I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with TCM’s “Great Directors” theme this month. A new vanguard every day for 30 days. My DVR is getting a workout.
Anyway, if I could spend a few hours with any director, alive or dead, it would have to be the affable, wily Billy Wilder. I love his philosophy on filmmaking, his attitude through the years, his no nonsense artistry, etc. If I had made it to Los Angeles prior to his death in 2002, I’m sure I’d have stalked his Brighton Way office in Beverly Hills like a moth to the flame, Bela Lugosi to my impressionable Ed Wood.
I bring this up because I caught up with Volker Schlondorff’s “Billy Wilder Speaks” this morning, which ran on TCM Saturday amid a retrospective of the director’s greatest hits — “Double Indemnity,” “Stalag 17,” “The Apartment,” etc. It’s a fascinating look at Wilder’s career through his own eyes, the old codger spinning anecdote after anecdote.
Wilder only allowed Schlondorff to film what was actually a separate interview for a book project with another German writer on the condition that it never saw the light of day while Wilder was alive. The original six-part series aired in Germany but was edited down to something more palatable for US audiences by Bret Wood for its domestic television premiere in 2006.
There have been a handful of these director on director documentaries this month. I mentioned “Spielberg on Spielberg” last week, and “Woody Allen: A Life in Film” was on just the other day, a rare glimpse at the New Yorker’s own contemplations of his work. It’s a great month to be a film fan, so if you aren’t glued to TCM lately, do yourself a favor and dive in here at the half-way point.
Here is an excerpt from a Michael Ciment interview with Wilder. I can’t find any clips of “Billy Wilder Speaks,” unfortunately:
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4 responses to “Wilder on Wilder”
My fave BW’s
1) Double Indemnity
2) Sunset Blvd.
3) Some Like It Hot
4) Ace in the Hole
5) Witness for the Prosecution
Just had to say so.
It would help if I weren’t the only person in the world without cable. :/
Man was a genius — “Double Indemnity”, “Some Like It Hot” and his masterpiece, ‘Sunset Boulevard” — is there a more chilling performance, a darker study of madness than Swanson’s Norma Desmond? Freakin’s frightening man — look at the performances he guided!! An actors director but a storyteller…may never see his like again.
“Sunset Blvd.” is a perfect film. “Ace in the Hole” is the kind of thing that makes great directors — something that was so perverse it was rejected initially only to be rediscovered as a classic.
Rozsa’s score in “Double Indemnity” is great, as well. Although I’m not as high on the film as some people.