit of St Louis and Lost Weekend are quasi-sincere, but feel more like filmmaking challenges than entirely felt. They mostly succeed in those challenges, but they feel a bit by the book emotionally rather than something Wilder really wanted to say, for good or bad.
WIlder's best film I think is The Apartment for managing to capture the widest range of emotional context and still mostly avoiding condescension to its characters, save for perhaps MacMurray's, but Double Indemnity is also hard to beat within its own noiry world as Stanwyck is pretty much perfect and MacMurray is an ideal foil for her, able to seem both upright and sleazy in equal measure and just smart enough to not realize he's being really stupid. Some Like it Hot is its own thing that people love and has that nifty ending, but I'm not so enamored of it and how Monroe is used. I think One, Two, Three is hilarious as much for its pacing and Wilder's way of handling it as the material itself, but the cast is excellent as well. Wilder is generally really good with his actors when they suit his needs, most of his films feature some really inventive performances, which only sometimes get swallowed by the tone of the movies. Wilder also worked with some top notch screenwriters and the dialogue in his movies is often quite clever and "adult" in ways many movies are not, for all his jadedness with some of his characters and situations, Wilder didn't talk down to the audience or sell the characters short in expression most of the time, so that's generally a plus for his films and basically the only way some of them work at all, much less as well as they do. I mean The Major and the Minor is treading a mighty fine line and manages to stay on the right side of it, or so I think anyway. At his best Wilder's films are more "sophisticated" than most Hollywood movies both in construction, visually and acting/dialogue, and in theme, where there can be more complex emotions or ideas at play than in most other Hollywood-like mass appeal films. The movies can leave a bad aftertaste when they miss, even if or maybe especially if there were some laughs along the way, but that seems to come from pushing the movies to a place most directors don't in their mix of themes. One thing is certain, he ain't Lubitsch, but he's definitely a step up from Blake Edwards. (I bet no one expected I'd have a long winded response to the question. Nope, I'm sure I caught everyone completely off-guard.)
After some brief thought, I guess it might be simpler to say that Wilder learned the value of insinuation from Lubitsch, having the dialogue and action suggest more than is actually said, but Wilder isn't able orchestrate that as well as Lubitsch, partially from Wilder's own attitudes being a bit less forgiving than Lubitsch and partially because Lubitsch fit the attitudes to his characters where Wilder tries to fit the characters to the attitudes he wants to convey. When it works, it's quite good, but when it doesn't it feels like an unpleasant imposition.
The Apartment
Double Indemnity
One, Two, Three
The Major and the Minor
Avanti!
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Joks Trois
- Posts: 361
- Joined: Sun Dec 16, 2018 9:51 am
I enjoy Wilder, but I feel he was extremely inconsistent, and his highs weren't as high as other great directors highs. He also went out on an extremely bad note (Buddy Buddy), and I find several of his films overrated. For example, who needs Stalag 17 and Ace In The Hole when you have Grand Illusion and Sweet Smell of Success? Yeah yeah, they are 'different', I get it, but that's how I feel. The cynicism of Ace just felt cheap and lazy to me.
Seen 19.
1.Sunset Boulevard
2.The Apartment
3.One, Two, Three
4.Double Indemnity
5.Some Like It Hot
His most underrated film: Kiss Me, Stupid
Seen 19.
1.Sunset Boulevard
2.The Apartment
3.One, Two, Three
4.Double Indemnity
5.Some Like It Hot
His most underrated film: Kiss Me, Stupid
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St. Gloede
- Posts: 712
- Joined: Sat Feb 09, 2019 5:50 pm
Seen 19:
Stalag 17
Sunset Blvd.
The Apartment
Double Indemnity
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
HM:
Five Graves to Cairo
Stalag 17
Sunset Blvd.
The Apartment
Double Indemnity
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
HM:
Five Graves to Cairo
Avanti!
The Apartment
Double Indemnity
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Some like it hot
The Apartment
Double Indemnity
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Some like it hot
seen 8. only truly fond of the first (and to an extent the second).
the private life of sherlock holmes
the apartment
some like it hot
double indemnity
the private life of sherlock holmes
the apartment
some like it hot
double indemnity
seen almost all of them, will just vote for the three i very much care for -
the private life of sherlock holmes
avanti!
kiss me stupid
the private life of sherlock holmes
avanti!
kiss me stupid
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Lencho of the Apes
- Posts: 1900
- Joined: Tue Dec 11, 2018 4:38 am
Seen 9. Fading memories, mostly, of long-ago watches/rewatches, so If I can list them unranked, that's what this is.
Ace In The Hole
Sunset Boulevard
Stalag 17
Ace In The Hole
Sunset Boulevard
Stalag 17
The opposite of 'reify' is... ?
i got 17. don't fuckin look at me lencho
double indemnity
sunset blvd
some like it hot
stalag 17
five graves to cairo
i don't really remember much about the others
double indemnity
sunset blvd
some like it hot
stalag 17
five graves to cairo
i don't really remember much about the others
thanks for the essay greg - i always feel bad about not giving proper responses but i don't have enough time to watch films & talk about them properly as well.
i think my problem with wilder was that i knew the lubitsch quote beforehand and then the answer was always 'not that!' so i didn't know what to think. maybe if the cynical ones were more cynical ('cept i don't care for noir so there ends that), the screwier ones more screwy i might have something to grasp...i usually prefer the vague things but here...blegh, without re-watching them all, i don't think i'm qualified to vote in this poll.
the one i hated was irma la douce. the lovable happy prostitute trope is a perennial
I'm not a "noir" fan exactly either, at least I'm not keen on the way it's become the dominant older movie genre, with maybe westerns a close second. (I won't go into how that label is really being misused and distorting how so many older movies are now seen, just look at letterboxd comments on anything balck and white with a hint of crime or cynicism/nihilism to see how its all getting hoovered up under the "noir" brand label.) I've gone back and forth on Wilder overall, kinda like I do with Hawks but maybe less dramatically, but I think his grasp of the craft is quite good and some of his movies really are worth seeing. The cynicism of his movies, even like Ace in the Hole, now seems a bit more dated and routine perhaps than it likely did at the time when that attitude wasn't nearly as common as it became post-60s. The more difficult thing now might be in how the movies frame the male/female relationships that are viewed through that cynical frame, as they are so often of wildly unequal partners.
If you do watch The Apartment or One, Two, Three, I went on at length about both over at Metafilter in an aborted Billy Wilder movie watching group. (I think my going on at such length might have been part of the reason the viewings were aborted though, so fair warning. http://fanfare.metafilter.com/9983/The-Apartment http://fanfare.metafilter.com/10099/One-Two-Three
If you do watch The Apartment or One, Two, Three, I went on at length about both over at Metafilter in an aborted Billy Wilder movie watching group. (I think my going on at such length might have been part of the reason the viewings were aborted though, so fair warning. http://fanfare.metafilter.com/9983/The-Apartment http://fanfare.metafilter.com/10099/One-Two-Three
ace in the hole
double indemnity
stalag 17
*seen eight
double indemnity
stalag 17
*seen eight
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Caracortada
- Posts: 106
- Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2018 8:38 pm
Seen 20. One of the greatest directors of comedy and film noir.
1. The Apartment
2. Sunset Blvd.
3. Some Like It Hot
4. Double Indemnity
5. The Seven Year Itch
1. The Apartment
2. Sunset Blvd.
3. Some Like It Hot
4. Double Indemnity
5. The Seven Year Itch
Im Kwon-taek may be too obscure for folk round here... But he's who first comes to mind. If not, lemme consider.
Have a look at all the picnics of the intellect: These conceptions! These discoveries! Perspectives! Subtleties! Publications! Congresses! Discussions! Institutes! Universities! Yet: one senses nothing but stupidity. - Gombrowicz, Diary