Ruination and Redemption in Billy Wilder's Romantic Comedies

Abstract

n his acceptance speech for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film of 1992, Fernando Trueba stated, "I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder...so thank you, Mr. Wilder.” To directors, Billy Wilder, who would die in 2002, was alive and well in every sense. When French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius accepted his Oscar for Best Picture for The Artist (2011), he thanked "Billy Wilder...Billy Wilder, and...Billy Wilder.” Director Stephen Frears, no slouch himself, is currently in post-production of a film about the Hollywood icon, starring Christoph Waltz. Directors get books written about them, and the volumes written about Wilder are too numerous to review, but not often do directors get movies made about them. Wilder, however, was a rare sort: a director’s director, the kind of artist who, long after death, keeps teaching the other directors, and the scholars keep talking. In this company, then, it’s prudent for me to keep my claim modest, demonstrable, and useful. My claim bears some resemblance to what Andrew Sarris once wrote: that the “apparent cynicism” in Billy Wilder “was the only way he could make his raging romanticism palatable’” (McBride, 273). Conversely, Neil Sinyard and Adrian Turner “drew attention to Wilder’s gentler, more romantic side...[challenging] the accusations of cynicism and bad taste” (Armstrong, 2). But that’s the point: Wilder would never sacrifice comedic or romantic force in his films, but neither would he sacrifice tragic or agonistic elements that drove the otherwise happy endings toward existential choice.