Ace in the Hole

Having been fired from every major news outlet for a variety of reasons, a caustic, hard bitten, alcoholic reporter (Kirk Douglas) talks his way on to the staff of the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin, serendipitously stumbles upon a man trapped in a cave, and milks it for every penny its worth by generating a media sideshow and even putting the once secured man's life in jeopardy in the process. Billy Wilder's dark and witty Ace in the Hole is relentlessly cynical, eerily prescient, and contains a great Douglas performances and one of those unforgettable Wilder endings.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Ball of Fire

Seven stilted researchers compiling an encyclopedia in a New York townhouse find their benefactor growing increasingly more impatient at their laborious, unhurried pace. Meanwhile one of the compilers (Gary Cooper) finds he is hopelessly uninformed on his latest research subject, American slang, and hits the streets to learn firsthand about the topic. When he meets a sassy nightclub dancer (Barbara Stanwyck) on the run from her mobster boyfriend, he takes in the ideal study subject who transforms himself and the rest of the stodgy bachelors. Directed by Howard Hawks, Ball of Fire is a funny, amusing riff on Snow White and the Seven Dwarves with the type of quick, witty script that  Billy Wilder and writing partner Charles Brackett would perfect in later years. Stanwyck is irresistible here and the film glows in her presence.

*** out of ****

The Apartment

C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a pencil pushing number cruncher in a sea of pencil pushing number crunchers at a top insurance agency but he has a leg up on the competition which will surely secure him a spot in middle management: a key to his flat which he lends out to supervisors for late night trysts. Soon he falls for an elevator girl (Shirley MacLaine), another wounded, lonely soul, and when it becomes apparent that she is involved with the CEO (Fred MacMurray), Baxter is forced to confront his love life, living arrangement, and work situation. Billy Wilder's The Apartment, a personal favorite from the great German emigre's unprecedented career, is so funny, witty, ultra cynical yet so heartfelt that it gets you to the point it hurts. Lemmon offers one of his finest, most tender performances, MacLaine is affecting in an early role, and MacMurray is excellent as the heartless dolt, with the rest of the cast (especially the lecherous members of upper management) in superb form.

**** out of ****

Some Like It Hot

When two caddish band members (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) inadvertently witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre while paying on a bet, their surest way out of town (and to stay gainfully employed) is to don a dress and hop a train as members of an all-girl band bound for a gig in Miami. On board they meet a voluptuous fellow member of their company (Marilyn Monroe) and are both immediately smitten. While Lemmon becomes distracted by an infatuated millionaire (Joe E. Brown, hysterical), Curtis feigns his way as his own self-made man to win the girl's affections at the same time as the mob hosts a convention in town. Billy Wilder's witty and hilarious seminal classic hosts finely tuned performances from Lemmon and Curtis and features Monroe at her screen sexiest and a finely tuned acting turn as well.

The Bishop's Wife

A newly appointed bishop (David Niven) has been pounding the pavement to raise funds for a new cathedral, both to little avail and at the cost of his relationship to his wife (Loretta Young). Praying for guidance, it arrives in the form of an angel (Cary Grant) who strolls into town and seduces all the women before teaching the clergyman a valuable lesson of love and seasonal cheer. Henry Kosters' The Bishop's Wife, based on a book by Robert Nathan which featured uncredited screenplay work done by Billy Wilder and Charles Bracket, is a much beloved holiday movie which I found to be alternately sappy and disturbing. With an intercessory celestial being at its center, this seems like an obvious attempt to capitalize on the success of It's a Wonderful Life from the previous year and even the child actors who portrayed Zuzu and young George Bailey are on hand as if the producers weren't even trying to disguise the fact.

Ninotchka

Shortly after the Russian Revolution, three bumbling Soviet agents are dispatched to Paris to hock the crown jewels while the former owner (Ina Claire) sends an operatve of her own (Melvyn Douglas) in an attempt to retrieve them. When the Kremlin catches wind of the ongoings, they send a frigid, no nonsense beauty (Greta Garbo) to bring the jewels and the agents home and not fall prey to the duchess' seductive emissary. Ninotchka is an absolute delight, with director Ernst Lubitsch at the top of his form and working from a snappy screenplay by his protege Billy Wilder, Charles Bracket (who would go on to coscript some of Wilder's best films), and Walter Reisch. Douglas and Garbo (who is positively radiant) have dynamic chemistry in this completely charming picture.

Sunset Blvd.

A jaded Hollywood hack screenwriter (William Holden), on the run from repo men looking to repossess his car, has a blow out and pulls into a garage of a seemingly deserted mansion on the titular roadway. There he is greeted by a stout and morose butler (film director Erich von Stroheim) and informed that he is in the presence of greatness--that is in the presence of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson, also a former silent star), a forgotten, aging, and delusional star of the silent screen. Now, seeing an opportunity, she keeps the writer as a financial prisoner and play toy as she plots her return to the screen. Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd is a darkly cynical insider's indictment of Hollywood replete with incredible cinematography, a brilliantly snappy script, and two amazing, polar opposite lead performances.

Love in the Afternoon

After eavesdropping on a conversation between her private eye father (Maurice Chevalier) and a client, who threatens the life of a notorious Lothario (Gary Cooper) who has seduced his wife, a young Parisian woman (Audrey Hepburn) rushes over to the charming American's hotel, and soon falls under the elder man's spell, much to the consternation of her father. Love in the Afternoon is a charming film with several inspired sequences and yet another reminder of what a fine auteur Billy Wilder was, working from a script written with regular collaborator I.A.L. Diamond. Hepburn and Cooper are magnetic in their roles, overcoming their considerable age gap and occasional lulls. I also didn't care much for the schmaltzy, soft-served ending.

Casino Royale

Following the assassination of M (John Huston), an aging James Bond (David Niven) is coaxed out of retirement to once more thwart the evil forces of SMERSH, and instead decides to send his nephew James Bond (Peter Sellers) who himself must contend with a series of agents, opponents, and villainesses also named James Bond. When Columbia Pictures held the movie rights to Ian Fleming's premier film instead of  Eon, the studio which has produced most of the other 007 films, they opted to make a goofy spy spoof mashup instead of trying to contend with the lauded series. Employing no less than 6 directors and 10 writers, which inexplicably features the likes of Huston, Woody Allen, Ben Hecht, and Billy Wilder, "Casino Royale" is an incomprehensible mess which only serves as a curio for its sometimes amusing cameos which include Allen, Huston, Orson Welles, and Peter O'Toole.

A Foreign Affair

A Congresswoman (Jean Arthur) heads to postwar, occupied Berlin on a government probe of American corruption, and is introduced to an Army captain and fellow Iowan (John Lund), who is carrying on an affair with a sexy local chanteuse (Marlene Dietrich). After a mix-up, the singer falls onto the representative's radar who in turn gradually falls for the Captain. "A Foreign Affair" is a wonderful excursion from the inimitable Billy Wilder and the first of two of his films set in the postwar German capital, the second being the riotous "One, Two, Three". Written with often collaborator Charles Brackett, the film features the typical brand of zany and witty Wilder humor, mixed with stinging social commentary aimed at dark subjects. In the lead role, Lund does a nice job playing a somewhat thankless role giving way to the tremendous work of his female screenstars. Marlene Dietrich is sly and sultry as Lund's mistress, and Jean Arthur is impeccable as the goody goody congresswoman and slowly begins to come unwound. "A Foreign Affair" isn't one of the first titles that springs to mind when the great directors name is mentioned, but it is yet another example of his incomparable talents and wit.

Five Graves to Cairo

After his tank division has been shelled in North Africa, a soul surviving British officer stumbles his way across the desert into an abandoned hotel in a bombed out city inhabited only by its manager and a female member of the staff. When General Rommel, the Desert Fox, takes up residence with his unit in the inn, the officer assumes the identity of a deceased server, which puts him in a unique position due to the fact that this waiter was also a German spy! Now, with access to the secret location of five arms bases, the officer now has the ability to turn the tide of the war in Britain's favor! "Five Graves to Cairo" is an early war yarn from master writer/director Billy Wilder. It is not funny in the typical Wilder sense, but it is still a tense, pointed, and well constructed film. Franchot Tone is excellent as the dry hero and Akim Tamiroff, Anne Baxter, and Peter van Eyck have fine supporting roles as the hotel manager, the staff member, and the German officer she is trying to seduce to return for her POW brother's release. Erich von Stroheim is also a lot of fun as an idiosyncratic Rommel. With "Five Graves of Cairo", Wilder demonstrates his dexterity and his certified skills as one of our great auteurs.

One, Two, Three

In the days before the erection of the Wall, a Coca-Cola man in West Berlin is jockeying for a job in the London office when his boss back home in Atlanta asks him to look after his teenage daughter as she passes through on her tour of Europe. Seeing this as a way to score points, things go from bad to worse after the girl disappears for the night and returns with a firebreathing, East Berlin communist radical! Now he must come up with a plan to annul the marriage and ditch the red, but things just keep getting more and more out of hand for the controlling executive. Like its title would indicate, "One, Two, Three" is a flat out assault, made at a breakneck pace, and featuring an endless barrage of gags and one-liners-the kind of film The Marx Brothers would have appreciated. Made by legendary auteur Billy Wilder and scripted with oft collaborator I.A.L Diamond, the film features his inimitable brand of humor. In a whirlwind performance, which would prove to be his penultimate one, James Cagney barely comes up for air in a spectacular turn. His supporters, all perfectly cast, are uniformly wonderful most notably the young Horst Buchholz as the unfortunately named commie beau Otto Ludwig Piffl. Wilder and Cagney is a fortuitous match, one that should have happened sooner and more often, and both live up to their deservedly high reputations.

Irma la Douce

In the red light district of Paris where policemen turn a blind eye to the rampant abasement, Irma la Douce (the Sweet) is the most formidable of the street's many prostitute. All carries on swimmingly until the arrival of Inspector Nestor Patau, the honest beat cop who has just been promoted from his post at a playground. When he halls all the working girls to jail, confronts their johns and pimps, and insults his superior officer, Nestor soon finds himself jobless looking for affection in the same neighborhood, which he does in Irma's arms. Quickly establishing himself as a top pimp with Irma as his lover and only client, Nestor becomes insanely jealous and devises a preposterous scheme where he can buy all of her time by masquerading as a British aristocrat! From a play by Alexandre Breffort with his longtime screenwriting collaborator I.A.L. Diamond, "Irma la Douce" is a rioutous farce by legendary writer/director Billy Wilder. Working with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, reteaming after the inimitable "The Apartment", Wilder manages to create another sweet and funny film with several memorable and inventive scenes. MacLaine is at her ditsy best and Lemmon has a field day hamming it up as the cockeyed Lord X. Lou Jacobi also has an amusing role as a bartender who has seemingly played every role in the European underworld. "Irma la Douce" is a hilarious if not slightly overlong film that doesn't quite match up to the best of Wilder's work, mainly because he set the bar so high.

Double Indemnity

A wounded insurance agent races through a red light in the early hours of the mourning and rushes into his agency where he dictates the events of the last few weeks of his life and how he became embroiled in his current predicament. Beginning with a trip to renew a man's auto policy, the agent becomes enamored with an icy blond and entangled in a murderous insurance scheme, with his keen and dogged boss always on the scent. Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity" may be the finest example of film noir to ever grace the big screen, and with a script from a novel by James M. Cain ("The Postman Always Rings Twice", "Mildred Pierce") and contributed to by fellow hard boiled author Raymond Chandler ("The Big Sleep", "Farewell, My Lovely") and given Wilder's crackling writing style, it should be of no surprise. The dialogue that populates the film is terse, witty, and cold and is given greater weight through Fred MacMurray's deadpan delivery as Walter Neff (with two f's as in Philadelphia). He is matched by the beautiful Babraba Stanwyck as the heartless and calculating Phyllis Dietrichson. Edward G. Robinson is wonderful as well as MacMurray's boss, in the role that ushered him from leading man to supporting player. In addition to the great dialogue and crisp black and white direction, one of the great things about the film is how well the crime is spelled out and how plausible every character's involvement and motivation is. "Double Indemnity" is a success on several different levels and another triumph on the incomparable Wilder's list of successes.

Billy Wilder Speaks

Billy Wilder is one of the best writer/directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood and left a lasting impression in many fine films. This 1986 interview, which he didn't want released until his passing (it was released in 2006), is filmed in two languages and covers different parts of his career. Though obviously not as interesting as watching one of his films, it was still interesting to hear the legend speak of his career.
***