Four Billy Wilder Films

Debbi and I spent both Friday and Saturday evenings at the Stanford Theatre watching some Billy Wilder films I'd never seen before. Billy Wilder died in March at the age of 96, and he's regarded as one of the best and most influential writer-directors of Hollywood's golden age. Films of his that I've seen before include Ninotchka (1939), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sabrina (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Love in the Afternoon (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), and The Apartment (1960). As the theatre did with Jack Lemmon last year, they're doing a Wilder retrospective, and we saw four of 'em in 30 hours.

The Lost Weekend is an early film about alcoholism. Don Birnam (Ray Milland) is a would-be writer in his mid-30s who has become an alcoholic. His brother Wick (Philip Terry) has been putting him up for some years and covering for him, as has Don's girlfriend, Helen St. James (Jane Wyman, who at the time was married to Ronald Reagan). The two of them think they've persuaded Don to give up drinking, and Don and Wick are about to go to a resort for a relaxing weekend. But Don manages to weasel out of the trip, and ends up at a bar getting stinking drunk. Wick has had enough and leaves without him, while Helen sticks around to try to find and help Don.

Don consistently generally gives her the slip, though, and goes through his available cash rapidly, falling farther and father into a booze-induced mania. The film tracks Don's descent and his desperate efforts to keep procuring alcohol.

The Lost Weekend feels dated in the sense that it doesn't feel very sophisticated today. It seems like it was calculated to shock viewers of the mid-40s, and I suspect it was successful, but The Days of Wine and Roses (1962) is overall a deeper, more textured, and more believable film, in part because it tracks the progress of alcoholism over 15 years, rather than four days. Still, Weekend is an interesting and at-times powerful period piece. The ending didn't really convince me, though.

The Big Carnival (1951, also titled Ace in the Hole) was one of Wilder's commercial flops, it seems. It's a very cynical film. Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) blows into Albuquerque, New Mexico as an east coast reporter who's been run out of all the eastern newspapers. He signs up with the local paper hoping for a big break to get himself back east, and it finally comes in the form of scavenger Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) who's trapped in an old Indian cave. Tatum writes about his predicament and attracts the attention of the nation. But Tatum wants to milk the story, so he manipulates the sheriff (Ray Teal) and lead engineer (Frank Jacquet) to make the rescue operation take much longer than necessary. He also manipulates Minosa's wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) into sticking around and playing the role of the worried-sick wife.

The film is a very dark satire of sensationalized journalism, and no one in the film really comes away clean (save for maybe Tatum's editor). It's also a masterpiece of "so shocking you just have to laugh" humor, and the running "gag" is the mass of people who travel to the small tourist attraction turned popular sensation thanks to the Minosa story. The story's tension mostly doesn't come from Minosa (except of course for the astonishment that Tatum would leave someone trapped under the earth for his own gain), but from Tatum's relationship to Lorraine (not a standard movie romance, in the least!) and his own quest for glory and a return to the east coast. Everyone in the film wants something and most of them do whatever they think it takes to get it.

I don't agree with some that it's one of Wilder's best films, but it's quite good, though very dark. Douglas is excellent as Tatum, and largely carries the film.

Witness for the Prosecution (1957) based on an Agatha Christie stage play. Sir Willis Robarts (Charles Laughton) is an aging barrister who is recovering from a heart attack. A solicitor brings him Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power), who is accused of the murder of an older woman who had befriended him and willed him a large sum of money. Vole's wife Christine (Marlene Dietrich) is his only alibi, that he came home at the time he claimed he did, and therefore could not have committed the murder.

Robarts, a patron of impossible cases, takes on Vole's case despite the advice of his nurse (Elsa Lanchester, who is quite entertaining) and doctor. The case takes a startling turn when Christine - a devoted wife whom Vole had married and brought from Germany after World War II - takes the stand for the prosecution and shreds Vole's alibi. The story takes several other twists and turns from there, but I won't spoil the details for you.

Witness' story seems implausible much of the way through, until the final few twists which put it in perspective. But it's the acting - particularly by Laughton and Lanchester, and partly by Power - which makes the film, along with its often hilarious script. The courtroom scenes are roaringly funny at times, without falling into mockery or chaos. One occasionally expected John Cleese to walk in, actually. The core theme of the film is the truth, and what it consists of. How it can be manipulated, and how perception of the truth is affected by circumstances. It's an insightful look at some of the flaws of traditional investigative mysteries as often rendered in fiction.

The main element of the film I didn't care for was Dietrich's performance, which seemed extremely flat and simplistic, even though she does have a few challenging moments where she does well. But those good moments only underscore the blandness of the rest of her performance. It's befuddling, and the film is generally better when she's not on-screen.

Besides that, I certainly recommend checking this one out.

The highlight of the weekend's films for me was Stalag 17 (1953), which occurs in a prisoner-of-war camp in Nazi Germany around 1943. The film opens with two members of Barracks 4 trying to escape from the camp. Sgt. J. J. Sefton (William Holden) bets his fellow prisoners that they'll never make it, and indeed they're gunned down as soon as they're outside the fence. It soon becomes clear that there's a spy among them in Barracks 4, and Sefton is quickly fingered as the likely suspect, as he has a lively trade business with the Germans (winning cigarettes from the other prisoners and trading them for equipment from the Germans) and isn't generally hassled by the Nazis.

Within this basic framework, we also follow the hijinks of the bored prisoners, including spying on the nearby Russian woman prisoners; the escapades of Animal (Robert Strauss) and Shapiro (Harvey Lembeck); and the build-up to the Christmas holiday. The stakes are raised higher when Lt. James Dunbar (Don Taylor) comes into the barracks temporarily, having apparently committed sabotage against the Nazis - a punishable offense which would make him a criminal, not merely a prisoner.

The script and the acting are what make this a great film. Holden's serious demeanor is an effective contrast to his fellows, and Strauss and Lembeck mug their way through the story with the best of them. The other characters are effectively portrayed as crazy, angry, noble, depressed, and comical. Of special note is Jay Lawrence as the impressionist Bagradian (he's impressive imitating Clark Gable, James Cagney, and Cary Grant), and a very young Peter Graves does a serious turn as Price, the Security chief.

Stalag 17 carefully balances the deadly seriousness of the sergeants' situation with the many lighter moments that they make for themselves. But it all eventually comes back to the spy and what they're going to do with him (let him go, so he can be put in another stalag? Kill him, and face retribution from the Nazis?). An elegant solution eventually presents itself, but it takes quite a while to get there. And the getting there is half the fun anyway.

Seeing this film makes me want to see The Bridge on the River Kwai - which also stars Holden - again.

It seems like Wilder's films are characterized by their serious situations, and the humor which is layered on top of them. Sometimes the humor is the main purpose of the film (as in Some Like It Hot), and other times it's to lighten the tone of an otherwise downbeat movie (Sunset Boulevard). Wilder's films also feature characters with well fleshed-out backgrounds, occupations and motivations, rather than taking some fairly generic figure and putting him into an unusual situation. Character is an essential element of Wilder's films.

Wilder films to see? Start with The Seven Year Itch for comedy, Sunset Boulevard for drama, and Stalag 17 for a mix of the two.

It's very hot in the Bay Area this weekend. Today in particular it's sweltering. It's not so much the heat, but the fact that we're not having our usual 10% humidity. It feels much more humid. Bleah.

Yesterday we headed down into the valley for an "open house" party thrown by our friends Robert (whom I work with, not my friend up in Berkeley) and Christine. They've been in their house for over two years, so it wasn't really a "housewarming" party, but they had friends who hadn't seen the place before. They live in an Eichler house. Eichler was a designer in the middle of the 20th century who wanted to bring Frank Lloyd Wright's artistic sensibility to houses that the average family could afford. They're characterized by rooms build around a central atrium, and lots of windows to both let in light, and give a sense that the house is part of its surrounding landscape.

Eichler Homes: Design for Living is a book on these homes. Yahoo has an index of sites about Eichler homes. I think it would be neat to live in one (they sure beat the postwar styles which are prevalent in Mountain View), but I don't know that there are many in the Bay Area locations I'd want to live (never mind trying to afford them).

We had a good time at the party, which was an afternoon affair. I met a fellow from Apple whose name I'd seen on mailing lists many times, but had never met in person. When he told me that he worked on a particular project, I said, "Oh, do you work with A-l D--?", and he said, "That's me!" Eesh, how embarrassing!

The party was still going strong when we left, even though it had already run past its intended ending time, but that's the mark of a good party!

Today Debbi and I are just taking it easy, after doing a little shopping over the noon hour. What else can you do on a hot and relatively muggy day?