True Best Movie: Billy Wilder
After Orson Welles’ TBM last week, let’s go for Billy Wilder now…
Usual Best Movie: The Apartment (or Sunset Boulevard or Double Indemnity or Some Like It Hot)
True Best Movie: Kiss Me Stupid
I think he’s one of the few classic Hollywood directors that I’ve ‘completed’. Meaning I’ve seen it all. Including the french one. Including the WWII gloomy documentary. Out of respect, admiration and love, I’ve taken the time to see everything he directed. I haven’t seen everything he’s scripted yet but I’m on my way…
In Dino, his biography of Dean Martin, Nick Tosches says the idea behind Kiss Me Stupid is the most sordid ever written for a comedy. He also called it frankly creepy and added that sex and cupidity were at the heart of every one of its salacious jokes (he probably didn’t use those specific words, I’ve read the book in french and my translation skills are not that high…). He’s certainly right. For a 1964 movie, that’s exactly what the movie is.
But underneath that challenge to morale that Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond wrote, behind all that jokes and embarrassing situations, there’s one thing that I deeply love about this movie. It has a sour happy ending. At the end of the movie, every single character gets what he/she wanted in the first place. And yet, you can tell that in any other movie, or in real life if there is such a thing, this can’t possibly be a happy ending.
In my opinion, that’s when Wilder is at his best. Think how badly Joe Gillis wanted a pool and eventually got it...