“Ace In The Hole” (1951)
Wilder’s first film as the triple threat of writer, producer and director, “Ace In The Hole” was also his first project after his split from writing partner Charles Brackett, coming off the back of the critical and commercial success of “Sunset Boulevard.” The working title of the film was “The Human Interest Story,” but while it was changed by Paramount to the it’s-fun-we-promise “Big Carnival,” it has long since reverted back to Wilder’s favored, and far superior, title. The film is a scathing examination of how news is made, inspired by the real-life story of Floyd Collins, who in 1925 was trapped inside Sand Cave in Kentucky after a landslide, with a local journalist turning the accident into a national tragedy and winning a Pulitzer for his efforts, despite the death of the stricken Collins. A shade darker than even “Double Indemnity,” the amoral antihero Chuck Tatum (played by Kirk Douglas), is a status-hungry journalist with a chip on his shoulder, who happens upon a man, Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), trapped by a cave-in. Teaming up with crooked local sheriff, and Minosa’s unfeeling and equally unscrupulous wife Lorraine, he creates a media frenzy. Thousands of people arrive, songs are written, a ferris wheel is erected, and local business thrives, as long as the man stays trapped in the cave. At the center of it all is Tatum whose unquenchable ambition to climb to the top of the journalism ladder in New York drives the story, scruples be damned. Though the film was a critical smash in Europe, the reaction in the U.S. was uneven at best, and the film was a financial failure. Fortunately, critics and academics have subsequently caught on, and it’s now rightfully considered to be one of Wilder’s top-tier pictures. [A]
“Stalag 17” (1953)
If the poor critical and commercial reception of “Ace in the Hole” gave Wilder even a momentary desire to curb his more cynical impulses, it doesn’t show in his follow-up “Stalag 17.” Ostensibly a war movie, the film takes place almost entirely in the barracks of a German POW camp where a motley assortment of U.S. army sargeants are being held, and thus the actual war feels strangely distant. Tonally too, it’s in a category of its own, a curious hybrid of high-stakes wartime drama and knockabout comedy. And yes, some of the broader jokes now feel a little labored, but it is to the film’s credit that even the worst of the German characters are made to appear ridiculous too, saving them from cipher-dom. Witness the incidental character detail of the commandant, played by fellow émigré director Otto Preminger, laboriously putting on his shiny boots, in a two-man maneuver, just to make a telephone call to Berlin. But the Germans aren’t the focus of attention here, it’s the Americans, and the divisions, rivalries and loyalties that spring up amongst them as they realize they’ve a traitor in their midst and decide — without proof except a general dislike for the man and his ability to prosper (relatively speaking) in these straitened times — that Sefton (William Holden) is the rat. It’s hard to imagine any other director not caving to pressure to make his lead more likable, but Wilder insisted, over Holden’s own objections, that Sefton stay the misanthropic, unheroic, self-interested pragmatist to the last, in the process guiding the actor to an Oscar. And it’s a characterization that truly doesn’t compromise, with a script at pains to stress that even his ultimate act of bravery is non-redemptive: it’s really just a calculated long-term financial investment. No, Sefton remains a blackhearted bastard to the end, his self interest, which borders on war profiteering, becoming oddly noble because it is pursued without the slightest ounce of self-pity. A war movie without the war, about a traitor who turns out not to be a traitor, but instead the least heroic hero you can imagine — Mr Wilder, how did you pull it off? [B+]
“Sabrina” (1954)
Sometimes froth is enough. “Sabrina” may lack the acerbity of Wilder at his most incisive, but it has pleasures aplenty that make up for it. And though it may be uncharacteristically soft-centered, it features lots of Wilder touches that help us know who’s behind the camera, like first-person voiceover narration, observational comedic asides, class consciousness and a huge disparity in age between the romantic leads. Ok, maybe that last one isn’t a recommendation, but bear in mind the May in this particular May/December romance is the beguiling Audrey Hepburn, who often played against love interests who seem, to the modern eye, age-inappropriate. Hepburn plays the titular Sabrina, the tomboy daughter of the chauffeur to a wealthy industrialist family, the Larrabees. Sabrina has a teenage crush on the debonair playboy David Larrabee (William Holden), but after a spell growing up and learning some womanly wiles in Paris, she returns home to entrance him, only to fall gently in love herself with his much older, more serious brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart). Bogart’s casting is eternally the divisive factor here, and how you respond to the film does depend on how willing you are to see your favorite tough guy gangster/PI play “society.” Wilder famously courted Cary Grant for the role, but call us crazy, seeing Bogie do something different here is one of the film’s chief pleasures, so we’re kind of glad Grant turned him down (as he reportedly did several times: perhaps that’s why Wilder featured characters doing Grant impressions for comic effect on more than one occasion?) This may be Wilder in rather anodyne form, but the charm of the players, especially the radiant Hepburn, teamed for the first time here with her signature designer Givenchy, whips it all together into the cinematic equivalent of candy floss. And if you think that’s all down to the source material and the Cinderella-esque story, just watch Sydney Pollack’s Julia Ormonde/Harrison Ford-starring remake. It’s not bad, exactly, just resolutely unmagical and it makes you appreciate the effortless charm that Wilder and co. bring to the original all the more. [B]
“The Seven Year Itch” (1955)
There’s little doubt that “The Seven Year Itch” is a minor entry in the Wilder canon. The director himself was dismissive of the film, describing it as “just a play.” And it’s undoubtedly dated and problematic. It’s a comedy about adultery that’s unable to show adultery thanks to censorship by the Hays board, never feeling more than half-achieved as a result. Meanwhile, Tom Ewell — who played the same part of a publishing executive trying to resist infidelity on Broadway — never feels particularly comfortable in the lead (Wilder had wanted to cast a then-unknown Walter Matthau, who tested opposite Gena Rowlands, and watching that screen test, found on the DVD, it’s hard not to imagine what might have been). But there’s one great trump card up the film’s sleeve, and that’s Marilyn Monroe. Playing a part so archetypal that she’s known simply as The Girl (although it’s suggested, in one ill-advised piece of in-jokery, that the character might be Marilyn herself), it’s the lighter flipside of her part in “Niagara,” and she’s marvelous at it. There’s an inherent comic grace to her turn that’s impossibly winning, and it’s hard to watch anything else when she’s on screen. And that’s without even mentioning Monroe’s dress being blown up by an air vent — an image which, despite being one of the most iconic in cinema, doesn’t actually feature in the film (Wilder and Fox had to use it only for publicity due to censorship rules). Wilder swore afterward that he’d never work with Monroe again, but fortunately for all of us, he came to change his mind, later observing: “My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?” [C]
