Billy Wilder counts among the greats in Hollywood. For quite a number of reasons: Humour, several fascinating angles on stories, wit and suspense. Original ideas in plots and dialogue. 6 Oscar’s to his name, many more awards and quite a number of nominations. Sometimes people know his movies better than his name: The Seven Year Itch, The Apartment, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, Sabrina, One Two Three, Kiss Me Stupid, and many more.
And stellar casts in almost any instance, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, you name them: Almost any human that counted for something among Hollywood actors at the time was part of one or more of his movies.
Most of his movies are among my favourites. The song above is the central theme from “Love in the Afternoon”, 1957, a rendering of the Italian version from 1904 by Dante Marchetti. Probably the best way to make this melting point-feeling clear – in a nutshell.
A rather mundane subject you could argue, a ‘man about town’ and a girl falling for that kind of charm too soon. Yet, as always with Billy Wilder, he makes it special.
And one of his great achievements is to clarify the idea of fascination vs. love. Take almost any of his movies: When you look closely he did not just cross the boundaries of Hollywood’s Hays code (1930-1967) in extremely smart ways to be able to hint at the then ‘forbidden fruits’ of passion… he also made that distinction clear.
These days I wonder what his motivation was: Probably personal experience, one way or the other.
But, whatever the reasons, try one of them. Maybe listen to the song. Some of us will remember a few encounters in our lifetime.
If Billy Wilder and this post will help only one heart to heal… he did not work in vain. ☺️