Ace in the POLL!! BILLY WILDER DIRECTS

You're gonna be Jean Arthur to Morb's Marlene, Alfred.

Morbs is not sultry.

in season, I am.

The Apartment is going to win this, but it shouldn't

I'm tempted to rent Fedora and Buddy Buddy to find out if there're as awful as they look.

Fedora is an interesting variation on Sunset Blvd., Holden and all.

"Buddy Buddy" is a version of that French film with Jacques Brel in it?

Irma la Douce's view on prostitution is kinda odd, even for a comedy made in 1963, but it's also quite charming in an old-fashioned way, and very funny too, so I think I'm gonna vote for that.

Though I guess in the Hollywood of 1963 the mere idea of making a comedy about prostitution was still outrageous, no matter what the actual movie was like.

Irma is nowhere in the ballpark of his previous Lemmon comedies, or even One Two Three.

Lots of terrible things on this list, as I wrote on another Wilder thread: The Major and the Minor, Love in the Afternoon, Kiss Me Stupid, Witness for the Prosecution, to name a few. Sure, Hawks, Cukor, Ford, Hitchcock, etc, made lots of duds too, but when Wilder, very much a member of the point-and-shoot school of directing, is off his game, he comes up with something akin to Bowie's Never Let Me Down.

watching Sunset Boulevard the other night, a film I like, I was struck by how much damn voice-over is on the thing.

Yeah that is weird, considering how big wilder was on "Show! Don't Tell!"

OK Alfred, none of those are terrible, even if Gary Cooper is a stiff in LitA.

have you seen the uncensored version of Kiss Me Stupid?

TMATM = coy; has rotten pacing
LITA = unpleasantness of Gary Cooper (he looks like he reeks of BO and Automats), Hepburn's hair, forced Lubitsch 'sophistication.'
KMS = just stupid. Some of the worst one-liners I've ever heard from a purported genius writer of clever banter. Wilder is rarely as funny as he thinks.
WFTP = My God. The movie stops for Laughton fat jokes, like the handrail lift. Marlene Dietrich and Tyrone Power "acting" (she's particularly terrible in the last ten minutes).

Ace in the Hole is really overrated.

feel like I haven't seen enough of these to really vote... hard to choose.

I think the only ones I haven't seen are Mauvaise Graine and Death Mills

iF ONLY aPATOW COULD EQUAL Kiss Me Stupid!

seeing as how Apatow's only directed 2 movies compared to Wilder's two dozen we maybe shouldn't be encouraging that TS poll just yet

that Lindbergh/Stewart movie's gotta be a bore, right?

voted ace in the hole. it not only sustains the unbeleivability of douglas's comically oversized character but actually just keeps building on it, asking you to suspend rational thinking by degrees. and it's message remains intact but never detracts from wilder's primary goal of *entertaining*.

I still think Douglas' attack of conscience weakens it substantially, tho it's one of BW's best non-comedies.

i'm shocked s1ocki hasn't shown up yet to condemn "love in the afternoon"

I could go on, if you like.

i voted for "the apartment" because it's really the only one i care about, tho some of the others are funny.

I wonder what Alfred thinks of Joe E Brown in Some Like It Hot? or in anything else?

ZOWIE!

http://www.movieactors.com/photos/slihot89.jpeg

I wonder what Alfred thinks of Joe E Brown in Some Like It Hot? or in anything else

Nobody's perfect.

iF ONLY aPATOW COULD EQUAL Kiss Me Stupid!

― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, December 9, 2008 1:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

suggset banlevard

I love Ginger Rogers so I have a weird affection for The Major and the Minor even though it is creepy. I didn't vote for it, though.

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

Lots of unpleasant performances in Wilder films. Besides Power and Dietrich, there's Nancy Olsen, Cooper, Ray Milland, Richard Gaines...

Carol Burnett, of all people, in The Front Page

i saw buddy, buddy when it came out
pretty dire despite presence of klaus kinski

is avanti! any good?

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")

Kino Lorber Studio Classics drops A Foreign Affair on Blu August 6th!

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
― johnny crunch, Sunday, February 14, 2010 2:05 PM

After 1964 the guy totally lost it.
― Inculcate a spirit of serfdom in children (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, February 14, 2010

wrong and wrong!

Rewatched Avanti! last night and it's pretty good. Lemmon and the screenplay make no attempt to present him as much more than a blinkered louse for the first half of the movie. Clearly the female lead should've been cast with a plus-sized actress, but they only got character roles then. Also Wilder wanted to rescue Juliet Mills from her "Nanny" sitcom, and she comes through charmingly. Clive Revill is a great poised fixer/hotelier. And the last line of the film has Lemmon recanting his fat-shaming. (Also, the coroner scene is not "kitschy" but marvelous.)

In the "lost it" late period I also like the Holmes movie and Fedora.

also i rewatched Some Like It Hot last night and the skeptics can go to hell, or Spats Colombo's place.

Much of the Lemmon and Curtis interviews on the CC are to do with their costuming.

Are there really a lot of Some Like it Hot skeptics out there?

apparently, Woody Allen!

I also saw a Letterboxd comment that it's now "problematic." [redacted]

I watched Avanti! on Amazon last month: leaden and way too long.

A little too long, othwise disagree.

I do think one layer of Some Like It Hot now lost on almost everyone under 50 is its feeding off the pop culture, particularly the movies, of 1929-33 or earlier films about the period (Raft, Pat O'Brien, George E Stone, Rudy Vallee refs etc).

admit a lot of those references do go over my head, still a fun movie tho

I mean I know George Raft and Rudy Vallee but I don't doubt there's stuff I miss

Joe E Brown was kinda the Jim Varney of early '30s comedy.

ok, Fedora isn't bad. definitely his best post-Irma movie. Avanti is good but way too long, and Fedora slows to a crawl once the interminable flashbacks begin. But there's pleasure in any Wilder because he never shot any coverage and every shot means something. and the bits of business he gives everywhere, like Antonia with the gloves (looking like Mario 64). really lush colors in this music, elegiac, again not bad for his second to last movie (I think), and yes, it is very nice to see Fassbinder actors in a Wilder movie. Gottfried John grabbing William Holden from behind? there are moments here

Showed Double Indemnity tonight for the small-town film club/society/whatever I've been trying to launch. (Fourth monthly screening. Total attendance to date, including me: 18.) Someone noticed that Walter Neff wears a wedding ring the whole way through. Which is...an oversight, a mystery, evidence that Fred McMurray was one devoted husband.

Sabrina is nearly flawless filmmaking, I’m stunned to come here and see zero votes. Any NYers catching the Film Forum retrospective?

Haven’t made it over there yet

Saw Sabrina there tonight and sensed the astonishment in the audience. It got applauded.

I remember enjoying the first hour a lot, but then drifting as the romance takes precedence over the comedy

^^^ same.

Fedora is the real sleeper.

I can't with the late Wilder: he loses any semblance of rhythm, tonality, humor.

Yeah, Fedora just seemed like an especially dull giallo, though it was nice to see Gottfried John outside of RWFworld.

UCLA’s new restorations of The Major & the Minor and A Foreign Affair look absolutely gorgeous

Love love love Foreign Affair.

Now I've finally watched some Lubitsch on Criterion, it's tarnished Wilder for me very slightly -- it's easier to see what he was aiming for but (sometimes) missing.

Unrelatedly: when I was younger I never understood The Apartment, but I just hadn't been disaapointed by life yet.

Foreign Affair is pretty good, but I mostly feel bad for Jean Arthur in that.

Kiss Me, Stupid tonight. I was really with it for the first 40 minutes or so when it felt like a pretty funny, kinda sharp satire (on mid century American society blah blah blah). Then the sex farce mechanics kick in and the film loses much of its weight. Kim Novak, though physically right for the role, is not good here. Ray Walston was fine but original casting choice Peter Sellers would’ve been much better in his role. I was expecting some kind of dark twist at the end but it ends quite conservatively. Btw why is this film in black & wihite, it screams out for color.

There was an overloud laugher at my screening, it felt like having a constant intrusive laugh track.