“The Lost Weekend” (1945)
Working on the script for “Double Indemnity” with Wilder proved a stressful experience for Raymond Chandler, a recovering alcoholic who was allegedly driven back to the bottle by his relationship with the director. As something between an apology and an intervention, Wilder optioned Charles R. Jackson‘s novel about an alcoholic, and won Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards for the first time (as well as sharing the top prize at the first Cannes Film Festival). Wilder’s film follows Don Birnam (a revelatory turn from Ray Milland, a British actor previously known for slighter fare), an alcoholic writer on a four-day binge of increasing darkness. Milland’s charm and Wilder’s deft comic touch gives Don, and the film, a charming, scampy feel to begin with, but there’s an undercurrent of sadness in the way that his brother and girlfriend treat him, and as he sinks deeper and deeper into his addiction, there’s a grittiness and power that’s shocking even now, and doubly so because of the opening. Wilder is already in full command of his medium, amping up the hallucinatory horror with techniques that swiftly became industry standard (the hero walking down a street as neon signs float past him? All started here), aided by Miklós Rózsa‘s score — one of the first to make use of the theremin, to great effect. The production code-mandated ending feels a little forced, but even so, the booze industry offered Paramount $5 million to bury the film (Wilder told Cameron Crowe, whose excellent book “Conversations With Wilder” is a must-read: “If they’d offered me the five million, I would have taken it”). Clearly, they knew that they were up against as powerful a portrait of the disease as has ever been made. [A]
“The Emperor Waltz” (1948)
In marked counterpoint to the bitter alcoholism drama that preceded it, and the cynical wit of “A Foreign Affair” to follow, Wilder’s sole foray into pure musical comedy territory is a toothless affair. Like a subplot extended to requisite feature length by means of a little crooning from lead Bing Crosby, including an interminable-feeling yodeling number, the film details the romantic entanglements of a brash American salesman and his dog (cruelly uncredited, despite turning in an Uggie-worthy performance) on a visit to the royal court of turn-of-the-century Austria. There they meet snooty aristocrat Joan Fontaine who gradually falls for Crosby’s golden pipes and unrefined charms, just as her purebred poodle disgraces herself with his mutt. While of course the pedigree/mongrel love affair(s) can be read as allusions to the cruel idiocy of the eugenicist policies pursued by Nazi Germany, and while some mild satire can be read into our hero’s dogged pursuit of a sale (a quality deemed extremely “American”), really the plot is pablum, the targets way too easy and the jokes, well, there aren’t enough good ones and Fontaine doesn’t get to deliver any of them. Which is possibly a good thing — she was never the funniest of actresses. Strangely, despite the portrayal of the old guard of Austrian royalty as a decrepit bunch of pompous snobs who’ll stop at nothing to protect their ossified way of life (not even — wait for it — the drowning of puppies), and America, by contrast being the gosh-darndest land of opportunity and equality, we emerge here with less of a feel for Wilder’s heartfelt love for his adopted homeland than we do from those films in which he is more critical of it. Despite some Lubitsch-ian moments (the aging monarch, banished to an ante-room because of a bomb scare, walks round and round on a spiral mosaic on the floor, like a bored child), the film lacks the shrewdness and storytelling efficiency we expect from Wilder. Indeed, the story goes that he had 4,000 daisies painted blue because he disliked them when white, in a most un-Wilder like moment of directorial excess. “The Emperor Waltz” may mean that the jack-of-all-genres director could tick yet another type of picture off the list, but it’s also proof that he couldn’t master quite all of them. [D]
“A Foreign Affair” (1948)
Returning to European subject matter surely couldn’t help but feel personal for Wilder, a Polish-born Jew, considering his escape from the Nazis, and the personal loss he suffered (the director had actually done wartime service for his adopted country, editing U.S. Army Service Corps documentary footage after wrapping “The Lost Weekend“), but however wounded he was, you wouldn’t know if from “A Foreign Affair.” The film is one of Wilder’s best satires, aimed squarely at the corruption endemic in occupied Germany. The story follows conservative Iowa congresswoman Phoebe Frost (Jean Arthur) on a fact-finding mission to Berlin. She meets Army Captain John Pringle (John Lund), who is secretly sleeping with Erika von Schlütow (Marlene Dietrich), a German cabaret singer, who has cut her former ties with the Nazi party. Congresswoman Frost, hearing talk of an officer consorting with a former Nazi supporter, is determined to get to the bottom of it, and enlists Pringle’s help, not realizing he is the officer in question. There was open hostility both on and off the camera between Marlene Dietrich and Jean Arthur; the latter, for whom “A Foreign Affair” broke a four-year absence from acting, was racked by insecurities, and felt Wilder was favoring Dietrich unfairly. The German actress’ cabaret performances are indeed some of the highlights of the film, particularly “The Ruins of Berlin,” (composer Friedrich Holleander, Dietrich’s frequent collaborator, was rightfully nominated for an Oscar), and the director’s affection for the star shines through, so maybe Arthur had a point. An ever-cynical Wilder has created characters that each walk a gray area of political and social assumption and duality, lambasting both Congress and the military, in one fell entertaining swoop. But films like this are judged not only on their merits but their message, and it received mixed reviews, with some critics horrified by Wilder’s somewhat light-hearted take on American post-war duplicity — the filmmaker was not only denounced by Congress, but the film was also banned in Germany. 65 years in, it’s less controversial, but just as good. [A-]
“Sunset Boulevard” (1950)
After straying into more comedic waters for a while, Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett, in their last collaboration, went back to the darker side of life to tackle Hollywood itself, and “bite the hand that feeds him,” in the words of MGM executive Louis B. Mayer (to which Wilder responded, eloquently, “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”). Movies about movies are historically difficult to pull off without feeling too inside baseball, but “Sunset Boulevard” certainly marks the apex of the genre, in part thanks to Wilder laying on a film noir feel to a world he’d been working in for over a decade. Narrated by screenwriter Joe Gillis (an excellent William Holden) as he floats dead in a swimming pool, it’s the story of his patronage by faded silent star Norma Desmond (a titanic performance from Gloria Swanson), who is driven to jealousy and murder by his burgeoning relationship with another screenwriter. Wilder skillfully blends truth and fiction, weaving in cameos by the likes of Cecil B. DeMille and Buster Keaton, and uses footage from “Queen Kelly,” Erich von Stroheim‘s compromised (and at the time still-unreleased) silent epic that starred Swanson (and in a wonderfully meta bit of casting, the helmer also plays Max, Desmond’s ex-husband, former director and current butler). But for all of the in-jokes, it never feels indulgent: Wilder is talking about the transience and fakery of the Hollywood world, rather than celebrating his pals. The icicle-sharp, endlessly quotable script is one of the greatest ever written, and the film remains relentlessly entertaining. If it’s not the director’s finest, it’s a testament to how much competition there is for that position. [A+]