Billy Wilder

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2019) The interesting thing about The Seven Year Itch is that I could reliably predict how much I’d like it based on other movies. Like writer-director Billy Wilder’s other comedies, it navigates a tricky path between tones, pushes the envelope a bit and shows his clear gift for humour. Like other movies featuring Marilyn Monroe at her best, it shows her as a comic actress first and a sex-symbol second. Like other brightly lit comedies of the mid-1950s, it offers us a colourful, nearly fabulist look at a society long gone. Beginning with a sardonic interlude describing the timeless ritual of men packing their family for summer trips while they get to enjoy themselves at work and at home during the summer, The Seven Year Itch quickly gets down to business as it relates the flirtation between a married man alone for a few weeks and his new sexy upstairs neighbour. It all takes place in 1950s Manhattan, as fun as a playground can be for this kind of thing. While quite tame by today’s standards, we shouldn’t underestimate the delicate way Wilder daringly tackled tough issues in the far more prurient 1950s, acknowledging a few base instincts that weren’t proper to acknowledge back then. Monroe can be very, very funny at times, although those who are attracted to the film for the infamous “dress pulled up by subway venting” shot will be very surprised to find that it’s nowhere in the film—that sequence is carefully framed to pull down from her head to the subway grate without offering a single overall shot of the pose, and the photo that people remember is a recreation of the scene made sometime later as a publicity shot. Protagonist Tom Ewell pales in comparison to Monroe, but he still acquits himself well, even when saddled with a narrative monologue that straddles an awkward line between voiceover and mumbling to oneself. The conclusion of the film is a forgone conclusion given the Production Code that limited all Hollywood movies at the time—as much as the film pushes at the edge of the permissible envelope, it will never rip it and maybe that’s why we feel so safe watching it. I much prefer the other Wilder/Monroe movie Some Like it Hot, but I did have quite a bit of fun playing a tourist in mid-1950s summertime Manhattan in The Seven Year Itch.

Irma la Douce (1963)

Irma la Douce (1963)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2019) Some Billy Wilder fans will probably be upset to see that I rank the writer-director’s Irma la Douce as second-tier Wilder—but in a long storied career like his, even a second-tier film can be quite respectable. The point being that I’ve seen all of his first-tier films by now, so what’s left is the rest. And while you can call Irma la Douce a good film, there’s no way you can call it a great one: its staggering length, at 147 minutes, runs against its lighthearted romantic comedy genre and gives far too many opportunities for the film to wander. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine return from Wilder’s The Apartment as, respectively, a former policeman and a prostitute in the disreputable Parisian neighbourhood of Les Halles, where he hatches a devious plan to get her out of the prostitution racket. The lies and impersonations required for his scheme soon escalate, and power much of the film’s last half. All of this is shot in bright colourful tones, with green clothing being strongly associated with Irma. Lemmon is dependably funny, but considering that I don’t like MacLaine all that much, it’s a significant disappointment to learn that the project was originally meant to be for Marilyn Monroe. Adapted from a French stage musical (which explains some of the length without excusing it), Irma la Douce is a reasonably entertaining film, but it does overstay its welcome in ways that Wilder’s top movies don’t.

Ace in the Hole (1951)

Ace in the Hole (1951)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2019) I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: the more I dig into classic Hollywood filmmaking, the more I realize that satire, social criticism and acerbic commentary have always been part of the package. This especially holds true for the 1950s, traditionally seen as a conformist decade but which also featured some of the bitterest take on media ever put on film. Coming in right before the rise of television and so perhaps at the apex of newspapers as a dominant form of media, Ace in the Hole gets downright nasty in describing how an unscrupulous newspaperman milks a personal tragedy for all it’s worth. As a man is stuck in a mine shaft and awaits a delicate rescue, our repellent protagonist (Kirk Douglas in a top-tier performance) decides to start manipulating events to his benefit. Within a remarkably short time, the mine entrance is surrounded by a circus of print journalists, broadcasters, opportunists and hucksters. Viewers beware—For all of the mordant wit of writer-director Billy Wilder’s film, Ace in the Hole is not meant to end well: it’s a deeply cynical work without many sympathetic characters to latch on. We’re meant to be awed but not charmed by Douglas’s wily, amoral protagonist, even as his great dialogue is undermined by despicable actions. Visually, there are some very evocative wide shots of cars, people and the media circus created around the scene of the news. As usual for Wilder, the film deftly manages to navigate a tricky labyrinth of tones even as it settles for more cynicism than usual even for him. It’s got a strong scene-to-scene watchability, and some clever-yet-transparent direction. The darkness of the ending may account for both its initial lack of popularity, and for its enduring nature. Show Ace in the Hole with A Face in the Crowd and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? for a surprisingly grown-up triple feature of 1950s media criticism.

The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)

The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2019) Considering Hollywood’s enduring love affair for American heroes (even if we have to scrub a bit of their non-heroics along the way), it was inevitable that sooner or later, Charles Lindbergh would be brought to the forefront with The Spirit of St. Louis. And while James Stewart was far too old at 49 to play Lindbergh (who was 25 at the time of the film’s event), you have to take into account Stewart’s obvious enthusiasm and technical qualifications to play the role of an experienced flyer—as a draftee and then a reserve officer, he flew bombers from WW2 to the Vietnam War. The script focuses tightly on Lindbergh’s trip and not so much on the less heroic aspects of his later life, but as co-written by Billy Wilder The Spirit of St. Louis becomes a fascinating aeronautical procedural as Lindbergh works to develop the plane that will carry him from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and then wait patiently for a good weather opportunity even as others are also racing to make the trip. Director Howard Hawks is in his element here as he describes the relationship between Lindbergh and his plane during the gruelling transatlantic flight. Even the film’s length and overused voiceovers help us feel the isolation and experimental nature of the solo trip. The predictable shout-outs to divine power become annoying, but the film’s clever structure keeps things more interesting than a strictly chronological approach would have done. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the film is how it manages to create suspense out of a story that everyone knows, with a foreordained conclusion. The Spirit of St. Louis is certainly not a perfect film, but it does create something very entertaining out of three legendary creators (Wilder, Hawks, Stewart) and a landmark historical event.

Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Love in the Afternoon (1957)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2019) From a twenty-first-century perspective, looking at the totality of an actor’s filmography at once certainly has a different impact that chronologically living through it one movie at a time. As much as I like Audrey Hepburn, for instance (and I do!), it’s hard not to notice that in between 1954 and 1967, she made no less than seven movies at least partially set in Paris, and at least four of them with significantly older men. While Sabrina was partially set in Paris but obviously not filmed there, Funny Face and Love in the Afternoon (both 1957, shot a month apart) get the subgenre properly started. In the latter film, Gary Cooper plays an aging playboy who sets his sights on an inexperienced young daughter of a detective. The remarkable difference between the two characters (in age, in social status, in understanding the world) is enough to make any viewer uneasy, and it’s a measure of writer/director Billy Wilder’s skill and both stars’ charm that the film (barely) holds together. Hepburn is up to her usual self here, although if you want another Paris movie in which she calls her father an ebullient “Papa!”, you’ll be better served by How to Steal a Million Dollars. Cooper is a bit less bland than usual here, with a character that does service to his stature in the industry at the time. Maurice Chevalier rounds up the marquee names with an on-target role as a wise, compassionate and knowing private investigator to the stars. There’s no avoiding that the material here is tricky, and that Wilder steers his movie through material that would instantly doom other directors. (Although much of the same can be said about Funny Face and Charade.) There are, fortunately, quite a few laughs along the way, my favourite being the gypsy band following Cooper’s character around, mixing diegetic and non-diegetic musical cues. But while the film does have its strengths (seeing Hepburn, Cooper, Chevalier and Wilder working together being the best of them), its place in a well-defined sub-sub-genre of “Hepburn with older men in Paris” also invites unfavourable comparisons. Funny Face has Astaire dancing and Hepburn keeping up, while Charade plays far more smoothly with the romance with the far more charismatic Cary Grant. If Love in the Afternoon makes you queasy despite its old-school Hollywood charm, you’re not alone.

Sabrina (1954)

Sabrina (1954)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, January 2019) If you want to understand why so many people love Audrey Hepburn as an actress, as a style icon or even as a person, you can start with Breakfast at Tiffany’s … or you can start with Sabrina. I know which one I’d pick: Despite Breakfast at Tiffany’s little black dress, Sabrina has Hepburn in a far more suitable role, avoids many of the unpleasant edges of the other film, and showcases Hepburn at the very beginning of her long association with high fashion. It’s also, to put it bluntly, a better movie. Here we have Humphrey Bogart, certainly too old for Hepburn at thirty years her senior but playing a fascinating deviation on his usual persona as a sophisticated businessman thrown in a romantic role. Plot-wise, Sabrina is filled with tricky material—the acknowledged age difference, the class issues, the messy familial romantic entanglements, heck the opening scene’s suicide attempt—but it succeeds largely because of writer/director Billy Wilder’s typically light touch on difficult material. The intriguing glimpse at the life of New York’s upper-class set is window dressing for a romance that’s not as clear-cut as in many other movies of the period, and that’s the territory in which Wilder excelled. Still, for most, Sabrina will be enjoyable on a purely aesthetic level: This is the movie that first paired Audrey Hepburn with Paris (even if only in studio shots), and also the film that launched her lifelong association with Givenchy. Sabrina is far less sappy and mindless than you’d expect from a mid-1950s romance, and that’s what gives it enduring power—plus Bogart and Hepburn, of course.

The Lost Weekend (1945)

The Lost Weekend (1945)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, June 2018) You really wouldn’t expect a film about alcoholism to be so … entertaining. And yet here we are with The Lost Weekend, a film about an alcoholic protagonist being offered a weekend out of town to work on his issues … which he refuses in order to go on a three-day bender that leads him to rock-bottom. Surprisingly non-didactic, the script nonetheless carefully maps out the behaviour and coping mechanisms of a functioning alcoholic, before dropping him down as low as he can go: abandonment, debts, imprisonment, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts and perhaps self-redemption at the end. And yet the film remains fascinating and engaging throughout, a paean to director Billy Wilder’s ability, amply demonstrated here and elsewhere, in balancing extremely different tones into a cohesive whole. Ray Milland is convincing in the lead role, although Doris Dowling is captivating in a relatively minor barfly role. The filmmaking techniques here are used wisely, but it’s the message of the film that’s interesting: Alcoholism isn’t always shown in a proper light (often used as a comic device), and this film does manage to find a way to talk about it that still stands the test of time. Hilariously enough, The Lost Weekend was directly inspired by director Wilder’s experience working with noted alcoholic Raymond Chandler during Double Indemnity. I’m not the best audience for the film (I don’t even drink, so it’s not as if I can relate to alcoholism), but I found the film far more interesting than expected, and I find it an entirely acceptable Oscar-winner.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Double Indemnity (1944)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, June 2018) Like many, I like film noir a lot, and Double Indemnity is like mainlining a strong hit of the stuff. Pure undiluted deliciousness, with black-and-white cinematography, unusual investigator, femme fatale, crackling dialogue, strong narration and bleak outlook. Here, the focus on insurance agents trying to figure out a murder mystery is unusual enough to be interesting, while the Los Angeles setting is an instant classic. Fred MacMurray is a great anti-hero (morally flawed, but almost unexplainably likable along the way), Barbara Stanwyck is dangerously alluring and Edward G. Robinson is the moral anchor of the film. Double Indemnity does have that moment-to-moment watching compulsion that great movies have—whether it’s the details of an insurance firm, dialogue along the lines of the classic “There’s a speed limit in this state” exchange, a trip at the grocery store, or the careful composition of a noir film before they even had realized that there was a film noir genre. Double Indemnity is absorbing viewing, and a clear success for director Billy Wilder, gifted with a Raymond Chandler script from a James M. Cain novel.

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2018) I haven’t watched that many movies starring Marlene Dietrich yet, but Witness for the Prosecution is the first when I really get what Dietrich was about—it certainly helps that it flashes back to a cabaret sequence. Looking spectacular in her mid-fifties, she feels actively dangerous as the titular witness willing to do what it takes to achieve what she wants. Not that she’s the sole highlight of the film—Charles Laughton is incredibly likable as a barrister taking on a difficult case and never quite certain of everyone’s motives. The script, adapted from an Agatha Christie short story, is nicely paced to introduce the characters before getting down to the business of thrills and unexpected plot twists. Witness for the Prosecution does amount to a satisfying film, perhaps too brightly lit as a court drama to be pure film noir but certainly willing to get its inspiration from the depths of human cruelty. If director Billy Wilder has made a bad movie, I haven’t yet seen it. 

The Apartment (1960)

The Apartment (1960)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, January 2018) For late-twentieth century cinephiles such as myself, Jack Lemmon is first the eponymous Grumpy Old Man, or the miserable salesman of Glengarry Glenn Ross. But this late-career Lemmon is the last act in a long list of roles, and films such as The Apartment (alongside Some Like it Hot and The Odd Couple) do suggest that young Lemmon was the best Lemmon. He’s certainly charming in The Apartment, playing a young man who has struck a most unusual arrangement with his superiors at work: His apartment made available for dalliances, in exchange for professional advancement. The film does begin in firmly comic mode, as the protagonist juggles the schedules of four executives with his own desire to sleep, and then to court an elevator attendant played by Shirley MacLaine. The first half of The Apartment plays as a proto-Mad Men, capped off by a sequence in which Lemmon dons a dapper hat and strolls out like a true New York City professional with a bright future. The look at this slice of 1960 NYC living is terrific and if the film had stopped there, it would have been already worth a look. But there’s a lot of murk under the premise of the film and The Apartment soon heads deeper in those troubled waters, shifting from suggestive comedy to much bleaker romantic drama as the protagonist ends up in romantic conflict with one of his superiors, and then in even darker territory with a suicide attempt that changes everything. Director Billy Wilder had an illustrious career, and the way he shifts adeptly between three subgenres in a single film is a great example of what he could do with difficult material. The Apartment is still unsettling today—less so than upon its release, but it still defies sensibilities. The film’s second half is a great deal less fun than the first, but it does give much of the film’s enduring power.

Some Like it Hot (1959)

Some Like it Hot (1959)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, January 2018) Curiously enough, it takes longer than expected for Some Like it Hot to warm up. The first act, in which two Chicago-based musicians witness a mob murder and decide to go on the run by cross-dressing and joining an all-female musical group to Florida, is occasionally a slog. Sure, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are sympathetic enough, and Marilyn Monroe makes a striking entrance, but the film seems far too busy setting up its ridiculous situation to get many laughs. Things get much better once the story lands in a posh Florida resort, as the complications pile up and the film’s true nature starts coming out. By the time Lemmon’s character has to fake being uninterested in Monroe as she slinks all over him, or as Curtis rather likes the attention he’s getting as a woman, the film starts hitting its peak comic moments. It keeps going to a rather simple but effective final line. It helps, from an atmospheric perspective, that the Floridian passages spend quality time looking at a high-end lifestyle in which yachts are treated as mobile homes for the rich—there’s some wish-fulfillment right there. Thematically, the film has a few surprises in store: For a comedy dealing in cross-dressing and attraction based on misrepresented gender, Some Like it Hot has aged surprisingly well—it’s far less prone to gay panic than you’d expect from a movie from the fifties, and still feels almost progressive in the way it approaches same-sex attraction. As a result of its pro-love anti-hate agenda, it can be rewatched without too much trouble even today, while many (most!) movies of its era feel grossly dated. Much of this credit goes to director Billy Wilder as he allows Lemmon, Curtis and Monroe, to become a terrific comic trio and help the film get over its duller moments. The far more interesting last half makes up for an average beginning, and Some Like it Hot is still worth a look today.

Stalag 17 (1953)

Stalag 17 (1953)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, December 2017) It’s hard to watch Stalag 17 and not think about the fetishization of history. Like it or not, World War II drama has grown more and more ponderous over the past decades, to the point where a World War II movie is presumed to be all about gravitas and serious considerations of the terrible cost of war. It wasn’t always so, though, whether we’re talking about the blockbuster WW2-themed action adventures from the seventies (The Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare) or, even closer to the war itself, a film like Stalag 17 that spends a lot of time in silly comedy before getting down to the thriller business. Early parts of the film, such as the white-line painting sequence, really wouldn’t feel out of place in an Adam Sandler movie. Keep in mind that Stalag 17 is based on the real-life experiences of its writers (filtered through a Broadway play adapted on-screen) and so presents the full range of humour and horror of German POW camps—not the almost idealized portrayal of later writers with an indirect knowledge of events. As such, Stalag 17 uniquely captures in time a historical truth of sorts, then wraps it up in entertaining thriller mechanics about uncovering an informant and helping a marked prisoner escape. William Holden is quite good as the resourceful but unjustly accused protagonist, while Don Taylor plays the other lead engagingly. Writer/director Billy Wilder has a long and varied filmography, and his Stalag 17 is still quite entertaining to watch, even as its closeness to the subject does give it a now-unusual quality.