4 -10 April 2002
Issue No.580
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 -10 April 2002 Issue No.580 |
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Limelight
That Wilder touch
Hollywood woke up the morning after its historic Oscar night to mourn the loss of three of its most prominent citizens, comedian Milton Berle, actor/musician Dudley Moore, and the incomparable writer/director/producer and six-time Oscar winner, Billy Wilder. If the name rings no bells, his works certainly will. One of his 50 films is undoubtedly one of your favourites, simply because he has made some of the best films of the twentieth century. Consider such titles as Sabrina, Stalag 17, Witness for the Prosecution, Love in the Afternoon, The Seven Year Itch -- and yes there's more, Sunset Bouldevard and Some Like It Hot. This incredible variety of styles and genres is produced by one man, and his name is Billy Wilder. Easy and comfortable like an old shoe, Wilder sails from one genre to another with an astonishing list of screenplay credits, taking us to places we know, introducing us to characters we are familiar with and always presenting us with something fresh and new, making the familiar even more cherished.
Billy was born Samuel, in Sucha, Austria in 1906. His mother was so fond of The American Wild West Show of Buffalo Bill, she called her second son "Billie". He was never called anything else. He was brought up in a genteel culture characterized by grace, harmony, beauty and refinement. He grew to become a gentleman, a scholar, an artist and a writer, long before he became one of cinema's greatest figures of the twentieth century. After high school he moved to Vienna and became a newspaperman. He went to Berlin to cover a concert and remained there for three years working as ghost-writer for several successful screenwriters. When Hitler surfaced, Wilder, a young Jew, fled to Paris, then to New York, then to Hollywood. He moved in with fellow Austrian, actor Peter Lorre, and thus started his long colourful and brilliant career, first as a writer, then as one of the best writer/director/producers in history. He ties Hitchcock with four films each on the American Film Institute's list of 100 best films of the century. No topic was too daring, no genre too difficult. As writer, he teamed up with Charles Brackett and together they co-wrote some of the best films Hollywood ever produced including Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939) and Howard Hawk's Ball of Fire (1941). In order to protect his scripts he started directing and in 1942 debuted with the charming comedy The Major and the Minor, starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland, followed by Five Graves to Cairo (1943) and his third effort became the masterful film-noir Double Indemnity (1944). Following this enormous success, came an even more powerful work, The Lost Weekend, a painfully realistic portrayal of alcoholism. It won 4 Oscars including best picture.
The fifties were Hollywood's golden era. They were also Wilder's. He started the decade with the best drama ever made about the movies, Sunset Boulevard. Hailed as an astonishing achievement, it was novel in its idea, daring in its treatment, of filmdom's élite community. Boulevard is the frank portrait of a faded screen siren living in seclusion in a grotesque Gothic mansion, dreaming of a comeback. After Boulevard the Wilder/Brackett team broke up and Wilder continued his glorious ride of the fifties as entertaining as they were varied and provocative. Stalag 17, a war-time drama won its star William Holden, an Oscar for best actor. In 1954 he gave us the sparklingly buoyant romantic comedy Sabrina. It garnered 6 Oscar nominations and was a tremendous box office hit. A remake in 1995 by Sidney Pollack was disastrous without that Wilder touch.
In 1955 he found a new writing partner, I.A.L. Diamond, and he found Marilyn Monroe. He blew up her billowy skirt over a New York street vent creating the most provocative photograph in cinema. The Seven Year Itch, became another classic Wilder comedy, keeping us in stitches until today. Never ready to settle with one genre Wilder surprised us again in a show of amazing versatility, with The Spirit of St. Louis, a biography of Charles Lindbergh, and Witness for the Prosecution, a murder mystery. He closed out a decade of sustained excellence, with cinema's finest comedy, voted as the number one comedy of the century on the AFI list -- the effervescent sex-farce, Some Like It Hot (1959). He was the only director to work more than once with Marilyn Monroe. Monroe's reputation as difficult and erratic is understated. When she did decide to appear on the set she could hardly remember her dialogue - "It's me, Sugar" required 47 takes. Wilder was patient and used that magic touch, coaxing and cajoling, consequently producing some of the best footage of Marilyn on film. Hot was nominated for 6 Oscars, but took only one because it was competing against Ben Hur, one of the biggest Oscar winners in history, taking 11 Oscars out of 12 nominations. Undaunted, Wilder came back in 1960 with The Apartment, which received 5 nominations. He alone received an unprecedented 3 Oscars for the same film as writer, director and producer. The Apartment was his second of 7 films with his favourite actor, Hollywood's top comedian, Jack Lemmon. Co-star, Shirley McLaine wrote: "Wilder was captivated by Lemmon's talent and the chemistry between them was a joy to watch". Lemmon is brilliant and Wilder's direction is ingenious and focused. He continued to make films in the sixties and seventies, like Irma La Douce, his highest grossing film (1963) and A Fortune Cookie, in which he teams Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau for the first time. He announced his retirement in 1986, sat back and collected one Life Achievement Award after another. The honours and accolades continued until his death last week. He was 95.
Wilder created a gallery of joyous characters in his writings. His directorial technique, never flashy, aimed to tell a story, the best way a camera could. He involved the viewer so deeply, his camera stealing the very soul of the character giving it a third dimension and drawing us ever so close to the true self of the image. The total number of Oscar nominations was twenty, of which he won six. For best director, he was nominated six times and won 2 Oscars. He developed the tightly woven intricate narrative structures that characterize his best works. Essays, books and treatises have been written about this iconoclast writer/director. He arrived in Hollywood with only a few words of English, and went on to write some of the best English dialogue on the screen. Billy Wilder visited Cairo in 1965. I was assigned by the Ministry of Culture to escort him and show him the sights. Warm and fuzzy, like a diminutive Santa Claus without the red suit, his eyes twinkled and sparkled with mirth. He seemed to smile at you, yet he was not smiling, he seemed to wink at you, yet he was not winking. His wit, his humour and his satire came from somewhere deep within, making him unforgettable. Full of the classic features of his native Austria, Wilder was Hollywood's film director par excellence leaving the world with a most enduring legacy.
Of all the great directors of Hollywood's golden age, no one has made more films that are as fresh and as entertaining to this day as did Billy Wilder. Eulogies are never pleasant, but when one can rejoice in a life so rich, so full, so versatile, of one as talented and as prolific as the unique Mr. Wilder, it comes close. To sum up his legacy, we echo one of his superb adjectives uttered by Sugar Cane (Monroe) in the comedy of the century Some Like it Hot -- "Delicious".
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