"For me there are only two types of movies: interesting movies and boring movies. It's as simple as that." -Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder is a well-known, Academy Award winning film director, and screenplay writer of the early 1900’s. His films include: Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and Some Like It Hot (1959). Born in June 1906, he was originally from Austria, but as a young adult, moved to Berlin to pursue a career as a journalist, at which he was greatly successful. He was known for his crime exposes, and interviews with celebrities. It was while he was in Berlin that he decided to focus his efforts on screenwriting, however, the uprising of the Nazi's forced him to flee Germany. He fled to Paris, where he continued to write screenplays, and also directed his first film. Catching some luck, he sold a screenplay to Columbia Pictures, and was able to fund his transfer to the United States. Unable to speak English, he lived on the money he earned from the screenplay sale, and listened to the radio for several hours per day, trying to learn English. He persevered, and although it took a few years, he finally got his foot in the door to be a director. He had several writing partners throughout his career, and they were nominated for (and won) Academy Awards for their films. In addition to the many nominations he received, Billy Wilder won an Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Lost Weekend, and for the film The Apartment (1960). He and his writing partners won for Best Screenplay for Sunset Boulevard, and The Lost Weekend.
Please follow this link to view the awards for Billy Wilder: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000697/awards
Picture found at: http://colnect.com/en/stamps/stamp/192067-Billy_Wilder_1906-2002-Personalities-Austria
Quote:
Philips, Gene D. "Billy Wilder." Literature Film
Quarterly 4.1 (1976): 3. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 May 2013.
I was intrigued the way Wilder directed the scenes of implied intimacy - since sex scenes were not filmed. Early in the film, he establishes that Phyllis applies lipstick after she gets dressed. Later, in Walter's apartment, a scene picks up after they were together for a time. They are sitting on opposite ends of the couch. He is smoking a cigarette and she is applying lipstick. I think we are to assume she just got dressed, etc. Those viewers who would be offended by the adultery may choose to assume they only chatted and she is merely fixing her face. Others are free to assume they were intimate. If not just a product of the conservative time, perhaps Wilder may have thought that 'implication without confirmation' might function better for a broader audience. May 22, 2013 -P_Korst-
ReplyDeleteI like the quote about there being only two types of movies. It is very interesting how he became a director and not knowing English. He serves as an example of how people can work hard to accomplish their goals.
ReplyDeleteI like this quote. I really like how Wilder uses both plot and language to really make his films interesting.
ReplyDeleteI like it to, and it underscores Wilder's versatility. His films are often noted (Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, to mention a few, not to mention his writing for Ernst Lubitsch, such as Ninotchka), but his directorial abilities somehow often get overlooked.
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