Billy Wilder
177 connections found
Filmography
Double Indemnity 1944 
Some Like It Hot 1959 
Stalag 17 1953 
Ace in the Hole 1951 
Sabrina 1954 
Sunset Boulevard 1950 
The Seven Year Itch 1955 
The Lost Weekend 1945 
The Apartment 1960 
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes 1970 
Buddy Buddy 1981 
Fedora 1978 
The Front Page 1974 
Irma la Douce 1963 
One, Two, Three 1961 
Avanti! 1972 
Witness for the Prosecution 1957 
The Emperor Waltz 1948 View:
Connections, in both directions
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun
influenced by Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Themes Characters
…writer-director Jane Schoenbrun wears their influences on their sleeve, from Friday The 13th to Videodrome via Mulholland Drive and Sunset Boulevard…
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma portrays Billy as a “Norma Desmond”-type, channelling the eccentric and secretive qualities from the Sunset Boulevard character.
Directly channelling Gloria Swanson’s tragic, forgotten star Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard (1950), she moves across the screen wearing a velvet turban and full makeup with a hypnotic grace and power that commands attention from minute one.
Parallels to Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond are verbally highlighted more than once, as Billy seems to be an enigma living in the ghost of a former life.
Billy swans about in her caftans and turbans, a scream-queen Norma Desmond living in a perfectly preserved museum to her erstwhile stardom (and foundational trauma). Kris, being a compulsive cinephile, privately makes the Sunset Boulevard comparison to her partner, but in a moment of self-doubting anxiety, she later pretends not to know the character’s name in front of Billy.
There’s more than a little Norma Desmond in Billy Presley…
A Simple Favor (2018)
Directed by Paul Feig
influenced by Double Indemnity (1944), The Apartment (1960), Some Like It Hot (1959)
Themes Characters Plot
Adapted by Jessica Sharzer (Nerve) from Darcey Bell’s 2017 novel, A Simple Favor pulls from a plethora of sources — Gone Girl, Rebecca, Gaslight, Double Indemnity, Diabolique — some of which the screenplay literally name-checks; it’s less homage or even pastiche than a bargain-basement mash-up of various superior inspirations.
Like Fred MacMurray’s weak-kneed patsy in “ Double Indemnity ,” Emily is thunderstruck by one of those noir blondes who could easily prove fatal.
If Double Indemnity were a hangout movie, this would be its sequel.
“A Simple Favor” is a sort of collage, featuring thematic snippets from “L’Avventura,” “Vertigo,” and “Double Indemnity,” set in the updated turf of Douglas Sirk, in an archetypal suburb that’s decorated in the catchy bright colors of the Hollywood sixties.
This is like some Agatha Christie mystery crossed with “Leave it to Beaver,” Gone Girl, Leave Her to Heaven, The Trouble with Harry and an old school Billy Wilder comedy like The Apartment or Some Like It Hot.
This is like some Agatha Christie mystery crossed with “Leave it to Beaver,” Gone Girl, Leave Her to Heaven, The Trouble with Harry and an old school Billy Wilder comedy like The Apartment or Some Like It Hot.
…but don’t expect “Sunset Boulevard,” “Tropic Thunder” or “Network.”
They can be comedic (Singin’ in the Rain, Day for Night), personal (The Fabelmans, 8/12), reflective (Sullivan’s Travels, Stardust Memories), acerbic (The Player, Sunset Boulevard)…
De ‘El crepúsculo de los dioses’ a la serie ‘The Studio’…
In Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, we witness the tragic fate of silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), whose career has faded due to the introduction of sound into motion pictures. She tries to exploit a young writer for a role that can revive her career–have the opportunity to shine in the medium’s evolution–but the Hollywood ruthless machine, obsessed with young faces, which serves as commodities until they are worthless, drives her to self-destruction and severe obsession.
…the aging actor trope played out in films like my personal favs – A Star is Born and Sunset Boulevard…
…it’s the comedic male equivalent of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)…
White Chicks (2004)
Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans
influenced by Some Like It Hot (1959)
Plot Characters
The army of writers were clearly using Some Like It Hot as a blueprint, so even when Kevin is a man on the prowl, he's pretending to be someone else.
Two such subplots are lifted from Some Like It Hot.
Nods to everything from Some Like It Hot to Soul Man are here in abundance, but with a tangled and pointless plot that redefines vapidity, they’re the gag writer’s equivalent of sprinkles on a doughnut hole, an empty treat for the cinematic bulimics in the audience.
Using the "Some Like It Hot" boilerplate, an army of writers reheat gender-bending slapstick with middling results.
Essentially a macho version of the Joe E. Brown character in "Some Like It Hot," he plays a swaggering, narcissistic football star who won't take "no" for an answer from blonde Marlon.
The Wayans Brothers' latest endeavor (Keenan is at the helm and all three brothers helped pen the script) borrows judiciously from just about every film that has ever featured cross dressing leading men, from Some Like It Hot all the way down to Tootsie, not to mention a generous nod to Eddie Murphy's classic SNL "white infiltration" skit.
I have no idea why the filmmakers decided to telegraph their ending this way,* other than the obvious reference to Sunset Boulevard, which was also narrated by a dead man.
In a nod to Sunset Boulevard, Kevin Spacey narrates from the hereafter, describing in hilarious deadpan the dreary suburban rituals that serve as a "commercial for how normal we are."
As the movie’s narrator, he tells the audience right away he is a dead man describing events leading up to his demise --- a cheap dramatic trick borrowed from Sunset Boulevard.
Like William Holden in Sunset Boulevard, narrator Spacey informs us in the opening moments that he's dead, so the suspense emanates from seeing which contender will do him in.
In American Beauty, of course, Lester really is a corpse; as with Sunset Boulevard, the last weeks of a doomed protagonist’s life are narrated from the perspective of the dead man.
Most of those reactions center on Lester Burnham (Spacey), whom we meet in a "Sunset Boulevard"-like introduction in which he announces he's 42, lives on an attractive street in a good neighborhood, has a beautiful wife and daughter, and within a year he'll be dead.
There’s a scene in JACK AND JILL where Jack Sadelstein (Adam Sandler) takes his family to the movies to see “Some Like It Hot.” It’s a nod to the classic cross-dressing comedy in which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon spend much of the film dressed as women.
Chewing the scenery the way an escaped pit bull chews the mailman's carotid (which, come to think of it, actually makes this a more subtle performance than the one in "88 Minutes"), Pacino falls for the unconventional Jill, resulting in some multi-layered drag shenanigans as Sandler-as-Jack impersonates Sandler-as-Jill, a development foreshadowed by the twins' viewing of "Some Like It Hot."
When it is funny, it's because it is done in a convincing way (think Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie), or in a way where the joke is that the supporting characters don't realize how unrealistic it looks (think Some Like It Hot).
Sandler the actor has never looked this apathetic, and the paycheck collecting is so obvious that the movie can’t even manage to sustain its own world, most blisteringly exposed by the ridiculous cameo appearance by cross-dressing classic Some Like it Hot.
It’s generally funniest when a male actor plays a man disguising himself as a woman for an important plot purpose à la Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie and Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire.
This is a major reason the in-no-way-funny Tootsie and Some Like it Hot are remembered as classics.
Weaving along the booze-soaked trail that so many great film actors have navigated before him, Washington gives a career-defining performance, right up there with Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend, Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses, and Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.
As excerpted in the film's trailer, the harrowing airplane crash sequence suggests that screenwriter John Gatins has revamped the disaster genre, but this is less an update of "Airport" than of "The Lost Weekend," plus the heavy spiritual component of such past Zemeckis films as "Cast Away" (also about a plane crash) and "Contact" (with Jodie Foster as another type of sky worker, an astronomer).
Treading similar ground to Billy Wilder’s exasperatingly cautionary The Lost Weekend (1945), in which Ray Milland plays a desperate drunk finding and hiding drops wherever he can (lamp fittings, under the coach, from the bar down the road, etc) Whitaker encounters booze everywhere.
“Flight” is not acrid or cruel, like Billy Wilder’s “The Lost Weekend” (1945), in which we see the world through the eyes of Ray Milland’s character as he suffers the d.t.s.
If you like this, try: Substance abuse classics like “The Days of Wine and Roses” and “The Lost Weekend”…
The movie is very light on dialogue, and many of the words that are spoken come across as if the characters are imitating movie actors (the film opens with Laure watching " Double Indemnity "--for pointers in how to be a vixen, no doubt).
She's lying on her bed, in her panties, with her back to the camera, watching Double Indemnity on TV.
The film begins with Double Indemnity on television.
It's a scene from Billy Wilder's film noir classic "Double Indemnity," and born-to-be-bad Barbara Stanwyck is coming clean to her patsy, Fred MacMurray.
>From Romijm-Stamos' reflection on a television screen showing "Double Indemnity" to a Rashomon-like restaging of the film's climax, DePalma's "Femme Fatale" is drenched in filmic duality.
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos plays a thief named Laure â the first time we see her, sheâs watching Barbara Stanwyckâs evil seductress in the classic film noir "Double Indemnity."
It runs a little long, and it strays off the path from time to time, but one look at Jack Lemmon's office building, with its endless rows of desks and fluorescent lights (borrowed from King Vidor's superb 1928 The Crowd), will hook you.
But its numerous Oscars--for best picture, direction, script, editing, and art direction--indicate that many disagree with me (including the Coen brothers, who seem to have studied it for The Hudsucker Proxy, just as Wilder studied Vidor's silent The Crowd for this).
This shot is quoted from King Vidor's silent film “The Crowd” (1928), which is also about a faceless employee in a heartless corporation.
Nonetheless, he immediately becomes one of a thousand interchangeable desk jockeys, portrayed in row after row of desks in an overhead shot that would influence everything from The Apartment to Brazil .
Such was the film's influence that its depiction of regimented office life and the palliative power of mass laughter were later referenced by such eminent directors as Billy Wilder (in The Apartment) and Preston Sturges (in Sullivan's Travels).
The Substance (2024)
Directed by Coralie Fargeat
influenced by Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Characters Themes
The tabloid fodder and airbrush snafus which have followed Moore make her casting reminiscent of Gloria Swanson playing Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s noir classic Sunset Boulevard (1950). But Fargeat’s shifting narrative twists and turns away from more simplistic readings to highlight how women can be their own unique victimizers as Elisabeth’s inherent self-loathing solidifies her downfall.
One of Fargeat’s best symbols, worthy of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, is the opening close-up of Sparkle’s Hollywood star as it’s installed and becomes just another bit of set dressing. A woman’s storied career is reduced to a monument that a guy accidentally sprays with fast food. When Harvey is reminded that Elizabeth won an Oscar, he bristles contemptuously, “For what? King Kong?”
Nightcrawler (2014)
Directed by Dan Gilroy
influenced by Ace in the Hole (1951)
Themes Dialogue Characters
Nightcrawler is cynical, but so was Network, Sweet Smell of Success, or Ace In The Hole (this film’s very clearly spiritual mentor).
Produced by the director/writer's brother, Tony Gilroy, and edited by his other brother, John Gilroy, "Nightcrawler," as the title promises, takes us into the underbelly of big city "news" removed of all ethical and moral barricades, something like an update of Billy Wilder's classic newsman drama "Ace in the Hole."
If Sidney Lumet’s “Network” and Billy Wilder’ s “Ace in the Hole’’ had a mutant baby, it would probably look like Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler,” a pitch-black satire of local TV news in Los Angeles with an eye-popping performance by Jake Gyllenhaal as the paparazzo from Hell.
Nightcrawler is the directorial debut of screenwriter Dan Gilroy (The Bourne Legacy), and it’s framed as a movie about the media, with some of the purplish, strident dialogue of Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951) or Sidney Lumet’s Network.
As a satire on tabloid journalism, it is in the cynical tradition of Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole.
He is like a Billy Wilder hero (Kirk Douglas’s unscrupulous reporter, say, from “Ace in the Hole”), transplanted to the land of David Lynch.
The Bride! (2026)
Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal
influenced by Double Indemnity (1944)
Visuals Characters
Penélope Cruz (whose costumes, designed by Sandy Powell, nod to Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity)…
…al film noir (Pacto de sangre / Double Indemnity)…
…dresses like Barbara Stanwyck in “Double Indemnity.”
Director Jocelyn Moorhouse includes a cinematic quotation from “Sunset Boulevard,” and “The Dressmaker” does have its noir side, a brooding sense of the past and a satirical vision of the present.
That scene, and a handful of others — like one in which Tilly and Teddy take Molly to see Sunset Boulevard, and she heckles and howls at the screen — are charming and clever enough to make you wish the movie were a bit less of a mess.
The funniest and most moving scenes involve the mother-daughter relationship (Judy Davis steals the show with comic pathos and many references to Gloria Swanston and Sunset Boulevard) and in the budding romance with hunky local boy Teddy (Liam Hemsworth), whose physical charms are fully dwelt upon in a delicious scene where Tilly measures him up in his underwear to make him a suit.
At one point, Tilly, Molly and Teddy attend a local showing of “Sunset Blvd.,” and the priceless sight of Molly talking back at the screen, cutting between Davis and Gloria Swanson, feels like a subliminal moment of exchange between one inimitable Hollywood grande dame and another.
The scenes between Winslet and Davis, especially a visit to local a moviehouse to see Sunset Blvd., almost make up for it.
At one point, an acquaintance compares her to Norma Desmond, that faded silent film star from Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard .
One can imagine, for example, a version of the film in which Amanda is the villain of the piece, or at least the central character; with her magnanimous eccentricity and cavernous homestead, her relationship with the straight-laced Maud at first recalls such memorable screen characters as Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond or Performance’s Turner.
One of her few visitors venomously tells her that she is turning into Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond, but she also owes a debt to Little Edie, the headscarf-wearing, eccentric former socialite from the cult documentary Grey Gardens.
Billy Wilder tried the same trick with “Avanti!,” in 1972, but that felt like late Chekhov compared with this ferocious onslaught of obligatory good cheer.
The clearest stretch of Zemeckis satire in Contact--a survey of the crackpot carnival that's gathered around the earthlings' construction of a Vega-designed spacecraft--is on all counts the weakest, both as an unimaginative rip-off of Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole and as a belaboring of the obvious.
Based on Tracy Letts’ play and directed by William Friedkin—the same team that produced the unhinged melodrama Bug five years ago—Killer Joe updates Double Indemnity for the trailer-park set, which means bypassing clever entendre in favor of straight-up venality and sleaze.
Before you can spot the noir inspirations (“Double Indemnity,” “The Killer Inside Me,” many more), things have gone very very bad for Chris and his clan (how the plan unravels is a true work of noir genius on Letts’ part, including a “duh” twist that I didn’t even see coming).
Yet Letts and director William Friedkin (“The Exorcist”), constructing a story that sometimes recalls “Double Indemnity” or just drunk Hitchcock, indulge the sleaze without much concern for the unconvincingly self-aware people or their relationships.
Blonde (2022)
Directed by Andrew Dominik
influenced by Some Like It Hot (1959), The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Visuals Characters
Based on Joyce Carol Oats 2000 novel that clocked over 750 pages, Dominik scurries through Monroe’s life in rapid-succession, surprisingly finding enough time to hit the major touchstones: there’s her abusive marriage to Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) and then a much healthier though still doomed courtship to Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody); 2022 recreations of scenes from “Some Like It Hot” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” are thrown in; plus the aforementioned appearance of JFK which is a scene that won’t easily be shaken and practically serves as a metaphor for how poorly Monroe was treated.
First are the stylistic choices by Dominik, such as cutting in and out of black and white, impressive recreation of screens from Monroe classics such as “Some Like it Hot” and “Niagara,” and the hard Marilyn POV that pays off – kind of – when she’s with JFK and pumped up on sedatives by a doctor ever slinking around the edges of the set.
Critics will claim (justifiably) that Blonde portrays Monroe as having no agency in this victimised life story, or that the movie fails to give her credit for the comedic panache she demonstrated in hits such as Some Like It Hot (tonally, Blonde is closer to the overheated psychosis of 1952’s Don’t Bother to Knock ).
In chronological succession, Dominik explores several noted film productions ( Don’t Bother to Knock , Niagara , The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot are all attenuated through interesting moments) and significant license is taken when examining her more famous romantic, troubled relationships.
In its impressively lavish and often spot-on visual recreations of the makings of Monroe classics such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like it Hot , we are party to her well-documented increasing turmoil.
Wilder also wrote a horrible monologue for Monroe in Some like it Hot , showing her off as the typical scatter-brained blonde and to underline the point Ana de Armas (as Marilyn) runs around semi-naked for no apparent reason other than titillation.
In one sly moment, Phillips has a background reference to Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole , only this time it’s presented as a porn film and not the caustic destruction of the media that the original film is.
The look of Mark Friedberg's production design is very much pre-Giuliani New York, with porn theater marquees advertising titles like Strip Search and Ace in the Hole (not the Billy Wilder film), and the blend of authentic NYC locations with sets is seamless.
No one who remembers "Stalag 17" will have to guess at the number that's on the front of the hen house, and no veteran of "The Great Escape" will fail to recognize the contours of the farm, complete with barbed wire fencing, barking dogs, and a suspicious Mr. Tweedy checking the locks and muttering about what the chickens are up to.
The kids, for example, probably won't catch the "Stalag 17" references, or "The Great Escape" music during the opening sequence, but they'll love the slapstick antics and tangible animation of the clay heroes.
In fact, the whole structure of the film is drawn from classic World War II prison pictures such as Stalag 17 and The Great Escape; just as the Wallace and Gromit shorts drew on thriller-movie conventions, and indeed as other animated films from The Lion King to A Bug’s Life have traditional structures taken from earlier films.
Most are comparing the film to a spin on the POW pictures of the past, like "The Great Escape" and "Stalag 17," but striking me as more of a chicken-based variation on the Holocaust, "Chicken Run" is set at Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy's England-based farm, and centers on the poultry inhabitants who are constantly making attempts to escape the fenced-in, barbed-wired confinement that they have been restricted to.