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17272dorsetave:

The Films Of Billy Wilder: A Retrospective

While we list only his directorial work below, Wilder considered himself a writer first and foremost and attained quite some pre-directorial success with screenplays co-written with Charles Brackett, especially those directed by fellow immigrant and mentor Ernst Lubitsch (to his dying day, Wilder’s office was graced by a plaque reading “How would Lubitsch do it?”). And several pictures after his eventual split with Brackett came the second important, multi-picture writing partnership of Wilder’s career, with I.A.L. Diamond.

But while Wilder always wrote in collaboration, the throughline is definitely his own. Perhaps to compensate for his initially faltering English, he developed an ear for the American vernacular that was simply unparalleled, and, boy, did he have a way with a joke. His detractors (we guess they exist, though we try to avoid them at parties) have accused his dialogue style of being too constructed, too unnaturalistic. They say, perhaps imitating Jack Lemmon imitating Tony Curtis imitating Cary Grant “Nobody talks like that” and perhaps they’re right — really, nobody did. Except maybe, judging from the plethora of witty, insightful, delightful late-career interviews he gave, Wilder himself.

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sirmitchell:

Just some solid advice. 

amy-blue:

“A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.” - Billy Wilder

amy-blue:

“Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.” - Jean-Luc Godard

bbook:

the end.