Ace in the Hole (1951)

USA, 111 minutes

Director: Billy Wilder

Writers: Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, Walter Newman, Victor Desny

Photography: Charles Lang

Music: Hugo Friedhofer

Editors: Doane Harrison, Arthur P. Schmidt

Cast: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Porter Hall, Robert Arthur, Richard Benedict, Ray Teal, Frank Cady, Richard Gaines

Director and cowriter Billy Wilder is one of my favorite filmmakers—Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd. are on my short list of the best of all time, and The Apartment is not far behind—but I’m reluctant to make too much of Ace in the Hole, which Wikipedia among many others includes with Wilder’s major work. I like the noirish feel of it but struggle with the narrative, which exaggerates outrageously under cover of being a satire. And I guess I may also have a Kirk Douglas problem. He plays Charles Tatum with his typical feral intensity, a weaselly ankle-biting reporter on a downward spiral, washing up in Albuquerque and hunting for a break. Any break will do.

The story involves a type of US news item that seems to recur and catch national attention every 10 or 20 years: kids down a well, specific people isolated in floods, miners in a cave-in. Stuff like that. The most famous case at the time of this picture may have been Floyd Collins, trapped for days in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave in 1925. The story was seized on for constant coverage by then-new radio broadcasters. An example on this side of the 20th century is “Baby Jessica,” who was 18 months old when she fell down a well in 1987. It took 58 hours to get her out. In Ace in the Hole the victim is Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), plundering a burial ground in a nearby mountain considered holy by local Native Americans. So among other things Ace in the Hole offers up an early version of violated Indian graveyard business, later a staple of horror pictures. For a long time everybody has hated the media, from newspapers, radio, and TV of the last century to the internet-driven landscape today. As hard as it may be to believe, it has been worse in the past (though we are presently challenging that more and more). This is one of those stories, a theme sounded in the great Citizen Kane, Meet John Doe, A Face in the Crowd, and many other movies.

Double Indemnity (1944)

USA, 107 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain
Photography: John F. Seitz
Music: Miklos Rozsa
Editors: Doane Harrison, Lee Hall
Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Tom Powers, Jean Heather, Byron Barr, Richard Gaines, Porter Hall, Raymond Chandler

Because the influence of Double Indemnity was instantly and enduringly so pervasive—it's tempting to make the case that it's ground zero for all film noir, The Maltese Falcon notwithstanding—I'm always surprised to learn how hard it was to get made. But we must remember that Double Indemnity is, after all, the tale of an adulteress and a fornicator plotting foul murder. It's downbeat to blackest hell, which makes it an unusual wartime project. And cowriters Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler couldn't stand each other. Chandler didn't understand screenplay writing (the more seasoned Howard Hawks knew all that mattered was getting Chandler's name in the credits, ditto for that matter William Faulkner) and Wilder couldn't write without a partner. In the fray, according to legend, Chandler sent the studio heads an indignant letter complaining that Wilder wore Chandler's hat without permission in writing sessions. Chandler thought he had licked drinking but now he started again. Wilder took his revenge by making his next picture, The Lost Weekend, transparently about Chandler.

Double Indemnity is where we see how Billy Wilder knew how to put together a picture: holding his nose to work with Chandler in order to get those sparkling wonderful weird overblown dialogue interludes ("There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour." "How fast was I going, officer?" "I'd say around ninety." "Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket." "Suppose I let you off with a warning this time." "Suppose it doesn't take." "Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles." "Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder." "Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder." "That tears it"), laboring to build a perfect cast our of nervous all-American pros headed by Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, with Edward G. Robinson in a supporting role, letting DP John F. Seitz loose to shoot as dark as he wanted and no stinting on the venetian blind shadows putting the guilty behind bars (which we must also remember were relatively new and are still spectacular in Double Indemnity), picking out the wig and sunglasses for Stanwyck, glad-handing censors on all sides and slipping in the juice with astonishing subtlety, resorting to Hitchcock-like grinding suspense techniques in numerous places (what? the car won't start?!), stripping it all down to essentials so it ends on a knockout punch of an image. Even Miklos Rosza's musical theme is perfect, noble, tragic, used frugally yet nagging like grief.

The Apartment (1960)

USA, 125 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
Photography: Joseph LaShelle
Music: Adolph Deutsch
Editor: Daniel Mandell
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, Joan Shawlee, Edie Adams, David Lewis, Hope Holiday

It's always struck me odd that director Billy Wilder chose to shoot Some Like it Hot in black and white, because it seems like such a natural for the vivid color treatment, especially once it gets to Florida. But I have no such problems with The Apartment. Its dreariness, even set in the heart of bustling, upscale New York City, is practically its main point—that is, right after farce. Billed as comedy, sold as comedy, often played as comedy, there's not actually much that seems funny in The Apartment, and there's probably more to it than just making adjustments for other times (which can't be entirely ruled out either). "Light-hearted" is about as far as I'm willing to go and even that is misleading.

The Apartment has a kind of half-surprising connection to It's a Wonderful Life, another peculiar comedy set during the holidays. At least, formally, they both pivot on a suicide attempt and end on a New Year's Eve bawling of "Auld Lang Syne." Jack Lemmon plays C.C. "Buddy Boy" Baxter, an accounting drone in an insurance company who lives in an apartment nearby in midtown Manhattan. Partly because he thinks it will help him get ahead, and partly because he's just a nebbish at heart, Baxter makes his apartment available to certain high-ranking players in his company for their illicit trysts. What could possibly go wrong?

Sunset Blvd. (1950)

#13: Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950)

Billy Wilder's background in Weimar Berlin served him well even if he had to suffer the inconvenience of fleeing. He's cynical, bitter, and funny, pretty much in all the right proportions, and his talent as a screenwriter is at least as abundant as his ability to work with actors and frame visuals. In a list of 50 I was never going to name any more than two titles by any one director, even for my favorites, and Wilder is certainly on the short list of my favorites. I was happy to see Phil pick The Apartment earlier, because that was one it pained me to omit, and I was sorry Phil felt constrained to drop Double Indemnity just because I got to it first. Like other pictures that have been mentioned here twice, I think it's one that's always worth talking about some more.

But Sunset Blvd. is my favorite Wilder. It's frequently characterized as a noir, and indeed one of the great ones. Its various deep shadows and the incidental crime in the frame make that appropriate enough, I suppose, but its black absurdity makes it seem to me more of an American gothic—or even more specifically a Hollywood gothic. A lot of unexpected faces come floating out of it: Erich von Stroheim as the dour butler; Cecil B. DeMille in a cameo; even Buster Keaton's stone visage turns up, aged a couple of decades and sitting at a table playing cards. The most cheerful, healthiest version of Jack Webb I've ever seen is there in a small role too.

Double Indemnity (1944)

#33: Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)

Billy Wilder's breakthrough Hollywood hit features a lot of things I am prepared to like no questions asked: Wilder himself, one of my favorite directors; a literary property from James M. Cain, my favorite hard-boiled crime fiction writer; and Barbara Stanwyck, one of my favorite actors of the period. It doesn't hurt that Fred MacMurray and Raymond Chandler, both of whom had to be talked into their participation and hand-held through it, are on board this project as well.

A lot of movies from Body Heat to Blade Runner to Breathless get characterized as "film noir," a slippery term for something that doesn't even appear to aspire to genre status, but is rather more like a stylistic overlay. People can be fanatical about it. It typically involves elements such as a stark, expressionistic use of black and white, heavy on the angled shadows; characters who are lost in their own depraved greed and/or lust; a black widow femme fatale that is sure to be the end of everything; and the good old unfeeling universe. Double Indemnity: Check, check, check, and check.

Sunset Blvd. (1950)

USA, 110 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshman Jr.
Photography: John F. Seitz
Music: Franz Waxman
Editors: Doane Harrison, Arthur P. Schmidt
Cast: Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Jack Webb, Lloyd Gough, Cecil B. DeMille, H.B. Warner, Anna Q. Nilsson, Buster Keaton, Hedda Hopper

Billy Wilder is one of my favorite film directors, and Sunset Blvd. happens to be my favorite picture by him, so naturally I'm happy to see it placing so high on the list of all-time greats at the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? website. Wilder is cynical, bitter, and funny, pretty much in all the right proportions, and his talent as a screenwriter is at least as abundant as his ability to work with actors and frame visuals. Nowhere does he bring all that together in a more dazzling confection than here.

Sunset Blvd. is frequently characterized as a film noir—indeed, one of the great ones. It's good to see it lauded for any old reason, and all the various deep and angled shadows, along with the incidental crime in its story frame, make the designation appropriate enough, I suppose. But its black absurdity makes it seem to me more of an American gothic—or even more specifically a Hollywood gothic. Is there any other noir that makes such flawless use of not only a dead chimpanzee, but a pipe organ that catches the wind in a way that makes it sound as if it is on its deathbed of lung cancer? Or any other one even like it?

Some Like it Hot (1959)

USA, 120 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond, Robert Thoeren, Michael Logan
Photography: Charles Lang
Music: Adolph Deutsch
Editor: Arthur P. Schmidt
Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Joe E. Brown

I fully intended coming into this complaining—and I will say, and stick to it, that I think it's one of the stranger artifacts of the critical consensus that this gets pushed to the head of the Billy Wilder line when Sunset Blvd., Double Indemnity, and The Apartment—at the very least—deserve places well ahead of it. I was going to complain, but then a funny thing happened. I watched it again.

Maybe Some Like it Hot is one of those films that depend on being in the right mood for it, which I know is a certain kind of indictment and at best damning with faint praise. I have seen this and liked it—those occasions are almost always unplanned, stumbling onto it on a TV broadcast. And I have more often seen it and been underwhelmed. In many ways it fits the sensibilities of TV better, as a kind of situation comedy of errors full of characters bent on deceiving and manipulating one another, often for no particular good reason above and beyond "I wanna." But it's Billy Wilder so there are many more levels to it than mere situation comedy.