By Odienator
In honor of what would have been Billy Wilder's 100th birthday, NYC's Film Forum is currently hosting a retrospective titled "Essential Wilder." Running until July 20th, the lineup features films co-written by Wilder either for himself or for another director (Howard Hawks, Mitchell Liesen and Wilder's idol Ernst Lubistch, to name three). Wilder's classics are represented, as well as films deemed by most to be "Lesser Wilder," though a die-hard fan may take issue with that label: Wilder had a few misfires in his career, but only one of them is in this retrospective.
Because the series is called "Essential Wilder," there are no screenings of Wilder's horrendous Buddy, Buddy, nor are there any sightings of Jack Lemmon's flat, naked ass from the otherwise mildly diverting truffle, Avanti. Film Forum also won't be wearing Wilder's Fedora nor reading The Front Page. In their places are movies about adulterers, perverts, lawyers, criminals, liars, wimps, snitches, drunks, and any combination from that list. Also present are numerous shots of the old New York, so many that Wilder should be mentioned in the same group of NYC directors as Lumet, Scorsese and Lee.
This week finds some choice Wilder works, and that aforementioned misfire. Thursday brings Witness for the Prosecution, a fun Agatha Christie mystery headed by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Laughton (both Oscar nominated), and made memorable by Marlene Dietrich's supporting turn. Friday unspools Sunset Blvd., Wilder's masterpiece and my second favorite movie of all time. It deserves a post all to itself at some future date. 
Saturday is the adulterous double feature of Kiss Me, Stupid and The Seven Year Itch. Critics called Stupid "smarmy," but at least--in its recently restored incarnation--it is honest about its smutty agenda. Itch, despite providing the iconic image of Monroe on that subway grate, is far smarmier for its failure to be true to its dirty-minded intentions. Monroe's line about keeping her drawers in the freezer when it gets hot outside is smuttier (and more unsanitary) than anything Stupid has to offer. Perhaps the censor did Wilder in, but Itch is the one movie in the festival I find below par. It's essential solely for that one scene of Monroe.
Wednesday, July 5 brings The Lost Weekend, the only Best Picture winner written by Charles Brackett and Wilder, or Brackettandwilder as they'd become known in Hollywood. Best Actor winner Ray Milland finds creative, alcohol-related uses for windows and chandeliers, then suffers a still-shockingly gruesome case of the DT's. Though overdoing it just a tad, Milland is still effective as he stumbles all over Third Avenue, desperate for booze. "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation," he says, but his desperation is anything but quiet. Milland begs for booze, and if the censor hadn't been around, he might have done some very debased things to get it. Far more harrowing than the recent alky fairy tale, Leaving Las Vegas, Weekend was even endorsed by Seagrams, who intoned in their ad that "Some men should not drink!"
Weekend is also notable for inspiring the one line from Bob Hope that I thought was actually funny. After Milland received his Oscar, Hope said "I thought they would have hidden it in the chandelier." 
Speaking of Milland: before to Weekend, he appeared in one half of a double feature that I saw at the Forum on Independence Day. Both films showcase two actors in comic roles whose next films for Wilder--both dramas--would immortalize them. The Major and the Minor describes Milland's hilarious Major Kirby and Ginger Rogers' Susan Armstrong, who is masquerading as a 12 year old for reasons too complicated to get into here. Fresh off her Kitty Foyle Oscar, Rogers looks 12 like Wesley Snipes looks albino. Yet everyone is fooled except for Milland's soon-to-be stepdaughter. Wilder uses the all-teenage boys school setting to emphasize that all men are born perverts; the horny cadets spend all their time trying to sprinkle Ginger on their overheating loins. At times, Major threatens to become the Porky's of 1942. Brackettandwilder write some excellent, uproarious dialogue for Wilder's directorial debut, including the line about "slipping out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini." But their real achievement is keeping the censor from realizing that this is, in Wilder's words, "the story of a man who gets a hard-on every time he looks at this woman he thinks is a 12-year old." Milland's attempt to explain sex to Rogers is worth the price of admission.
Brackettandwilder also wrote Ball of Fire for Rogers, but she refused to play a scandalous woman. The role instead went to Barbara Stanwyck who, with her incredible legs and overall hotness, had by this time cornered the market on movies where a less than virtuous woman blew the gaskets of uptight, virginal men (see The Lady Eve).Howard Hawks directs this screwball comedy take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ("there are eight of them," says Stanwyck) where a bunch of dirty old men and one Gary Cooper are captivated by an on-the-lam Babs. Stanwyck's slang-spewing Sugarpuss O'Shea (try saying that three times fast) is hired by the encyclopedia writing "dwarfs" to help Cooper with his volume on slang. Little do they know that Stanwyck's involved with some gangsters. There are prime swipes at my home state, New Jersey, and great slangy dialogue by the English-as-a-second-language Wilder. Stanwyck would entice another dumb dude, though in far more sinister fashion, in her next piece for Wilder, Double Indemnity.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Adulterers, perverts, lawyers, criminals, liars, wimps, snitches and drunks: "Essential Wilder," at Film Forum through July 20
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17 comments:
I agree about Seven Year Itch; Monroe iconography aside, it's a pretty weak movie, no thanks to its very stage-bound nature and Tom Ewell's dated performance.
The last time I saw The Lost Weekend, I was laughing at the rubber spiders and rats in Milland's DT nightmare, I think the movie works as a first-of-its-kind but has been since superseded by plenty of other, better movies about drunks.
When I was a projectionist and film archivist at SMU back in the day, "The Major and the Minor" is one of the "old" movies I used to show to people to demonstrate that it's possible to be shocking within commercial constraints. That this movie ever got made within the studio system still boggles my mind. The movie even predated the novel "Lolita," which makes me wonder if Nabokov, who came to the United States in 1940, ever saw it.
Do I have to stick up for The Seven Year Itch yet again? It's certainly stagebound and far from Wilder's best, but also thoroughly entertaining and further yet from Wilder's worst (that Front Page remake was severely misguided). The dialogue is great, Marilyn is gorgeous, and there are some lovely moments of intimacy between Ewell and Monroe, as well as between Ewell and his wife.
The Lost Weekend on the other hand, I really don't care for at all. I found it pretentious and too eager to announce itself as an Issue picture.
Goran: The dialogue is great, Marilyn is gorgeous, and there are some lovely moments of intimacy between Ewell and Monroe, as well as between Ewell and his wife.
I missed all of these moments of intimacy. And Ewell seems to be on stage, not on film; Broderick and Lane had this problem in the movie version of The Producers.
In Pat Kirkham's 1995 interview, Wilder stated "the guy who has all those daydreams [in Itch] should not be very attractive at all." Wilder had tested Walter Matthau for the role, but the studio wouldn't let him have Matthau. Their rationale was that Ewell had played the role 900 times on stage. Having seen Candy (unfortunately), I know Matthau would have no problem playing a horndog.
Wilder further says "censorship was a problem. I argued that at a certain point we must say it, see it, feel it: that he slept with Marilyn Monroe. 'Oh my God, Mary, Mary,' the studio said."
So censorship did have something to do with Itch's inability to show its hand. Most importantly, in that same interview, Wilder says "Actually, the Seven Year Itch wasn't a very good picture. Well, it was all right."
I can't argue with Mr. Wilder.
MZS: That this movie ever got made within the studio system still boggles my mind.
There's a scene early in the movie where lightning startles Ginger, and Milland gets into bed with her, holding her to his chest and "comforting" her. I was thinking "this is some R. Kelly shit right here."
We know at all times that it's a grown woman, not, say, Dakota Fanning, but the premise remains: Milland thinks this is a 12-year old girl. Maybe because the audience is in on the joke, the movie failed to freak out the censors.
Besides, I'd be afraid for Milland if it were Dakota Fanning. Unlike Ginger, Miss Fanning does look 12. But she's really 40.
This weekend, I finally caught up with Five Graves to Cairo, which was sort of fun, though definitely a lesser Wilder. Erich von Stroheim is great as Rommell though.
Looking over this list, it's striking how many Wilder films revolve around a femme fatale or otherwise siren-ish woman who intentionally or unintentionally seduces (and sometimes destroys) an impulsive or ambitious man. "Double Indemnity," "Sunset Blvd.," "The Major and the Minor," "The Seven-Year Itch."
Lest anyone accuse Wilder of misogyny, though, it's worth pointing out that other Wilder films show lovelorn or lustful women being destroyed by her obsession with a controlling man (Fred MacMurray's homme fatale in "The Apartment"), or being used in one man's scheme to take advantage of another ("Kiss Me Stupid," which plays both angles -- the exploitation of women by men, first Felicia Farr and then Kim Novak -- then the incidental entrapment of a man by a woman's charms -- Ray Walston's gradually deepening fascination with Novak). "The Lost Weekend" is a dark love story in which the real affair is between a man and his booze; doesn't he even talk to it as if it's a person?). Even supposedly "light" Wilder films like "Sabrina" and "Spirit of St. Louis" (arguably Wilder's blandest, most Hollywood-pleasing movie) have a dreamy-obsessive edge and a sense that the central male character is deeply unhappy and is looking for an excuse to have an adventure and risk destroying the life he's got.
Maybe Wilder's central theme is how obsession subverts and sometimes destroys the status quo.
Maybe Wilder's central theme is how obsession subverts and sometimes destroys the status quo.
That's a very good point. Wilder's cynicism manifests itself in the ways his characters go about satisfying their addictions. Some of his best lines stem from the pursuit of a character's next fix. Fran Kubelik's line about married men and mascara, Joe E. Brown's line about perfection, and Norma's line about close-ups--all of these grow from the characters' acknowledgement of that which drives them to distraction. (By the way: Is Norma really crazy? Or is this her insanity defense? Wilder is vague there.)
In other news, you can catch a rare sighting of the Odienator this Monday at the Film Forum. I'll be at the 7:45 showing of Wilder's classic One, Two, Three. Just so you know whom to sic your pit bull on, I'm the bald guy who looks like Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire.
The diss on AVANTI will...not...stand.
Odie: I'm the bald guy who looks like Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire.
Better than Cuba Gooding, Jr., in Lightning Jack.
Odienator: Is Norma really crazy? Or is this her insanity defense? Wilder is vague there.
Deliberately so. But either way, her narcissistic/obsessive grandeur fits into the obsession-subverting-or-destroying-the-status-quo angle.
Though we don't see the aftermath of this sad story, the Swanson/Holden relationship certainly accomplishes that agenda, laying bare (1) Hollywood's heartless fixation on youth and newness over age and experience; (2) the fact that it's OK in America for older men to lust after younger women, but not the reverse; and (3) the industry's generally shabby treatment of writers, actors and other professional "talent" who've either fallen from favor or never quite got there. (He's on his way up, she's on her way down, and they're both so desperate to succeed that it doesn't really matter that much what they succeed at; they're a match made in hell.)
Bilge: The diss on AVANTI will...not...stand.
C'mon, I said it was mildly diverting! That doesn't mean bad! If you go back to my earlier piece on Wilder under the comments you'll see that I also copped to enjoying the fullness of Juliet Mills. I didn't diss the movie, just one asspect of it:
I DID diss Jack Lemmon's flatter than 14th century Earth's ass, which is not essential for anyone to see.
MZS: Better than Cuba Gooding, Jr., in Lightning Jack.
...or Boat Trip. Or Snow Dogs. Or Dirty. Or Radio. Or...
Why couldn't I look like Denzel?
MZS: they're a match made in hell.
Yes, but don't you think that Wilder sympathizes with Norma over Joe?
I could never bring myself as a viewer of any of Holden's films to feel for his characters. He always came off as someone I wanted to slug. This isn't a criticism of his acting; I still enjoy his work. I doubt I'm crazy for saying this because, while filming Stalag 17, Holden asked Wilder to please allow him to play his character as a nicer person. Wilder refused, saying something to the effect of "wasn't I right about you in Sunset Blvd.?"
Odienator: Yes, but don't you think that Wilder sympathizes with Norma over Joe?
Good point. Ultimately, yes, Wilder favors Norma, if only slightly, because as creepy and decrepit as Norma has become -- and as obsessed with recapturing fame for its own sake -- at least she was great once; her career actually meant something. Whereas there's nothing in the film to indicate that Joe has anything like Norma's artistic potential; he's just a hustler looking for a big score--a parasite attaching himself to a contaminated host that eventually sloughs him off.
Odienator: I could never bring myself as a viewer of any of Holden's films to feel for his characters. He always came off as someone I wanted to slug.
Absolutely. And that's what makes Holden unique, for better or worse: nobody was better at playing worthless characters, or characters who perceive themselves as worthless. He often looked unhappy and lost, and bitter about feeling that way; when his characters manipulate other people you always sensed the self-contempt behind each action. Kirk Douglas and Lee Marvin played a lot of heels, too, but they reveled in their heelishness and turned it into an alpha male spectacle, a movie star performance; we enjoy watching them behave selfishly or cruelly. But there was no gusto or glory in Holden's charactrers. He was the alpha male as basket case. His performances revealed that what other movie stars presented as imperatives, as drives transformed into behavior, were actually just appetites, addictions that had to be fed to keep the body moving through life instead of just giving up. Which means that many of Holden's most distinctive characters are, in some fundamental way, passive, prisoners inside their own skin.
English was a second language to Billy Wilder like it was to Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov. It’s mind-boggling.
Five Graves to Cairo is next on my list of unseen Wilder now that I’ve gotten my paws on a copy. I will file my report later.
Billy Wilder made so many great movies, but surely Sunset Blvd. is his masterpiece. I’ve shown this movie to more people than any other, and it has a 100% success rate. I’ll buy all the analysis that Odie and Matt have provided, but I have to say that each time I watch it I just enjoy it so damn much that I never have reached that stage of contemplation/analysis. Maybe I need to see it a dozen more times. I’m still astounded that as many times as I’ve seen it, and that’s a bunch, I always get so caught up in it that I almost forget how it all shakes out during the final third. And my lips move when I watch it –I say all the lines along with it.
Yes, Wilder was primarily a word man, but I think he deserves more credit for his visuals. Right now I’m thinking of that great shot of Joe leaving the party of his peers when he hears about Norma’s suicide attempt. It’s shot with a slightly longer lens; it looks like those people are really packed in there. Or how about that first glimpse of Norma in the window? Hell, I think that short car chase is still exciting! And how about a round of applause for Franz Waxman’s great score.
I really wish I could see this retrospective. Even if you’ve seen an old movie a dozen times, it’s like a whole new movie when you see it on the big screen. I can’t be there unfortunately, but if I was, I would be the one in the middle, wearing a honey of an anklet.
P.S. Has anyone read the short story “A Can of Beans” which Sunset Blvd. was based on?
Wagstaff: I really wish I could see this retrospective. Even if you’ve seen an old movie a dozen times, it’s like a whole new movie when you see it on the big screen.
Seeing Sunset Blvd. on the big screen was an entirely different experience than all the times I saw it on my TV. Wilder really capitalizes on the larger than life screen, especially in his placement of Gloria Swanson. Swanson herself is far more terrifying staring down at you from the screen.
I've never read the story Sunset is based on, but I did see that Lloyd Webber version. Wilder himself liked it far more than I did. He said it would make a great movie. Despite Glenn Close's performance, I thought it was blasphemy!
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