Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

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Dr Amicus
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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#126 Post by Dr Amicus » Tue May 05, 2020 7:22 am

Wilder was the first "classic" director I fell in love with as a teenager, probably just before Hitchcock. The odd connection between the two is that my first films of both were late minor works (The Front Page, Family Plot) which nonetheless I liked a lot. I haven't seen Front Page since, but of the four (at least?) versions it remains my second favourite after the Hawks - I remember finding the Milestone a bit of a slog and Switching Channels was just pointless and unmemorable. There are still a few gaps in my viewing but I have a few in my kevyip and hopefully will find time (I'm working from home at the moment) to catch up with some rewatches.

Ninotchka - I'm surprised this took me so long to watch, it was on occasionally on UK TV in the 80s and Halliwell gave it a good review (for better or worse, a lot of my teen viewings of older films were influenced by Halliwell). On the whole I found this OK - as noted before, Garbo and the three emissaries are great fun and Douglas is suitably suave - but it failed to really grab me. I did get interrupted a lot whilst viewing, so a second watch is probably called for. As for all the anti-communism on show, the film is much harsher on the White Russians who seem to be primarily untrustworthy thieving snobs. Lubitsch is a blank slate for me, I'll hopefully return to this when I canWil tackle more of his films in a determined (re)watch.

The Emperor Waltz - Wilder does a BIng Crosby vehicle, set in the Austria of his childhood, as a tribute to Lubitsch and the result is a film about doggy sex. Did I fall asleep whilst watching this and dream it? The whole plot centres on Joan Fontaine's dog being pimped out to the Emperor's dog but falling in love with Crosby's mongrel. Now that is a sentence which I didn't think I'd be writing when I sat down to watch this. As Domino said, Fontaine's hair is a wonder to behold and the supporting cast are fun (Sig Ruman psychoanalysing Fontaine's dog is a highlight) but this is a bit ho hum - the songs aren't anything special but there is a fun dance routine where the chauffeur dances with the hotel maids. Oh, and the dogs have more chemistry than Crosby and Fontaine. Passably odd but nothing more.

I've also started reading Charlotte Chandler's Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder - A Personal Biography. So far - and I don't think it's going to change much - it seems to be a bunch of anecdotes from her interviews with Wilder arranged chronologically with a few factual asides added (and anecdotes / comments from Wilder's colleagues). It's pretty easy reading so far, but equally pretty pointless - anyone else here read it and have any opinions?

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#127 Post by domino harvey » Tue May 05, 2020 1:25 pm

Just don’t watch the movie on the flip side of Universal’s disc— le woof!

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#128 Post by Dr Amicus » Tue May 05, 2020 7:18 pm

On my disc, part of a UK Crosby set, its partner is Connecticut Yankee, another childhood favourite unseen for close to 40 years.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#129 Post by domino harvey » Tue May 05, 2020 7:23 pm

That’s the one. Free advice: Keep the fond memories of nostalgia by not rewatching it! Though there is perhaps some minor, minor interest in seeing William Bendix suffer through the worst miscasting imaginable as “Ol’ Saggy”

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#130 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue May 05, 2020 10:28 pm

Well now I have to see it to be a Bendix completist.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#131 Post by domino harvey » Tue May 05, 2020 10:43 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue May 05, 2020 10:28 pm
Image

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#132 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat May 09, 2020 10:46 pm

Rewatched The Apartment as my last viewing for this project, but I don’t think I can add anything much to the wonderful analyses that have been posted. My take on the characters’ “debasement” is probably somewhere between Mr. Sausage and HDT’s. The thing with Baxter, and I don’t know how much of that is the role as written or what Lemmon naturally elicits as a performer, is that he’s still pretty much likeable through all of it despite his motivations (and however screwed up those may be his actions are still so helpful towards other people). This time around at least, I had a much harder time with Fran. Domino is right that she’s made immediately endearing, but I find that eventually dissipates, especially at the point where she doesn’t show up for the date with Baxter; at that point my sympathy for her dropped significantly and it never completely recovered. Part of that also - and if there’s a minor quibble I have with the film it's this - is the fact that it’s hard to see why she’s in love with such a patently obviously slimy guy – we’re offered no sense of any value to his character to understand her love for him, especially with it being so obsessive. It is truly a dark film, but I can understand that the last few minutes (which for some reason I had completely forgotten!) leave a different impression, as the tone dramatically changes with the characters now having undergone their transformation.

I agree with twbb about the deft weaving of the comedy and drama, although I’d say for the first 40 minutes or so it's pretty much strictly a comedy. Nobody said how great this film looks, in terms of visual design and cinematography, and to me that’s also a big part of what makes the film stand out.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#133 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat May 09, 2020 11:53 pm

I don't think we're really given any "sense of value" for the promotion Lemmon is sacrificing himself for either though (other than that coveted 'executive wash-room key'). Both he and Fran are chasing ideas rooted in socially-engrained hivemindedness of the era, hers is toward a cutout feminine role and his a male one, though their own personalities emerge as more gender fluid when fleshed out, especially Lemmon who takes on a more 'feminine' sensitivity, but MacLaine also emerges as more dominant and self-assured in certain scenes compared to any other woman, and many men, in the film. My sense is that even though they are falling into their conditioned paths, there is a strong emotional component to the relationship with these ideas that is very real.

MacLaine's attraction to MacMurray is bizarre to me on the surface (god how I loathe him), but love has no logic to it. MacLaine is simultaneously conflicted over her pull towards the socially normative security and her submissive cultural role compared with the push of her own strong-willed identity, as well as the pull of falling in love with someone you know is wrong with the push of that awareness and lack of will power. The latter is timeless, and I don't know about you but I can absolutely relate to defying logic and returning to a toxic relationship with a person I didn't even like on many levels due to the mystifying spell of 'love' - and it's not a great feeling or one that does anything but destroy self-esteem. MacLaine standing Lemmon up is her getting swept away in the craziness of that complex headspace of being knocked down back into a cycle after building herself up to be strong, and I think the film does a great job at not judging her for it - surely not any more than we judge Lemmon for continuing to suck up to MacMurray and tell him he'll "take care of it" as MacMurray continuously fails to deliver empathic actions to a post-suicidal MacLaine, for seemingly no emotional reason on Lemmon's part.

One can argue that he physically cares for MacLaine because he emotionally cares about her, but he goes the lengths to call and report with giddy, pathetic brown-nosing that if I almost lose respect for anyone, it's him, who is still halfway on star-eyed autopilot pleasing the big dog. MacLaine's convoluted narrative of being driven against her established intelligence and morality by her emotions, and how she's smart enough to be aware of how sad that lack of will power is when we recognize the stronger power of clouded feelings next to our risk-management rationality, is incredibly relatable, and I believe her character is allotted the appropriate amount of rope. I've never stood up a date in a similar circumstance per se, but I've absolutely stood up friends, ignored obligations, and sacrificed a hell of a lot in situations when caught off guard and sucked back into a black hole of enigmatic love - but I haven't set my life on fire for a job that isn't even appealing beyond an elevator ride up a floor, so if we're going on personal experience, which I try not to do when establishing sympathy, I'd still side with her!

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#134 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun May 10, 2020 12:12 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sat May 09, 2020 11:53 pm
and I think the film does a great job at not judging her for it - surely not any more than we judge Lemmon for continuing to suck up to MacMurray and tell him he'll "take care of it" as MacMurray continuously fails to deliver empathic actions to a post-suicidal MacLaine, for seemingly no emotional reason on Lemmon's part.
I completely agree with everything you say about Baxter. Perhaps just because the film stays with him more I find myself identifying more with, along with the other reasons I've given. I get your point also about romantic attachment sometimes having no reason - and you could even interpret her attaching to such a negative figure as a projection of her own self-hatred - but the film doesn't shade MacMurray's character even just a tiny bit to make it a little more believable. So in that way it feels like she's drawn a bit like a caricature. My feeling about it anyway.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#135 Post by Drucker » Sun May 10, 2020 12:17 am

Watched Double Indemnity tonight, another re-watch for the first time since the MOC disc came out, and I think it'll be in my top 3. I suppose when I watched both of these for the first time I was attracted to Lost Weekend as being so completely dark, and wished Indemnity was darker. I was newer to watching film and this is what I was looking for. With a fresh view of Double Indemnity I can see it for the masterpiece it is.

Right out of the gate, the film is incredibly charming and gripping. We are given a compelling opening sequence, and the backstory establishes two characters with great chemistry. MacMurray makes the great joke about coverage while Stanwyck stands in her robe. One of the keys to the film's success is the interaction between the two leads. Stanwyck really steals the show in many ways. Her eyes light up when MacMurray pitches the double indemnity idea. She gets excited again when she sees her dead husband in the back of the car as the prepares to walk MacMurray to the train. She does such a good job of getting more and more invested in the plan, with her mouth watering for the money, and not caring about the life of her husband.

All of this said, Edward G Robinson is my favorite part of the film. Compelling and funny and grounded. "Ten times twice as dangerous," is a brilliant line, as is his take down of the boss, telling him, "You have the ball, let's see you run with it." I'm not an expert on noir but so many things feel as if they are making their debut here, and the film is constantly engrossing. Glad I revisited it.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#136 Post by domino harvey » Sun May 10, 2020 12:18 am

I think we're always kept a bit at arm's length from MacLaine's character all the way through to and through the end, because that's how she keeps Lemmon and probably everyone in her periphery. To me it's what gives her such vibrancy, especially in the somewhat Sphinx-like final exchange. As for her romantic choices, well, sadly I and no doubt many other viewers can relate

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#137 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun May 10, 2020 12:20 am

domino harvey wrote:
Sun May 10, 2020 12:18 am
I think we're always kept a bit at arm's length from MacLaine's character all the way through to and through the end, because that's how she keeps Lemmon and probably everyone in her periphery.
Good point.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#138 Post by senseabove » Sun May 10, 2020 12:24 am

Sabrina and Bluebeard's Eighth Wife — two that, charming enough as they are, I'm afraid won't be knocking anything out of my current list. Neither ever really got completely off the ground for me. I'm still baffled by what reads to me like Cooper's tendency to be utterly charming in about 3 scenes and rest entirely on pretty for the balance of a movie. Perhaps he just doesn't work as a comedian for me, or perhaps he's just a Hudson type who needs a particular directorial hand for me to find him interesting. I've found Lubitsch in general to be wildly variable—some I instantly adore (Trouble in Paradise, Smiling Lieutenant, Shop Around the Corner), some I find mysteriously dull (Ninotchka, Heaven Can Wait), and some have fallen in both camps at one time or another (To Be Or Not To Be). But I adore Colbert, and found her to be a saving grace.

Sabrina is a more complicated one... I expect this could be one I appreciate more on round 2, but I doubt that will happen for this list, and this go-round it felt like it never got quite dark enough to make the levity feel quite light enough. Sabrina's attempt, e.g., feels rather pointedly framed as an adolescent whim, as tragic at its core as any but tinged with comedy ("Shhhh...") and flippancy (the window) compared to the other notable, earnest instance in Wilder's filmography... And the "if you love them let them go" bit felt more typical of the genre than of Wilder. But whatever qualms I do have about it find their antidote in a fantastic Bogart performance, a handful of perfectly handled moments—that Givenchy dress, the car rides—and Wilder's token palm leaf rib-style balance of oppositions in character, circumstance, and overall narrative arc. One reason I can see this improving on repeat viewings is being able to pay more attention to how it subtly shifts in and out of playing smoothly into or pointedly against its generic tropes (the same way, say, In A Lonely Place does for noir, which twbb's post in the 1950s thread put in my mind). While this could be a near miss for spot 10 on my list, I ultimately found something like Fedora's outlandish crashlanding a more interesting first watch, so at the moment, it's holding that spot over a few contenders.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#139 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun May 10, 2020 12:24 am

Drucker wrote:
Sun May 10, 2020 12:17 am
I'm not an expert on noir but so many things feel as if they are making their debut here, and the film is constantly engrossing. Glad I revisited it.
I love pretty much every minute of this movie, and it's easily my no. 1. Definitely not a MacMurray hater here!

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#140 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun May 10, 2020 12:27 am

Rayon Vert wrote:
Sun May 10, 2020 12:12 am
therewillbeblus wrote:
Sat May 09, 2020 11:53 pm
and I think the film does a great job at not judging her for it - surely not any more than we judge Lemmon for continuing to suck up to MacMurray and tell him he'll "take care of it" as MacMurray continuously fails to deliver empathic actions to a post-suicidal MacLaine, for seemingly no emotional reason on Lemmon's part.
I completely agree with everything you say about Baxter. Perhaps just because the film stays with him more I find myself identifying more with, along with the other reasons I've given. I get your point also about romantic attachment sometimes having no reason - and you could even interpret her attaching to such a negative figure as a projection of her own self-hatred - but the film doesn't shade MacMurray's character even just a tiny bit to make it a little more believable. So in that way it feels like she's drawn a bit like a caricature. My feeling about it anyway.
I guess I have to flex my imagination to how MacMurray is emotional behind closed doors. The secretary and MacLaine both allude to how he gets vulnerable between the sheets, making promises and declarations of love, though we only see him outside of these moments. It definitely requires a leap of faith, but any more time actually given to these scenes would be narratively lopsided and could be confusing in drawing MacMurray as the most emotionally-diverse character in his fakery (not to mention too much MacMurray, period!) so I think they're deliberately left out for a variety of reasons. I hear your point though, this is just a movie where so much of the actual drama is happening below surfaces and behind scenes with us getting flavors of these complexities coming to boils, that looking outside of what we're seen feels necessary (and seeing domino's great point, that kind of fits with that).

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#141 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun May 10, 2020 12:39 am

I used to like Double Indemnity more in college (the shot of Stanwyck's legs down the staircase before we see her was used for our introduction to the "male gaze" concurrently with the film for noir, so it had a historical place in my early education), but aside from my hate for MacMurray's mug, the film just doesn't come together for me and falls into shrugs of expected conventions in the back half that feel too smooth and tempered. I think in my last watch for the 40s project I still really admired the way the actual murder is executed, which is very tense and well-constructed. Maybe I'll take the time to give my MoC disc another whirl before the end of the month. I wish I still liked it, but it's not one of the Wilders that I'd roll my eyes at for anyone placing high since I'm clearly apathetic about it for my own interpretation on its weaknesses as the outlier amongst the many admirers.

senseabove, shame you didn't get as much out of either film, which will both land in my top five easy, though now knowing your ranks on Lubitsch I feel like we're in bizarro worlds on that front, with the exception of Trouble in Paradise, which is one of the few films that most everyone probably likes (I also don't love Ninotchka passionately, though it'll make my list here).

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#142 Post by senseabove » Mon May 11, 2020 2:23 am

Well, it seems I'm one of those folks who like One, Two, Three. Which is funny because about 1/3 of its jokes are cannibalized from WIlder scripts that are pretty low on my extended list...

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#143 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon May 11, 2020 6:18 am

Ace in the Hole is our discussion topic over at the the film club. Come on over and give your tboughts.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#144 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon May 11, 2020 11:10 am

senseabove wrote:
Mon May 11, 2020 2:23 am
Well, it seems I'm one of those folks who like One, Two, Three. Which is funny because about 1/3 of its jokes are cannibalized from WIlder scripts that are pretty low on my extended list...
It's pretty well-liked outside of vocal dissenters here, in my experience. I'm curious why you enjoyed it though (purely surface-level jokes landing, thematic success at satire, etc.) I think it's a lot like Fedora in that Wilder is going full-steam ahead, naked to the point where confidence can become reckless. But while Fedora deconstructs moviemaking, mythmaking, and makes transparent the facade of objective value in socially-constructed celebrations of status and formulations of identity, One, Two, Three sucks the value out of people and their self-proclaimed interest, period. Wilder reverts all to a romp to showcase their surface level 'banalities-as-identities' to be pathetic; rather than their interpretations of valid drives for recognition to be pathetic- not the emotional drives themselves, in Fedora. I find Fedora works by adding that acknowledgement of the universal hole in humans where the facades are emanating from, while One Two Three is more of a failure with potential in its ideas that is thin by design.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#145 Post by Drucker » Mon May 11, 2020 6:13 pm

I appreciate therewillbeblus spirited defense of Irma La Douce but I think it's not quite top tier for me. I must give it credit in that the Wilders that I haven't enjoyed so much I found to be rather dull, and that was never the case here. Unfortunately, when this film didn't work, I found it painful. There are absolutely moments of greatness. The first 30 minutes or so are sublime, and I was prepared to love the film. The bar scene celebration when Irma first lets everyone know about Lord X was gleeful. The prison escape scene was just right. The tender moments of the film and the romance between Maclaine and Lemmon are up there with the best moments in any Wilder film. I understand what TWBB says about feeling like it would burst out into a Minelli film, as there were definitely moments that reminded me of Gigi.

Unfortunately, there's more to the film than these expert moments. There's the big fight scene which breaks up the sublime first 30 or so minutes of the film. A painful, monotonous, unfunny, slow moving bust-up. The subsequent bedroom scene has the tenderness I enjoy, but goes on for what feels to be an interminable amount of time. And when the central plot gets going, its quite clever. Only Lemmon as Lord X is annoying and unfunny. Sometimes it feels like the film is venturing into a fun fantasy-realm, especially with the finale, and that's generally well done. But there are also moments the film teeters on the brink of unbelievable and ratchets up the action/ridiculousness until 11 in a way that I don't quite care for. When the film works it is pretty sublime, but I think it could do with a little less of it overall to really be top tier.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#146 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon May 11, 2020 6:36 pm

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Part of what I find so sublime about the film is the screwball/Keaton-esque gags that interrupt the more 'Apartment-as-exaggerated-fairy-tale' comedy-drama wavering, so the "big fight" works along those lines, but especially the "bust-up," which is my favorite scene in the film, and in no way slow-moving! The amount of gags packed into that setpiece is the definition of comic cinema as far as I'm concerned.

I enjoyed reading that, Drucker - Feel free to PM me a movie you want me to see/write about. The offer still stands for others.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#147 Post by senseabove » Mon May 11, 2020 8:52 pm

As someone who generally enjoys your write-ups twbb, I do sometimes have to do thinking-woman-meme.jpg to parse your sentences, especially when you get into the psychological terminology, and this is one of those cases. I ran screaming from Freud/Lacan back in my critical theory days—I held to the phenomenological/deconstructivist line—so I don't even have a distant memory of a framework to call to my aid in case it might help. I'm not sure I follow how One, Two, Three "sucks the value out of people and their self-proclaimed interest" or what "to showcase their surface level 'banalities-as-identities' to be pathetic" is aiming at... But I appreciate the prod, so I'll give something a go!

Roughly and somewhat briefly, I think it's just a screwball that focuses on ideological hangups rather than romantic or social hangups, and I guess I think that's funny. Performed ideology and ingrained ideology and professed ideology... Communists jumping ideological ship for a secretary; Germans conveniently forgetting their actions under Nazi rule; the office workers jumping to attention and being ordered to sit down—this is a democracy now!; Otto being gavaged like a foie gras duck until he finally lays himself out on the platter; McNamara going to maddening lengths only to get exactly what he doesn't want. Scarlett blithely oblivious to Otto's shouting except what she parrots and Otto shoutingly oblivious to her blithe oblivion because, basically, both of them are horny is as succinct a Wilderian theme as you're going to get. Everyone either is sacrificed to an ideology or sacrifices their ideology. And it works because nobody wins in the end, not even Coke—just abject, abstract Capitalism, which you can see coming from a mile away, and we all have to laugh to keep from crying at that... But we all, also, have over-committed out of principle or smudged the edges of our beliefs for a little comfort or love or pleasure or self-satisfaction, or the prospect of it. So it's playing for laughter both with and at these people. We've all done something like it, but at least we're not that bad.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#148 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon May 11, 2020 9:34 pm

I can appreciate that, but I don't see psychological terminology in my response (even though I am guilty of it in many instances, purely accidental) nor do I recall Lacan well or use his theories often outside the general ideas. I'm making a very broad comparison between two films where Wilder is taking very different approaches along a similar interest, so it was probably doomed to begin with in its translation from my mind to the page, but I spelled it out more in my initial writeup (maybe better, maybe worse). Perhaps a nitpick, but I think in this case the problem is rooted in the poor expression of conveying an already hazy connective tissue, rather than psychological jargon.

I think the film "sucks the value out of people and their self-proclaimed interest" by laughing 'at' them and their feelings of self-importance through ideology, reduced to hogwash. Everyone is on the same playing field though, so it's not like he's making fun of just one side (and I suppose you could say in this way he's laughing 'with' them too). The following sentence, which you quoted part of, meant that he is only going so deep with this attack in focusing solely on the absurdity of behavioral observation, showing loud, wild caricatures that are actually empty, boring people without authentic identities.

The comparison to Fedora is that he is doing something similar there, but empathizing more with the feelings of his characters, specifically the 'longing' to make meaning and hold on to identities. The characters are still hammy, artificial people seeking fake statuses, but there is an emotional understanding to this part in all of us that wants and needs to be seen, to know ourselves, and to hold onto time and ideals. So I think he takes these themes more seriously and approaches them in a complex way in that film, ironically by dressing it up in ridiculous self-reflexive narrative, caricatures, and genre-playing.

I hope that clarifies things somewhat. I agree with your thoughts on One, Two, Three for the most part, and have always felt that the comic ideas are great while the delivery feels 'off' - except for Otto who steals the movie, and nearly every scene involving him caught between a rock and a hard place (of which there are many) land for me. It's partly a case of performers missing the beats, and partly a case of the beats-to-be-hit not being as funny as they probably seemed in the writing room.

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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#149 Post by senseabove » Tue May 12, 2020 3:18 am

Sorry, I was inexact in my own words—I don't think you're jargony by any means, or that you're dropping Lacan references left and right, and "terminology" was probably the wrong, er, term. I meant more that sometimes it feels like there's a foreignness of concept, not of words, for me in your analysis and I have the impression it stems from your background being in a field I'm almost entirely ignorant of, beyond general pop-cultural knowledge; that combined with your sometimes stretched sentences, and I sometimes have to read them a few times for all the phrases to shake into place. Maybe I'm just reading into things based on what I've gleaned about your real-world life, though, or maybe I was just half-distracted by work when I wrote that earlier, who knows.

Anyway, back to the movie: going back to your previous write-up clarifies things for me a bit—I guess it works for me that everybody's equally reprehensible, if mostly for different reasons, and all those reasons are given rather simple, sympathetic motivations sketched to varying degrees of depth. But the simplicity of their motivations in contrast with the erratic mania of their commitment to their ideologies, whether overt (the communists) or implicit (the capitalists), and the ease with which each betrays his ideology for human needs (the communists) or betrays human needs for it (the capitalists), is the absurdist version of the run-of-the-mill ideological compromise and rigidity we are liable to every day. We're all frauds one moment and sticklers the next, and if I felt like Wilder were saying "we're all awful, so who cares," I'd probably hate it. But I guess, in a weird way, it almost feels like the fact that characters' ideologies do change is a bizarrely hopeful twist. It's "shut up and deal" in a different context: you don't get to stop and figure everything out before you have to act and react, and sometimes you have to commit, and sometimes you have to bend, and often you do the wrong one at the wrong time, and neither rigidity nor compromise is always right or always wrong. No one seems to be aware of that in this movie except when they can exploit it, but we can be when we're watching it. (It's been a while, but one of the reasons Ninotchka didn't work all that well for me years ago was that her shift didn't click, where Otto and MacNamara both get more absurdly committed in the face of challenge until they're out of options, and then they shift lest they snap. Ninotchka just... snaps. But that one's on my possible rewatch list... so we'll see how I feel about it on another go.)

Since you reference Lanthimos as a comparison in your original write-up, it seems relevant that I absolutely loathe him—Dogtooth is one of the rare movies I've turned off in disgust, I hated The Lobster, and I was antipathetic at best to The Favourite, and even that only because Olivia Colman is brilliantly disarming. He makes movies whose characters are either reprehensible or idiotic, unsympathetic, mutually exploitative, and completely irredeemable, and I've never been able to see beyond that. I need a sliver of hope—and as cynical as Wilder is about people, their motivations, and why they change, I feel like there's still some hope here. Maybe that's why I loathe Ace and The Lost Weekend so much—they're both very "abandon all hope ye who enter here." Just don't ask me to fit Sunset Blvd. into this schema...

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Auteur List: Billy Wilder - Discussion and Defenses

#150 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue May 12, 2020 8:55 am

I hear that need for hope, which for me is more of a want. Personally I’m willing to believe that hope may occur after we cut to black in a film, and sometimes prefer that than to see forced development or visible optimism occur if it’s not fitting with the story. The Lost Weekend is a good example of a film that is straight-up about hopelessness, and even though I think it does end on an optimistic note, I can think of so many alternate routes the film could have taken where the experience of powerlessness in alcoholism would be harmfully invalidated by an inserted oxygen tank for the audience.

This ‘hope in the unknown,’ or faith in the intangible growth that will occur off screen, is definitely in step with my own worldview and understanding (partly from therapeutic work, partly from personal experience) of life. If it’s not already obvious, I find enormous amounts of validation, and concurrent pleasure, from witnessing human beings struggling with identity, loss, meaning, enigmatic emotions, longing for connection and self-discovery, etc., not because of schadenfreude, but compassion. I also know that the honest answers to these vulnerabilities is not often in the kind of optimism one can be shown in cinema through typical means. So watching people stew in their own discomfort or confusion can be incredibly disrespectful and turn me off if the subjects feel pathologized or looked down upon, but can also be an experience of ‘joining’ with the characters and find reciprocal comfort in a lack of tangible optimism, which is itself very hopeful to humanity’s capacity for energetic connection and support through empathy. A film like the Netflix miniseries Maniac reaches this conclusion in a way that satisfies both your and my definitions of hope, but often times I think simply by being present with and for the characters is enough to feel validated ourselves. If I had to choose, that is the primary reason that I love cinema: the ability to feel empathized with myself, and the tools for me to empathize with myself (divorced from any notion of self-pity) simply be watching the experiences of others and empathizing with the commonalities of humanity's challenges and rewards through them. In these instances, linear hope is not necessary, and can even undermine the power of the empathy.

When it comes to Lanthimos, especially something like The Favorite (or his most humanist film, Alps, which nobody seems to talk about) I think he does this exceptionally well. I also don’t think Wilder is saying “we’re all awful, who cares” about One, Two, Three - I think he cares very much, but here chooses to keep it lighter than something like Fedora when tackling this idea. Part of his demonstration of caring is lightening things up and allocating an equal distribution of playful jabs, while still concocting a final product where characters are densely populating spaces together. Life may be comprised of pain and objective meaninglessness, but our magnetic pull toward engagement with the world and one another will, at the very least, be interesting, amusing, and shared.

I believe Wilder finds a twisted kind of comfort in knowing that people will continue to gather together, in spite of all the ‘rational’ reasons not to when so many of us drive each other crazy with our differences. But it’s those commonalities that keep us coming back and there’s a surging optimism there, especially in our current crisis where that’s all that most of us want right now. I don’t think Wilder is interested in saying all that in this film, but I do think it’s the optimistic half of his ultimate worldview, which, if true, was certainly somewhere in his mind while making it.

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