Billy Wilder, the genre-jumper who would be 100 years old on June 22

"It isn't true that Hollywood is a bitter place divided by hatred, greed and jealousy. All it takes to bring everyone together is another flop by Peter Bogdanovich. Champagne corks are popping, flags are waving. The guru has laid another egg..."

IMO it's too long and too slow, but boy is it terrific eye candy!

Original TCM doc tonight, and I'd recommend taping A Foreign Affair in the wee hours.

A producer, [Joe Sistrom], came to me and said, "Look, do you know James M. Cain?" I answered, "Certainly. He wrote Postman Always Rings Twice." He said, "Well, we don't have that, Metro has that, but as an afterthought, and to cash in, he wrote a serial in the old Liberty Magazine called Double Indemnity. Read it." So I read it, and I said, "Terrific. It's not as good as Postman, but let's do it." So we bought it. Then we said, "Mr. Cain, how would you like to work with Mr. Wilder on a screenplay?" He said, "I would love to, but I can't because I'm doing Western Union for Fritz Lang at Twentieth Century-Fox." So, the producer said, "There is a Black Mask mystery writer around Hollywood called Raymond Chandler." Nobody knew much about him, seriously, as a person. So we agreed, "Let's bring him in." He'd never been inside a studio. Then he started working. So you see, it is not that I am tossing up and down in my bed like Goethe conceiving art, and wind is playing in my hair, and I plan it all out to the last detail. No. It's happenstance that we found Chandler.

http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue10/features/wilder/

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/dvd_review.asp?ID=1001

Young-turk revisionists have too much time on their hands (at least we can blame P. Kael for starting them on the "De Palma is one of the all-time greats" road)... tho Dave Kehr, no youth, engaged in this recently too in his review of the disc:

"Wilder, who had as little interest in visual expressiveness as Jackson Pollock had in figure painting, remained a literary filmmaker to the end of his career, relying on such stock techniques here as endlessly repeated lines and situations ...and a condescending approach to his audience that led him to spell out everything in large capital letters..."

Yeah, other noirs look better (or grimier) but jeez, Wilder's strengths were obv dialogue and narrative rhythm (which deserted him around the time of Irma la Douce), and some of those John Alton-lit B pics don't do much for the ear.

i may have jumped the gun a little.

(EGR is just a midlevel guy -- an adjuster? -- I think.)

Barton Keyes: You know, you, uh, oughta take a look at the statistics on suicide some time. You might learn a little something about the insurance business.

Edward S. Norton: Mister Keyes, I was RAISED in the insurance business.

Barton Keyes: Yeah, in the front office. Come now, you've never read an actuarial table in your life, have you? Why they've got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed: by poison, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison, subdivided by TYPES of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth. Suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of trains, under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from STEAMBOATS. But, Mr. Norton: Of all the cases on record, there's not one single case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train. And you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found? Fifteen miles an hour. Now how can anybody jump off a slow-moving train like that with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself? No, no soap, Mr. Norton. We're sunk, and we'll have to pay through the nose, and you know it.

As these two monsters thrust and parry contemptuous dialogue at each other ...it's hard not to feel that the prospect of sex between two people has seldom looked so joyless.

makes me doubt that Dan Callahan has ever had a good hatefuck.

btw, re Wilder, Sarris eventually recanted many of his complaints.

Hooray! Finally.

http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=396

:D

Posted this on ILF:

Boy, Ace in the Hole's unavailability has inflated its reputation. Really stupid in a rancid way, as if he wanted the audience to applaud his "nasty" premise and rub its nose in it too. Kirk Douglas' loud, unmodulated performance doesn't help.

And, as usual, he doesn't have the courage to accept the consequences of his rancidness -- the last 30 minutes are just awful.

I guess it's something that Richard Gaines as a Gotham editor is as terrible as he was as the boss in Double Indemnity.

I think Sunset Blvd the cinema is a tad overworshipped by homosexualists

Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit, Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla sooit!

BOO!

So to speak.

Er -- I mean, I like it a lot. (Hence name.) The excessive rancid darkness -- that's the good stuff.

heh

Morbs makes me sound like Lady Bracknell.

Douglas' style is nearly perfect for the material here til he has to feel guilty.

I do a mean "No Lindy's! No Yogi Berra" impression.

til he has to feel guilty.

Isn't that the typical Douglas role?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n05/wood01_.html

http://www.hulu.com/some-like-it-hot

Double Indemnity getting a Criterion release

https://www.criterion.com/films/30460-double-indemnity

Ugh, a Richard Schikel commentary track.

The Eureka/Masters of Cinema disc has a really good CT, and lots of good extras:

https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/double-indemnity/

That Dobbs/Redman CT was--like the Schickel one--a port from old Universal DVD/BLU.

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