jack
classic
film
review:
Three Cheers for Billy Wilder
by Dave Tough
Billy Wilder was a master craftsman of classic Hollywood
movies with a particular gift for the tragicomic. Have
You Seen, Peterborough's purveyor of quality video rentals,
has three Wilder films on DVD; JACK gave me the enviable
task of watching them and writing about what makes him great.
Mostly, it's writing. And that's what The Lost Weekend, an
unusually dark early Wilder flick, is about. Writing and drinking.
It's essentially a character study of Don Birnam (Ray Milland),
an alcoholic and would-be novelist who out-maneuvers his brother
and girlfriend to go on a self-destructive weekend bender.
A supercilious failure who abuses the sympathy of those he
mocks, Don loves to drink, as he tells his uneasy ally, the
bartender: "It shrinks my kidneys, doesn't it, Nat? It
pickles my liver, yes. But what does it do to my mind? It
tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly
I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent, supremely competent."
Then delirium: an imaginary bat brutally devours an imaginary
mouse as Don Birnam the drinker devours Don Birnam the writer.
In Some Like It Hot, saxophonist Joe (Tony Curtis)
and bass player Gerry (Jack Lemmon) join a ladies orchestra
as Daphne and Geraldine to evade gangsters in prohibition-era
Chicago. They befriend Sugar Cane (Marilyn Monroe),
a sweetly sexy singer who has a bad habit of falling for (you
guessed it!) sax players and sets out to nab (right again!)
a millionaire. Predictably enough, Joe and Gerry's dissimulations
initiate a bewildering shell game in which not only gender
but also class and sexuality eventually become completely
arbitrary performances. Wilder's remarkable refusal to tie
up the loose ends, even when the truth is laid bare in the
final scene, provides one of the lasting joys of this film
for post-Stonewall viewers.
To my taste, though, 1960's The Apartment is the film
in which Wilder's warm-hearted cynicism finds its clearest
expression. C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is an insurance company
clerk who allows a quartet of middle managers to use his apartment
for their extramarital enterprises in exchange for recommendations
to an executive post. When Baxter's glowing references make
big boss Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) suspicious, Baxter
spills the beans, expecting his immorality to disqualify him
for promotion. Instead Sheldrake asks Baxter for a key. In
one of many running gags, Baxter's key is repeatedly mixed
up for the key to the executive washroom. In true Wilderian
style, this light comedy provides the critical edge of the
film: Baxter's willingness to abet his superiors' callousness
is his key to success. Only his fondness for the beautifully
sad elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine)
forces Baxter to become what his neighbour, Dr. Dreyfus, calls
"a mensch, a human being."
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