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Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austrian born film maker who won a total of 6 Oscars and nominated for a further 13.
Wilder was skilled at working with actors, coaxing silent era legends Gloria Swanson and Erich Von Stroheim out of retirement for roles in Sunset Boulevard. For Stalag 17, Wilder squeezed an Oscar-winning performance out of a reluctant William Holden. Humphrey Bogart shed his tough guy image to give one of his warmest performances in Sabrina. James Cagney, not usually known for comedy, was memorable in a high-octane comic role for Wilder's One, Two, Three.
Wilder mentored Jack Lemmon and was the first director to pair him with Walter Matthau, in The Fortune Cookie (1966). Wilder had great respect for Lemmon, calling him the hardest working actor he had ever met.
Wilder's films were non-political and without satirical edge - this was deliberate.
A list of films directed by Wilder:
1934 Mauvaise Graine
1942 The Major and the Minor
1943 Five Graves to Cairo
1944 Double Indemnity
1945 The Lost Weekend
1945 Death Mills
1948 The Emperor Waltz
1948 A Foreign Affair
1950 Sunset Boulevard
1951 Ace in the Hole
1953 Stalag 17
1954 Sabrina
1955 The Seven Year Itch
1957 The Spirit of St. Louis
1957 Love in the Afternoon
1957 Witness For The Prosecution
1959 Some Like It Hot
1960 The Apartment
1961 One, Two, Three
1963 Irma La Douce
1964 Kiss Me, Stupid
1966 The Fortune Cookie
1970 The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes
1972 Avanti!
1974 The Front Page
1978 Fedora
1981 Buddy Buddy
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Filmography
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Billy Wilder - what members say
Billy Wilder - filmography
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Buddy Buddy
(1981)
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate: 
This black comedy stars the comic duo of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as a pair of antagonists. Trabucco (Matthau) is a hitman who, having already dispatched two of the witnesses to an act of criminal fraud is about to ice the third, mobster Rudy Gambola (Fil Formicola) before he can testify. As ..read more »
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59%
from 40 members
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The Front Page
(1974)
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Susan Sarandon
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate: 
In perhaps the most honest of the remakes, director Billy Wilder satisfies the 1970s craze for nostalgia in this third filming of the Hecht-MacArthur play about wild and woolly Chicago newspapermen in the 1920s. Sparks fly as Walter Matthau plays a ruthless managing editor who learns that his ace ..read more »
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70%
from 25 members
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Avanti
on DVD
(1972)
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills, Clive Revill
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate: 
Jack Lemmon stars as Walter Armbruster in Wilder's leisurely romantic comedy set on the idyllic Mediterranean. When his father dies in a car crash on the isle of Ischia, the corporate executive is quickly on a plane. Once there, he learns from Pamela Piggott (Juliet Mills), a young Brit, that her ..read more »
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66%
from 770 members
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The Fortune Cookie
on DVD
(1966)
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ron Rich
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate: 
Starring the legendary duo of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, Wilder's characteristically cynical comedy again explores the corrupting influence of money. When TV-cameraman Harry Hinkle (Lemmon) is slightly injured while covering a football game, Willie Gingrich (Matthau), his ambulance-chasing ..read more »
Rate this:
62%
from 923 members
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Kiss Me, Stupid
on DVD
(1964)
Starring: Dean Martin, Kim Novak, Ray Walston
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate: 
In Wilder's smutty low comedy, Dean Martin has little trouble easing into the role of Dino, a womanizing pop singer with a yen for the grape. En route to Hollywood after a Las Vegas gig, he stops in a small Nevada town, where his arrival is considered a piece of extraordinary fortune by amateur ..read more »
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54%
from 248 members
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Irma La Douce
on DVD
(1963)
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Lou Jacobi
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate:
Billy Wilder's adaptation of Alexandre Breffort's stage farce stars Shirley MacLaine as the Parisian prostitute of the title. When Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon) a naive, uncharacteristically honest young gendarme decides to raid Chez Moustache, the bistro which provides a base of operations for many ..read more »
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64%
from 940 members
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One, Two, Three
on DVD
(1961)
Starring: James Cagney, Arlene Francis, Horst Buchholz
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate:
Billy Wilder's Cold War satire, derived from an energetic Molnar comedy the director had seen in 1929, probably owes as much to NINOTCHKA, perhaps the best known film of his idol Ernst Lubitsch. It stars James Cagney as C.J. MacNamara, a Coca-Cola executive who comes to West Berlin to promote the ..read more »
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68%
from 444 members
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The Apartment
on DVD
(1960)
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate:
Winner of numerous Academy and BAFTA Awards, Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT blends his customary harsh cynicism with a humane streak that appears only fleetingly in his films. The movie stars Jack Lemmon as C.C. Baxter, an office clerk who curries favor with the executives in his office by giving ..read more »
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72%
from 10,124 members
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Some Like It Hot
on DVD
(1959)
Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate:
When Chicago musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) accidentally witness a gangland shooting they quickly board a southband train to Florida, disguised as Josephine and Daphne, the two newest homeliest members of an all-girl jazz band. Their cover is perfect...until a lovelorn singer (..read more »
Rate this:
76%
from 26,615 members
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Sabrina
on DVD
(1954)
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, Audrey Hepburn
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate:
Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn) is the daughter of a Long Island chauffeur, almost a member of the extended family of her father's employer. Linus and David Larrabee are the sons in the wealthy family, and Sabrina has harbored a crush on David (William Holden), the younger and more freewheeling of the ..read more »
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70%
from 3,959 members
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Stalag 17
on DVD
(1952)
Starring: William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate:
Billy Wilder's adaptation of the Broadway hit stars William Holden as the cynical Sefton. Set in the eponymous German prison camp during WWII, the director's broad, black comedy focuses on a group of decidedly unheroic prisoners. While they spend most of their time trying to entertain each other ..read more »
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70%
from 1,224 member
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Ace in the Hole
(1951)
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Porter Hall
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate:
Watch now: FREE
A cave collapse in New Mexico traps a man, and all eyes turn toward the tragedy, including those of Charles "Chuck" Tatum (Kirk Douglas), a washed-up newspaper reporter who sees the incident as a ticket back to his former days at the top of the journalism heap. As the media circus begins to swirl ..read more »
Rate this:
81%
from 221 members
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Sunset Boulevard
on DVD
(1950)
Starring: Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich Von Stroheim
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate:
Billy Wilder's masterpiece, a corrosive black comedy that remains the most memorable assault on the emptiness and vanity of the movie business, it stars William Holden as young, down-and-out screenwriter Joe Gillis. Narrated in flashbacks by the now-deceased scribe, the film unwinds the series of ..read more »
Rate this:
74%
from 9,169 members
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Double Indemnity
on DVD
(1944)
Starring: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate:
Director Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler (Creator of the ultimate private investigator, Philp Marlowe - 'The Big Sleep', 'Farewell My Lovely'), adapted James M. Cain's hard-boiled novel into this dark film noir. Insurance investigator Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) plans the perfect murder with the ..read more »
Rate this:
77%
from 4,978 members
Billy Wilder - watch online
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Ace In The Hole
to Watch Now
(1951)
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Porter Hall
Director: Billy Wilder
Certificate:
Watch now: FREE
Run time: 112 minutes
A cave collapse in New Mexico traps a man, and all eyes turn toward the tragedy, including those of Charles "Chuck" Tatum (Kirk Douglas), a washed-up newspaper reporter who sees the incident as a ticket back to his former days at the top of the journalism heap. As the media circus begins to swirl ..read more »
Rate this:
77%
from 48 members
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Billy Wilder facts
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A romantic comedy that is actually funny! 20 July 2004
... does. What makes it great is the combination of hilarious screenplay thanks to Billy Wilder, superb direction, thanks to Billy Wilder, and some of the best comedy ACTING I...
What's not to love? 25 September 2003
