Ace in the POLL!! BILLY WILDER DIRECTS

I saw Ace In The Hole only the other night, and while it wasn't bad, I fail to see why it's considered a classic. I vote Double Indemnity.

I remember liking Avanti! long ago. Juliet Mills, oo la la.

i'd rank the ones i've seen like this, best to worst:

1944 Double Indemnity
1950 Sunset Boulevard
1959 Some Like It Hot
1961 One, Two, Three
1964 Kiss Me, Stupid
1960 The Apartment
1945 The Lost Weekend
1953 Stalag 17
1951 Ace in the Hole
1974 The Front Page

the only stinker is the last one.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

So

Alfred : Wilder :: Me : screwball

but I can watch Wilder!

Double Indemnity vs. Sunset Blvd vs. Ace in the Hole

Eric watches screwball, don't believe the hype.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

is avanti! any good?

― negotiable, Wednesday, December 10, 2008 7:32 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i threw it the one pity vote it got, not great but pretty entertaining, definitely worth a look.

I voted The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps not a Wilder classic but he puts an interesting spin on proceedings.

Um, I actually voted for Avanti!. As usual, I go for an auteur's later works and this is his masterpiece followed by The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. I'd even take the cleansed vision of Buddy Buddy over the two winners here.

You'll need to explain the Sherlock Holmes love, KJB. Nice and slow.

(Naturally you sound like me defending "Empire Burlesque")

weird, i swear i voted for Avanti too, maybe i just shrugged and went for the Apartment after all

Forgot a lot of the great lines in A Foreign Affair! Congresswoman Jean Arthur on a crime spike in Iowa: "A little boy in Des Moines took a blowtorch to his grandmother..."

tried to watch Avanti! a few wks ago and got about as far as the kitch-y coroner w/ the color-coded italian forms and turned it off. none of it was funny or charming and there was no reason to think it'd get better imo. there was a line where jack lemmon outright refers to juliette mills' character as fat that seemed really mean-spirited and would probably draw protesters today

After 1964 the guy totally lost it.

i cant believe the witness for the prosecution hate on this thread

― Ron Polarik, PhD (and what), Tuesday, December 9, 2008 11:48 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

but the correct answer is SABRINA, what the hell is wrong with you communists

nobody threw a bone to Five Graves to Cairo? shame on yall

I saw Jonathan Rosenbaum introduce Double Indemnity in Toronto last night (followed by Q&A afterwards). One of my dozen favourite films. Never read the novel, but he was describing the original ending, and does it ever sound preposterous. Apparently the Dietrichson house still stands in California. And the Pacific All Risk office where Norton makes a fool out of himself trying to intimidate Phyllis was designed like the Paramount offices--which made me wonder if Norton was modelled on a studio head whom Wilder thought a buffoon. (Which in turn made Fred MacMurray wonder if I wonder.)

Probably Sunset Blvd, at this point. Maybe that would change with re-viewings.
I actually enjoy Witness for the Prosecution.

you can buy A Foreign Affair from TCM now

yes!

Black market,
Cuckoo clocks and bangles

Seem to have read today that BW was considering using Marilyn Monroe for another project after Some Like It Hot but can't remember what that might have been.

Kiss Me, Stupid I guess

Irma la douce. Liz Taylor was also considered.

Oh yeah, look at that, thanks.

I think it's amusing that a pre-"Faster Pussycat" Tura Satana is in Ild.

It's gotta be Foreign Affair. Or the Lost Weekend. Or the first 20 mins of Sabrina. Love in the Afternoon is genuinely awful though.

i was pretty disappointed in 'ace in the hole' when i finally saw it. haven't watched any of these in a long time but 'the apartment' still stands out to me as the best one.

I couldn't get through One, Two, Three. Two votes for that ahead of Sunset Blvd. or Double Indemnity is some outstanding contrarianism.

xp def agree on both

Voted One, Two, Three for incredible fast-paced funny and believable performance of Cagney as a hectic executive and its images of post-war, pre-wall Berlin. Almost voted A Foreign Affair for reasons stated above. Not conscious contrarianism, just think these New World meets Old Europe scenarios stress his strengths and help him steer clear of schmaltz.

Recently remarked that Tony Curtis wrote a book about the making of Some Like It Hot, but a perfunctory perusal seemed to indicate that it mainly consisted of him making stuff up, mostly about Marilyn.

^^I think I read an excerpt from that in VF when it came out. Apparently he was rocking a serious irl boner during the boat seduction shoot.

Would have killed an ordinary man.

cmon, A Foreign Affair can't be the BEST: John Lund.

Curtis & MM had allegedly had a thing years before SLIH.

Anything is possible. But are you sure he wasn't confusing her with someone else, like Yvonne De Carlo?

cmon, A Foreign Affair can't be the BEST: John Lund.

Not a single film that Crowe didnt defend in that hagiography.

i appreciate 123's energy and setting, but the humor is really stale to me.

I've never looked at the Crowe book. He annoys me.

Much as he obviously wanted it to be, that Crowe Wilder book is no Hitchcock/Truffaut. No Objects of Desire either.

It's more interesting for the anecdotes and observations he pulls out of a still-sharp Wilder, but even my contrarianism stops at the gates of Fedora and the remake of The Front Page.

Wazzabout Buddy Buddy?

I saw The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes in a beautiful 35mm print last night. Have to rate it an honorable miss (I think it might 'play shorter' if we had the full 5-episode 165-minute version, if we had it). Robert Stephens' excessive makeup took some getting used to, and while I like dopey sidekicks Colin Blakely's Watson began to grate after the first 30 mins. Good non-fanged Christopher Lee; nice brief work from Clive Revill as the ballet impresario (nothing like a protracted 1970 gay-ppanic sketch) and the old broad who played Queen Victoria.

despise that movie, but i'm v protective of watson. hardly the only movie to violate him but at least the guys directing nigel bruce towards banana peels didn't think they were so goddam clever.