Billy Wilder

[knives]

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

[domino harvey]

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

[jdcopp]

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.

[domino harvey]

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.

[senseabove]

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...

[tenia]

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.

[FrauBlucher]

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

[therewillbeblus]

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.

[knives]

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.

[FrauBlucher]

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.

[bottlesofsmoke]

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.

[domino harvey]

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

[bottlesofsmoke]

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]

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.

[bottlesofsmoke]

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.

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.

[domino harvey]

Jean Douchet's perfect summation of Billy Wilder, from his review of the Apartment in Cahiers (my translation): "His camera is not an eye, but a snout. It likes to scrounge sordid details, to sniff out universes nearing putrefaction."

[domino harvey]

Love in the Afternoon is just below (above?) the Fortune Cookie on the comedy scale, a film that seems to literally pause and hold after every allegedly funny moment for laughs that it hasn't inspired. And that insulting, unsettling ending? Oof, what a waste of a decent premise and talented cast!

Fifteen (!) years later and I gave Love in the Afternoon another shot and it remains a truly terrible, leaden, and unfunny movie that stands firmly among Wilder's worst. That he thought he was embodying Lubitsch shows delusion on a grand scale-- a Lubitsch version of this material would run 80 minutes and end with a Matterhorn instructor with dimpled knees being on the same train with Cooper and Hepburn. This? This is 130 minutes of constant stop-starting and long, luxuriating pauses that never refresh.

To make matters worse, the English subtitles on the Warner Archive Blu are inexcusably poor. I may not find the film funny in the slightest, but I still recognize the comic intonation and heft every word is given by Wilder and Diamond's script. It is not that the subtitles elide a word here or there for the sake of brevity, they rewrite about half of the lines, stripping them of what little verve and spirit they have. What's worse, these redrafts often change the meaning of the actual line, which strikes me as even lazier because whoever halfheartedly transcribed them couldn't even be bothered to confirm their changes didn't alter the intent. No typos though, so there's that...

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

Will Love in the Afternoon never surmount the Lubitsch accusations? It's one of my very favorite Wilders, one of my favorite movies, and as an ardent Lubitsch fan I am under no impression that it is not in the slightest Lubitschean except for a few gags here and there, and perhaps the general atmosphere of Paris. I love it for it languorousness, its strangeness, the melancholy air that young love and middle aged love have in common, and the gorgeous images and delicate lighting. But Lubitsch's clockwork it is not.

[Stefan Andersson]

A making-of for The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, shot in 16mm and produced by Rob Houwer, is being restored in 2K by Houwer´s son, who owns international rights:
https://www.dvdclassik.com/article/entr ... rome-wybon

Translated by browser:
"There is also the story of the making-of of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. I'm a big fan of the film and someone had talked about it on an English forum. I had dug into the information until I found that it belonged to ZDF, in Germany, from which I finally got a viewing DVD. When I told you that I have an admiration for Billy Wilder's film... In particular, we see the filming of the inverted room, a part of the film that will finally be cut in the final cut. Ten years later, a Blu-Ray edition is on the horizon in France at L'Atelier d'images. I got back in touch with ZDF, who replied that they only had the rights for Germany, not for the international market, and that they no longer had any equipment. A hard blow. On my DVD, I see in the credits that the producer is Dutch: Rob Houwer, who will then produce Verhoeven's first films in the Netherlands. I then discover that his son is a producer himself. I don't know how, I find his email and write to him. He replies that he has just restored this making-of shot in 16 mm in 2K and that he has the international rights."

[tenia]

Jérôme is talking about what he did for the already-released BD release of the movie in France, in 2018, and that includes this making of restored in HD.

[Stefan Andersson]

Many thanks for the above update, tenia!

[hearthesilence]

MoMA just kicked off a Marilyn Monroe retrospective - most if not all of the screenings are DCP's. I was planning on seeing The Seven Year Itch because (per an ancient HTF post) back in 2015 it was confirmed that Fox created a 4K DCP that was a full restoration from the original negative. I have no idea if this was done earlier, in which case the Blu-ray might've been derived from the same work, but I was curious to see how it looked.

However this was never one of my favorites, and given how quickly I'd need to get to the theater from where I was located, my reluctance got the better of me. (It screens again Saturday, but I'll probably skip it.) I ended up streaming it later, and it's every bit the slog I remember: the first 25 minutes or so are nearly dead as none of the comedic bits were funny. Unless it was performed by Monroe, a lot of the comedy was tiresome to be honest. I'm pretty sure Wilder's made worse movies, but for much of the picture, it felt like the most disappointing film I had ever seen by him.

The one great exception in all this is Monroe and she really makes the picture more than anyone else. Obviously her most iconic images come from this movie, but that moment is spectacle - her performance is actually brilliant and every close-up is magnificent. One that stands out is after she says "we can do this all summer" - the scene is written to ignite imagination and Wilder films it brilliantly, suggesting a pipe dream of an angel descending from heaven. (It's one of the few moments in the movie where the filmmaking is really inspired instead of pedestrian.) But what really seals it in memory is the final look Monroe gives to Ewell - it's hard not to notice this in the many close-ups she's had throughout her career, but every now and then she emotes quite a bit through the eyes, especially in the way she moves her eyebrows. It's not something I'd suggest to any actor because it's the kind of thing that sounds too much and unnatural, but she makes it work. She does it to express a whole range of emotions, and in this case, it does more to ignite Ewell's imagination than anything the writers could come up with. I do not know the play, but I do know the same two characters actually have sex, something they could not do in the movie for obvious reasons, and it would not surprise me if THIS was the moment that preceded that moment in the play. (More on that later.)

The other standout is the extended take where she explains, in a locked down medium close-up, what she does for a living, and at the moment I can't think of a greater example of what someone (Olivier?) famously and vulgarly said about her being a child in the body of a whore. (Honestly, it makes me wince just to type that.) As she talks with bright, wide open eyes, she completely projects the first half of that equation. Then when she shows her sales pitch for the toothpaste, we see her narrow her eyes and flash that beaming smile in a way that feels like it's been perfected through hours of rehearsal after picking it up from a modeling class - it's calculated but it's doing what it's supposed to even when it's obvious.

Wilder and Axelrod famously complained about how they were forced to bowdlerize Axelrod's play. For example, without the sex, the guilt intended in Ewell's third act scenes don't fly, though honestly I think genuine paranoia works perfectly had they refined that more. I'll also add that the best thing about the film, Monroe's performance, wouldn't have been as compelling and fascinating if she did end up sleeping with Ewell. She immediately establishes herself as an innocent made all the more vulnerable by her looks, a frequent target of aggressive heterosexual men, and that gives the movie a tension that's more powerful than Ewell's neuroses. Regardless of his struggles, he was going to be fine - it's Monroe that you really have to worry about. When she expresses a relief that he's married ("I wouldn't be lying on the floor in the middle of the night in some man's apartment drinking champagne if he wasn't married"), the response is only written for laughs ("that's an interesting line of reasoning") but one can also feel immense pity that this character's going to get really hurt someday, and you don't need to know the tragic details of Monroe's life to think that.

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

As someone who considers Monroe to be maybe the greatest female screen actress, I will say I think The Seven Year Itch is one of her and Wilder's best. The film's biggest problem is that everyone goes in expecting Marilyn but they get a lot more Ewell, not nearly as beautiful. I think the film though is quite a shrewd examination of the difference between being comfortably middle class and precariously working class. Monroe lives in a relation's apartment, doesn't have A/C, and while Ewell fantasizes about even higher class signifiers, Monroe is shameless about dunking potato chips into champagne –– one of the film's best moments is when Ewell is meditating on some topic emotional (I can't recall exactly) and Monroe is slumped in a chair trying to tabulate expenses (iirc). Marilyn obviously dazzles, but I think this is a strong film from Wilder that anticipates the much more acidic The Apartment, in terms of how corrosive American society is.

I will say that anyone in town for the MoMA retro should make it out to my favorite, The Prince and the Showgirl, which I think contains Marilyn's best performance (although both of these opinions seem to be solely my own). And also that the Museum of the Moving Image is showing a few Marilyn films as well in April.

[Drucker]

I will say that anyone in town for the MoMA retro should make it out to my favorite, The Prince and the Showgirl, which I think contains Marilyn's best performance (although both of these opinions seem to be solely my own). And also that the Museum of the Moving Image is showing a few Marilyn films as well in April.

Appreciate the write-up! One of the few classic-era Wilder films I haven't seen. For what it's worth, Film Forum also have announced a Monroe retro as part of their Q2 slate, so no excuse to miss it I guess!

[hearthesilence]

The Seven Year Itch does come out of an emerging crop of films dealing with the post-war middle class, but I don't think it's a really insightful examination of the working class, nor does it try to be. Monroe's character is an aspiring TV personality/actress, and that's sort of a chosen bohemian existence - I had friends who were in a similar situation after graduating with theater degrees and nearly all of them eventually gave up and went on to middle-class or even upper-class lives in business or law. The apartment she occupies belongs to someone who has money (as implied by his possessions and lifestyle) and they make it clear that not only is AC a luxury, it's one they could have afforded (but for whatever reason do not have). AC was also a novelty at the time, it would be a while before it took off as something every home should have, though even then it's more of an American thing. (When I lived in London over a decade ago for school, I was told that residential units usually didn't have them, and I was living in a pretty nice neighborhood.)

When she's on the couch, she's actually wondering how to make her fan work more effectively after getting annoyed that it wasn't doing the job - she eventually decides to go back to the store to get a bigger one, but since it was closed due to the late hour, her big problem was how to get some sleep that same evening since she didn't want to go to work sleep-deprived. Money does play a part in her thinking, but I don't think I'd describe it as a good example of working class struggles in the 1950s. (Meanwhile, Ewell is basically regurgitating psychoanalytical nonsense about what her true intentions behind her actions were.)