THE BEST OF BILLY
Four Classics Films by Billy WIlder
Q&A with UK Professor Jordan Brower
ABOUT DOUBLE INDEMNITY
"Everything about this picture is superb." —Chicago Tribune
"This shrewd, smoothly tawdry thriller, directed by Billy Wilder, is one of the high points of nineteen-forties films." —New Yorker
"Continues to set the standard for the best in Hollywood film noir." —Rotten Tomatoes
In this classic film noir, insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) gets roped into a murderous scheme when he falls for the sensual Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), who is intent on killing her husband (Tom Powers) and living off the fraudulent accidental death claim. Prompted by the late Mr. Dietrichson's daughter, Lola (Jean Heather), insurance investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) looks into the case, and gradually begins to uncover the sinister truth.
ABOUT BILLY WILDER
Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder (1906-2002) abandoned that career in favor of work as a reporter in Vienna and then Berlin. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many German films until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Fleeing Nazi Germany, Wilder emigrated to Paris, then to the US. Although he spoke no English when he arrived in Hollywood, Wilder was a fast learner and thanks to contacts such as Peter Lorre, he was able to break into American films. His partnership with Charles Brackett started in 1938 and the team was responsible for writing some of Hollywood's classic comedies, including Ninotchka (1939) and Ball of Fire (1941). The partnership expanded into a producer-director one in 1942, with Brackett producing and the two turned out such classics as Five Graves to Cairo (1943), The Lost Weekend (1945) (Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) (Oscars for Best Screenplay), after which the partnership dissolved. Wilder had already made one film, Double Indemnity (1944) without Brackett, as the latter had refused to work on a film he felt dealt with such disreputable characters. Wilder's subsequent self-produced films would become more caustic and cynical, notably Ace in the Hole (1951), though he also produced such sublime comedies as Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960) (which won him Best Picture and Director Oscars). He retired in 1981.
ABOUT JORDAN BROWER
Jordan Brower is an assistant professor of English at the University of Kentucky, where he teaches film and media studies. His first book, Classical Hollywood, American Modernism: A Literary History of the Studio System, was published with Cambridge University Press in January 2024. He is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and Film and at work on a new monograph on crises in contemporary Hollywood.