Ace in the POLL!! BILLY WILDER DIRECTS

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")

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

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.