Correction, Billy Wilder: T----You, God!, for the magnificient new DVD collection that bears your name.
Though they're calling it The Billy Wilder Collection, but the new 3 DVD set issued by Paramount offers but a small sampling of the filmmaker's oeuvre: his collaborations with William Holden.
Holden, with his salty style, was the ideal fit, brawny body and cynical soul, for Wilder's subversive style of cinema. He defined himself both in life and on-screen as 'an optimistic pessimist', the perfect ideological mutt for a director who promoted traditional American film values, like true love and easy opportunism, while playfully revealing their darkest side.
The first film in the collection is the classic Sunset Boulevard (1950.) The part of down and out screenwriter Joe Gillis was slated to go to Montgomery Clift, who backed out when he feared being typecast as a suitor of older women.
The most famous image in the film, indeed the most famous image of Holden's career, is him lying face down in a swimming pool, dead at the hands of the demented Gloria Swanson. It was a tricky shot to get. Holden was shot from above and reflected back into a mirror. Still, the experience was not an easy one - not simply because the water was freezing cold but because it had to be reshot three times.
Yes Stalag 17 (53), the smash hit that is also part of this set, looks muddily authentic, but the "POW Camp" it was shot in was a ranch 40 miles west of L.A. Though an intuitive man, Wilder had yet to clue in that Holden was the definitive spokesperson for his brash brand of banter; Charlton Heston was originally cast. But Holden got the part, and the Oscar, for his performance. By all accounts, it was the easiest shoot of Wilder's career, unlike...
...the also included, Sabrina (1954), whose champagne-light tone belies its rotgut-hard history. Holden and co-star Audrey Hepburn were having an affair - much to the consternation of Humphrey Bogart, who felt that, as a result, both he and his character were being evicted from the spotlight. There was needling, drunkenness, and take after maddening take. At shoot's end, Wilder dropped to his knees, looked up at the heavens and screamed, F---You, God!
Correction, Billy: T---k you, God!, for Wilder, his made-to-order mouthpiece Holden, and this magnificent collection.
