Formal Film Study: Billy Wilder

I had never seen a Billy Wilder film before this. I guess the reason why I picked him at first was because The Apartment was one of the top 250 films on IMDb I hadn't seen yet. So, getting past my lame reason for choosing him, I chose to watch The Apartment (1960), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and Some Like It Hot (1959). I decided on these three films because I felt that they were his most well-known and would have the best demonstration of his unique style.

I watched The Apartment first because that was the film I was most familiar with. This film depicts Jack Lemmon doing his trademark average Joe character who can't say no to letting his bosses use his apartment to have affairs in, while they promise future success for his loyalty. Sunset Boulevard I felt was the densest of the three as it is a realistic and rather sharp look at a B-movie screenwriter who gets taken in by an aging and mostly forgotten silent film star, while exposing the often overlooked darker side of Hollywood. Some Like It Hot also features Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe, who gives a very good performance, and is about two men who go on the run disguised as women in an all-female band after witnessing the St. Valentines Day Massacre.

The Apartment

The writing of the three films was what stood out to me the most. Besides being director, Wilder co-wrote all three films. He won Oscars for writing for Sunset and The Apartment, and was nominated for Some Like It Hot. All three films are heavy on dialogue and each have many memorable lines. My favorite from the three was, "I am big. It's the pictures that got small" (Sunset Boulevard) spoken by Gloria Swanson. There is also quite a bit of humor injected into all three, specifically Some Like It Hot since it is a straightforward comedy, but the humor isn't simple. I felt stupid a few times for laughing a few seconds later than I should I have because it took me some time to get a joke. For example, Lemmon is talking to his boss who says, "Ya know, you see a girl a couple of times a week, just for laughs, and right away they think you're gonna divorce your wife. Now I ask you, is that fair?" while Lemmon then responds, "No, sir, it's very unfair... Especially to your wife." Besides humor, the dialogue lacked any of the typical campiness many of the films of the same time were plagued with. The words, along with the performances, at times seemed frighteningly real. 

Sunset Boulevard

Another thing I thought seemed consistent throughout Wilder's films was the cinematography. The medium shot was heavily employed in all three films, as Wilder seemed to prefer to keep the audience from getting too close to the characters. Rarely were there close ups in any of the films. A scene that was both funny and well shot was when Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot are arriving at a train station and are wearing high heels for the first time. Wilder films them walking from the waist down, giving us a good luck at their rather manly legs struggling to stay balanced in their new shoes. Also, Wilder often kept the camera steady. Only slightly panning at times, like when Lemmon goes to answer his phone in his apartment in the middle of the night as an executive calls to make a late booking. The often stagnant camera I thought was done because it allows the audience to really focus on the characters and highlights dialogue, rather than action.

Some Like it Hot

I found myself at times in awe of what Wilder was able to get away with in terms of content in his films, but immensely satisfied, that he pushed the boundaries at the time, as it gave the films great depth and added to the quality. I was glad that Sunset Boulevard didn't try and sugarcoat anything, as a main point of the film was that it was showing Hollywood without all the glamour. A scene I think shows a good example of this is when Gloria Swanson's character attempts suicide by slitting her wrists. The movie doesn't show the act, but shows the aftermath and how distraught she is, adding to the character's complexity. I think that scenes like this, the entire premise of The Apartment, and the many references to sexuality and sex in general in Some Like it Hot, demonstrate how Wilder didn't care if his movies pushed the limit for what was allowed, instead letting the magnificence of his films not be detracted by censorship. 

Yet, at the core of these films, I found something rather interesting. I noticed that all three films were about people pretending to be something different than who they really were. Some Like it Hot is the most obvious example of this, with the men pretending to be women. Sunset Boulevard is tells the sad story of a woman who believes she is an "ageless star", when in reality she has all but faded into the universe. While, in The Apartment Lemmon's character, Baxter, lets his neighbors and almost everyone else he meets think that he is a womanizer, and the trysts happening almost nightly in his apartment are of his doing. While researching Wilder's life, I discovered that he was a first just a writer, but then became a director too, because he felt directors were misinterpreting his work. This shows how since he at one point felt that he was being portrayed as something else (through his writing), he felt that this feeling of misrepresentation was a great source for new material in his later films. 

I think Wilder does a great job of balancing reality with fantasy. His films seem to be right on the edge of believable and fake. Originality is essential in his films. The stories seem so familiar, but still so fresh. His films don't seem dated at all, even though they are all 50+ years old, and I think a major factor they stand up to the test of time is because of the originality of the films. Perhaps Wilder is trying to say that our lives aren't so boring after all, and there is something exciting if we take a second glance.