Category: Billy Wilder

THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (1942)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder
CAST: Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland, Rita Johnson, Robert Benchley
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100% Fresh

PLOT: A frustrated city woman disguises herself as a 12-year-old girl to get a cheaper train ticket, but her plan backfires when she winds up befriending a very adult Major on the train.  Risqué hilarity ensues.


Billy Wilder’s The Major and the Minor, contains big laughs, true love, and comic/cosmic misunderstandings – in other words, it’s a classic farce from the fledgling career of one of Hollywood’s true legends.  However, there are certain plot elements that I suspect would make this movie virtually unfilmable today, at least not without tinkering with the structure here and there.  I think the plot points in question will be glaringly apparent to any reasonable viewer, so if I acknowledge them with only the occasional eye roll in my review, I hope readers will forgive me.  It is not my intention to prepare a compare/contrast treatise on prevailing attitudes towards women during the 1940s versus today.  You don’t need me to tell you that the very concept of an adult male bunk-bedding with a strange 12-year-old girl he just met (among other plot devices) raised my eyebrows.  It is firmly a product of its more innocent time. But the whole endeavor is so breezy and carefree that I think it would be a shame to give this film a pass without hearing more about it.  So, here goes.

Ginger Rogers plays the lead, Susan Applegate.  Having only seen Rogers in the occasional dance film with Fred Astaire, I was bowled over by how naturally comic she is.  Based on this movie alone, she could have given Lucille Ball or Rosalind Russell a run for their money.  Anyway, Susan Applegate is fed up with living in NYC.  Tired of being besieged by lechers at every turn, she quits her job – her 25th in a year! – and tries to buy a train ticket back home to Iowa.  When she finds herself short on cash, she dresses up as a 12-year-old girl to get a ticket at half price.  Her real troubles begin when the train gets underway, as the conductors are not movie-dumb enough to fall for her act.

She winds up hiding in the compartment belonging to Major Philip Kirby (Ray Milland in a mildly uncommon comic role).  Because he has a bum right eye, he falls for Susan’s story (she calls herself Su-Su to complete the façade) and takes it upon himself to be her impromptu guardian.  Through an unfortunate series of events – a blocked train track, the unexpected arrival of Kirby’s beautiful fiancé, Pamela, and some ill-timed misunderstandings – “Su-Su” finds herself being whisked away to a military school with Major Kirby promising to get her on the next available train back to Iowa.  Trust me, it all makes sense, I’m leaving a lot of details out, otherwise we’d be here all night.

The rest of the film involves Su-Su’s misadventures on the military school campus, surrounded by three hundred school-age boys who are inexplicably attracted to this girl who somehow has the presence of an adult woman.  They like her, but they’re not quite sure why.  The same phenomenon begins to afflict the Major himself, which makes him extremely uncomfortable (understandably so), which makes things more complicated for Susan because SHE’S beginning to fall in love with HIM, and meanwhile Kirby’s future sister-in-law sees right through Susan’s disguise and wants Susan to help her break up the impending marriage, and 20 different cadets show up to escort Su-Su to the school dance, and so on and so on and so on.

This was only Wilder’s second film, but already we can see ideas and situations that he would return to in some of his future films.  The woman disguising herself as a girl is a funhouse-mirror version of the men disguising themselves as women in Some Like It Hot.  We get the reverse situation, a girl becoming a woman, in Sabrina.  The idea of how tough it is to live in the big bad city is echoed in The Apartment.  And if you really squint, you might even see an early forerunner of Norma Desmond in Major Kirby’s beautiful but devious and controlling fiancé…it’s a stretch, but I think it’s valid.

The performance by Ginger Rogers in this movie was a revelation to me.  I had absolutely no idea she could play this kind of character.  She plays everything so believably, whether she’s Susan or “Su-Su.”  In scenes where she’s near Major Kirby, her longing for him is palpable, but her outward reactions are perfectly subtle: a slight pause before a reply, a constant gaze, only occasionally a little mugging when he’s not looking at her, and always making sure to keep her brassy voice in a higher register to sound more girly.  I learn from IMDb that she was anxious to play this role because she was able to draw from her own experiences: as a younger woman, when she toured vaudeville halls with her mother, she would often make herself appear younger to get cheaper train tickets.  Who knew?

Ray Milland had a trickier time of it in this movie.  He manages to pull it off, but imagine the minefields he had to navigate.  He plays a grown man who is the self-appointed guardian of a 12-year-old girl who, by his own admission at one point, looks like a full-grown woman in the right light.  There’s a scene where he feels compelled to at least try to explain the facts of life to Su-Su so she’ll understand why all the cadets are attracted to her like a moth to a light bulb.  (In one of the less-enlightened moments of the film, he advises her: “Maybe if you made yourself a little less attractive…”  HUGE eye-roll.)  Now, we as audience members know there’s really no problem with his mild flirtations because, of course, Su-Su is really Susan.  But HE doesn’t know that.  Wilder has the good sense to pull everything back from the brink before anything unsavory occurs.  It’s one of the best high-wire acts I can think of in a comedy.

(I’m itching to relate all the hilarious Wilder-esque bits peppered throughout the movie, like finding the occasional burnt end in a delicious brisket, but I am anxious to avoid spoilers.  There’s the tap dance, the Veronica Lake look-alikes, “the Maginot Line”, the cigarette on the train…oh, too many to list.  They’re wonderful.)

As with the best farces, a crisis occurs and it seems as if all is lost, but fear not.  Wilder is not known as a genius for nothing.  If you think this romantic comedy from the early forties is not going to have a happy ending, you need to see more movies.  The Major and the Minor is a delight from start to finish.  And if the last line doesn’t quite come up to the standards of “Well, nobody’s perfect!”…well, I mean, what does?

[Note: It’s also interesting to know that The Major and the Minor was filmed and released in 1942, it’s set very specifically in May of 1941, before Pearl Harbor.  Here and there are in the movie are references to Kirby’s desire to be stationed abroad in case war breaks out.  There’s a moment when he confesses that no woman would want to marry a military man stationed overseas, only getting a letter from him once every two weeks.  The reply he gets is very direct, clearly indicating where Wilder stood on the matter: “I think you underestimate us, Mr. Kirby.  Perhaps all a woman wants is to be a photograph a soldier tacks above his bunk or a stupid lock of hair in the back of his watch.”  Sexist?  Or patriotic?  Discuss.]

THE LOST WEEKEND (1945)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder
CAST: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 97% Certified Fresh

PLOT: The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four-day drinking bout.


I don’t drink.  Like, at all.  I’ve never taken drugs, and I’ve never smoked a cigarette.  Luckily, I have never been gripped in the throes of a crippling addiction, unless collecting movies counts as an addiction, in which case I plead the fifth.  I say this, not to brag, but because a lot of my first impressions of Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend are tinted by the fact that I don’t know the first thing about being drunk or what it means to suffer from an addiction so crippling that it would force me to hang a liquor bottle outside my window to hide it from my brother.

As it happens, Don Birnam (Ray Milland) DOES suffer from this kind of mid-to-late-stage alcoholism.  We first meet Don as he and his brother, Wick (Phillip Terry), are packing for a long weekend to get away from everything and everyone, including alcohol.  Don is a would-be author who needs a break from…something.  (Whatever he went through is never specified, only hinted at: “It’ll be good for you, Don, after what you’ve been through.”)  Don’s plan to surreptitiously pack the hidden bottle of liquor falls through after the arrival of his almost unbelievably good-hearted girlfriend, Helen (Jane Wyman).  No matter.  He still has a plan, which he confides to the long-suffering but increasingly annoyed bartender, Nat (Howard Da Silva).  He’s bought two bottles of rye.  He’ll hide one badly in his own suitcase and another in his brother’s suitcase.  When Wick discovers the badly hidden bottle in Don’s suitcase, he’ll chew Don out, Don will act suitably contrite, and Wick won’t think about searching his OWN suitcase for a second bottle.  What could go wrong?

During these first few scenes, when Don lies and lies and drinks shot after shot in a bar and winds up missing the train for his getaway weekend, I found it difficult to sympathize with him.  Oh, he’s clever and loquacious when he’s either about to drink or while he’s drinking.  He has enough knowledge to quote Shakespeare at the right times and wittily proposes to Nat the bartender: “I wish I could take you along, Nat.  You and all that goes with you.”  Under the right circumstances, Don is a fun guy, always good for a laugh…until his seventh or eight or ninth shot of bourbon.  Then the other Don shows up, Don the drunk, Don the liar, the Don who gets so desperate for cash that he’ll walk 70 or 80 New York City blocks trying to find an open pawn shop so he can hock his typewriter for drinking money.

For some reason, it was harder for me to empathize with Don Birnam than it was to empathize with any of the main characters in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000).  In that film, not a single leading character escapes the ravages of addiction, and yet even as they made their mistakes, I empathized with them and grieved when their bad decisions made things worse and worse.  With Don Birnam, however, every bad decision he made just made me like him less and less.  I remember thinking at one point, “He’s brought this all on himself, he deserves what he gets.”  Not a very Christian attitude, but I’m not gonna lie about it: that’s what I felt.

And his girlfriend, Helen…wow.  It’s almost like she needs as much of an intervention as he does.  She loves Don so unconditionally it’s almost unbelievable.  What’s the attraction?  Perhaps it’s symptomatic of the era in which The Lost Weekend was made.  She discovers Don’s alcoholism late in their 3-year dating relationship.  (What did people think in 1945 of someone who dates a man for 3 years?)  Instead of breaking up with him or giving him ultimatums, she devotes herself to “fixing” Don.  Not precisely the course of action I would recommend myself in today’s world, but there you have it.

Director Billy Wilder presents this first half of the movie in a very uninflected tone with little-to-no comic relief.  This flat tone becomes very effective at simply presenting the information without directly commenting on it one way or the other.  There are moments up to this point where the movie seems to side with Don (his struggle to find a bottle whose hiding place he’s forgotten is particularly pathetic), but it’s still not really passing judgment or giving him a pass.

And then…the turning point.  Don accidentally falls down a flight of stairs and knocks himself out after finagling some drinking money out of a young lady he flirts with at his favorite dive.  When he wakes up, he’s lying in a bed in the Alcoholic Ward of the local hospital, face to face with one of the strangest characters I’ve ever met in a Billy Wilder movie, and that’s saying something.  He’s a nurse.  “Name of Nolan.  They call me Bim.  You…can call me Bim.”  The closest I can get to describing Bim’s weirdness is to imagine an evil Waylon Smithers from The Simpsons as a male nurse.  On quaaludes.  To Don’s slowly increasing discomfort, Bim lovingly describes what Don is in for during his stay on the Alcoholic Ward, giving the inside scoop on the various repeat offenders and what to expect during his D.T.’s: “You know that stuff about pink elephants?  That’s the bunk.  It’s little animals.  Little tiny turkeys in straw hats.  Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes.”  This Bim…he has NO bedside manner, man.  “Prohibition…that’s what started most of these guys off.  Whoopee!”  (Nice little social commentary there…classic Wilder.)

Don manages to find his way home once again, having not had a drink for almost a day-and-a-half, if my memory is correct.  And it’s at this point that the movie, Billy Wilder, and Ray Milland finally got me in Don Birnam’s corner.

SPOILER ALERT, SPOILERS COMING.

Don finally has a bout of the D.T.’s.  It’s not turkeys or monkeys or elephants, though…it’s a rat.  A single rat chewing its way out of the wall in front of him.  Then, out of nowhere…a bat finds its way into the apartment and flutters around the room.  Don is understandably distressed.  But then the capper: the bat swoops down to where the mouse’s head is poking through the hole, there is a terrible squealing sound, the bat sort of trembles and scuffles…and a stream of thick blood starts to dribble out of the hole where the bat is presumably chewing the rat’s head off or something.

To say I was surprised is an understatement.  Don starts screaming his head off…and at long last I finally empathized with Don’s situation, and I no longer wanted him to wind up penniless and/or alone and/or dead.  I wanted the movie to find a way to fix him, like Helen tries desperately to do through the entire picture.  From then on, I was on his side, or Helen’s side, or whoever’s side, it didn’t matter, as long as he figured out a way to get out from under the disease that was slowly killing him.

I would not dream of revealing exactly how the movie ends.  It might go the way of Leaving Las Vegas (1996).  Or it might go the way of the vastly underseen Duane Hopwood (2005), featuring David Schwimmer as an alcoholic father on a path of self-destruction, but who manages to turn things around.  (Sorry if I spoiled that for you, but I’m betting it’s not a movie most people will want to seek out.)  I will say that it’s the ending of The Lost Weekend that really showcases the era in which it was made more than anything else.  But it could just as easily have gone the other way and still been just as successful.

The Lost Weekend cleaned up at the 1945 Oscars, winning awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay (it was based on a novel).  At the time, it was the most unglamorous movie ever made about alcoholism.  Up to that point, drinking in movies rarely if ever led to hangovers and the D.T.’s and spending the night in the Alcoholic Ward.  It certainly belongs to be mentioned with Wilder’s greatest films.  But you’re gonna wanna watch something a little lighter afterwards.  Stalag 17, maybe.  Or Some Like It Hot.  A laughter chaser.

THE LOST WEEKEND

By Marc S. Sanders

Ever wonder why I write so many reviews?  It’s because I yearn to be a successful playwright/screenwriter.  I’ve directed three original plays that I’ve written over the years.  I will be directing a fourth for the holiday season later this year.  Had a few short plays I wrote performed locally as well.  Still, I suffer from a terrible ordeal that often grinds me into bouts of depression and internal rage.  Writer’s block! 

My father always told me that he stayed away from gambling and casinos. He said it was because he could have an addictive personality and he was not confident he could stop if he started.  I know what he means.  I have an addiction.  One that’s not commonly recognized, but I obsess over something every single day. Without fail, every damn day.  It’s my weakness.  Sorry.  I must keep that to myself, though.  Yet my pursuit of what preoccupies my mind taxes on my motivations to write and stretch the imagination needed for churning out one script after another.  So, a remedy is to write about movies that speak to me in lieu of my next great play. 

Billy Wilder’s Oscar winning drama The Lost Weekend demonstrates a writer’s inability to exercise his talent when an endless need for alcohol consumes his every waking moment.  Ray Milland delivers an Oscar winning performance as Don Birnam, an alcoholic wannabe writer of the worst kind.  When Wilder’s film opens, Don seems healthy and spry.  He’s clean shaven, well dressed, and ready to pack a bag for a weekend getaway that his brother Wick (Phillip Terry) has arranged for him along with Don’s girlfriend Helen St. James (Jane Wyman).  Wick implies to Don that this trip is just what his brother needs after what he’s recently been through, and he’ll have his typewriter with him to write in calming solitude.  Eventually we get an idea of what Wick has been referring to as Don attempts to sneak a bottle of rye that is strung outside the window of his New York apartment.  Wick catches Don in the act, pours the bottle down the drain and assures him that he won’t find another drop of liquor anywhere.  He doesn’t even have money to go to the corner bar.  So, Wick and Helen leave Don alone for a few hours before it’s time to depart. Don gets ahold of some cash though, and thus begins a spiral into a drunken binge over a four-day weekend.

I read that when this film was released, test audiences laughed at it.  I guess in 1945 people were not attuned or prepared to witness an account of a very real disease like alcoholism.  I’m not certain it was even diagnosed as a disease at that time.  Surely, the addiction was an ailment though, and Billy Wilder uses some effective cinematic devices to demonstrate the journey into madness and desperation for even just a tiny shot glass of gin or rye. 

A repetitive device is to show a tormented performance from Milland within the shadow of bars or fences.  He’s trapped in his own need for swill.  A telling moment occurs when Don is desperately trying to pawn off his typewriter just for some money to buy more alcohol.  Every store in the city is gated and closed on this particular Saturday though.  It’s the Jewish holiday of atonement for past sins, Yom Kippur.  I found that little detail to be interesting.  Surely, it’s a sin to harm yourself whether by alcohol or suicide, for example, and the holiday is a time for speaking to your inner self and Hashem (G-d) for your past transgressions.  Yet, that is no matter to Don.  He’s not ready or wanting to climb out of his dark hole.

Inanimate objects or props are also given much focus.  Early on, Don is seen at the local bar and Billy Wilder brings an inventive visual to explain just how much this character has consumed in under two hours.  The camera focuses on the wet rings on the bar top left by Don’s shot glass.  First there are two rings, then four and soon, fifteen.  Wilder also zooms his lens into the very bottom of the small glass filled with liquor to show how much the audience will drown in Don’s despair over the course of the film.

Other props also work towards Don’s paranoia such as a ceiling lamp bearing the shadow of a hidden bottle.  Milk bottles left in front of his apartment are not collected from one day to the next showing the passage of time for this weekend, and how even the most basic chore is dismissed so Don can extend his stupor.  A lady’s unguarded purse offers temptation.  A tossed lamp shade seems to glare at Don like a hole that he’s in, as he gets weaker and weaker. 

A magnificent scene, one that I can envision a skilled director doing today with quick cuts on digital film, occurs as Don recalls sitting in a crowded opera house watching the toasting scene of La Triviata; one of the most recognizable operas of all time.  Don is one of many in the audience, and yet he’s the only one alone with the production’s props of various drinking glasses and champagne bottles being used on stage that are mere inches away.  Very quickly into the scene, Billy Wilder skillfully draws focus from the opera singers and diverts towards the immense amount of liquor adorning the stage and the cast with quick cuts of Don salivating and perspiring alone in a chair of a crowded theater.  Everyone else is watching the performance.  Don is gazing at the alcohol.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Martin Scorsese had much admiration for such a sequence.

Phillip Terry is very good in his performance.  I’m surprised he’s not promoted as much as the other two stars of the picture.  Wick cares for his brother, but he’s ready to give up on him after six years of this ordeal, with one more transgression played out. He’s exhausted from lying to cover for Don’s weakness.  He represents the outsider of the dilemma who’s been affected by someone else’s ailment. Jane Wyman as Helen serves a nice purpose as well.  The one last hope for Don.  She’s the only one left who holds on to the faith that she can pull Don out of this nightmare.  Wilder presents these characters as side effects in the Oscar winning script written by him and Charles Brackett. 

Another haunting, but effective dimension comes when Don finds himself in the alcoholics’ ward at Bellevue Hospital, shot on location, and the first film to ever do so.  With an eerie use of a theremin in the soundtrack from Miklós Rózsa, Don is surrounded by dark shadows and tormented victims suffering from drying out just like him.  A nurse explains that he still has the DTs to experience like envisioning being surrounded by horrifying images like bugs crawling on him or something comparatively worse.  I recall from childhood seeing this symptom used on an episode of M*A*S*H.  Wilder invents his own kind of imagery and it’s pretty shocking in its grotesqueness.

I ask for forgiveness when I say that The Lost Weekend seems a little melodramatic. Maybe that’s because movies have built themselves into much more graphic and honest depictions of alcoholism since 1945.  The ending seems to welcome a stringy violin to accompany Ray Milland’s final scene with Jane Wyman.  However, I’m completely impressed with how pioneering this movie must have been for its time.  Billy Wilder didn’t shy away from the dramatic side of drinking. 

The Lost Weekend is certainly an effective and important piece on the study of alcoholism.  I’d recommend it as a visual reference to what can happen to the one who suffers, as well as those around him, including the bartender who deals with the regulars he easily knows by name.  While it’s certainly a movie of its time, the message remains the same.  Though I’m no expert on the effects of alcohol, I’ve seen enough friends who deal with the problem to know that the message in Wilder’s film still rings true.  An addiction to drink will dominate a life.

I always say that movies offer another valuable avenue to learn from.  There’s much to learn from The Lost Weekend.

THE FORTUNE COOKIE (1966)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ron Rich, Judi West
My Rating: 5/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 96%

PLOT: A crooked lawyer persuades his brother-in-law to feign a serious injury.


Billy Wilder’s The Fortune Cookie reminds me of what it might be like to watch Jerry Lee Lewis play “Chopsticks.”  You sense it’s being done as well as it possibly can be done, but you wonder why it’s being done at all.  C’mon, man, let’s hear “Great Balls of Fire!”

Notable for being the first of twelve films Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau starred in together, The Fortune Cookie tells the story of a hapless TV cameraman, Harry Hinkle (Lemmon), who is covering a Cleveland Browns football game from the sidelines.  A burly punt returner accidentally runs him over during a play and knocks Harry out cold.  While he recuperates in a hospital bed, his thoroughly unscrupulous brother-in-lawyer, Willie (Matthau), concocts a very modern-sounding plan: Harry will fake serious injuries in the hospital so Willie can work his magic with the insurance company and get a big payout.  Harry demurs at first but is enticed to go along when he finds out his ex-wife, for whom he still carries a torch, is very interested in assisting with his recuperation from his “serious” injuries.

Meanwhile, the poor football player who knocked him down, Luther (Ron Rich), is wracked with guilt over the damage he thinks he’s caused.  He pitches in to buy Harry a motorized wheelchair and offers to assist with his rehab back at home.  This gnaws at Harry’s conscience.  Things don’t get any better when he’s brought a lunch of Chinese food at the hospital, and the fortune inside his fortune cookie bears a grim warning…

There’s nothing wrong with The Fortune Cookie that a rewrite or some editing couldn’t have fixed.  That might be considered sacrilege, considering the script was penned by Wilder himself and his legendary writing partner, I.A.L. Diamond, but in watching the film, I was struck by how many scenes involved a semi-static camera just watching people talk, and talk, and talk.  I don’t mind a lot of dialogue in a scene when the characters have something to say, or when the story is being driven forward.  But here, we usually get a five-minute scene when a two-minute scene could have done the job just fine.

Take one scene in particular that almost had me literally nodding off, when Harry’s ex-wife, Sandy (Judi West), has returned home to help with Harry’s rehab.  Harry is still feeling guilty about the sham he’s perpetrating, but he’s so besotted with Sandy that he’s willing to keep up the pretense just to keep her around.  They catch up a little, blah blah blah, he says he never threw away his ring, blah blah blah, she dumps out her purse looking for her ring, blah blah blah, he puts on a little music, he’s happy, she’s happy, and <snoorrrrrrre.>

I could list any number of films, including some of Wilder’s other films, where other characters talked for even longer than Harry and Sandy, but they were so much more interesting!  What happened here?  What went wrong?  Even in the scenes where Willie, the huckster, is rattling off his grand plans and needling the insurance company attorneys, Matthau just comes off as a two-bit hack that no sane person would pay any attention to.

I’m not saying he must be likable, that dreaded word.  There are movies that are very, very good and that contain nothing BUT unlikable characters. (Anyone wanna watch The Godfather?) But here, something is off with the tone.  When I wasn’t bored, I was inflamed with distaste for what Harry was being forced to do, both by Willie and by his own hormones.

The movie does have one saving grace.  The comeuppance, when it, er, comes up, is brought about with the kind of shock comedy scene that Mel Brooks might have loved.  I don’t want to spoil it, but it features the kind of language that would have been right at home in Blazing Saddles.  When I got over the shock of what I had just heard, I sat back in admiration and smiled, and thought to myself, a little ruefully, “Now what would this movie have been like if it had been this nervy all the way through, instead of just here at the end?”

But The Fortune Cookie even mucks up the ending with an “epilogue” scene that’s so gratuitously manipulative, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been tacked on by the studio who demanded a happy ending, or at least a happier ending.  If the movie had earned it, I’d have been on board, but everything that came before was so humdrum that it felt super-cheesy.

Billy Wilder’s résumé reads like the Pixar catalog: one hit after the other with only a couple of rare misses.  Double Indemnity.  The Lost Weekend.  Sunset Boulevard.  Ace in the Hole.  Stalag 17.  Sabrina.  Witness for the Prosecution.  Some Like It Hot.  The Apartment.  Even One, Two, Three, which may not exactly be his finest moment, but at least it had James Cagney to liven things up.  I ask again: what happened here?  Where is the dynamite chemistry between Lemmon and Matthau that would become legendary in later films?  Where is the zaniness of Some Like It Hot or the earned pathos of The Apartment or the edginess of Ace in the Hole and Stalag 17?

According to the trivia section on IMDb, the opening football game sequences were filmed during an actual Vikings-Browns football game, which the Browns lost, at home, 27-17.  After watching this movie, I felt like those Cleveland fans must have felt: always glad to see my boys play, but man, it would have been WAY cooler if they had won.

SUNSET BLVD

By Marc S. Sanders

One of Billy Wilder’s most famous films is Sunset Blvd. A film that’s always escaped me despite seeing two productions of the stage musical, most recently on Broadway with Glenn Close as Norma Desmond. No matter how it is interpreted, it is a haunting story narrated from the grave of young screenwriter, Joe Gillis. In the 1950 film, Joe is played by William Holden. Norma is played by Gloria Swanson, with Erich von Stroheim as her butler Max.

Joe is a down on his luck screenwriter trying to avoid his car being repossessed. Events lead him toward hiding the car in the garage of a mysterious mansion belonging to one time silent film star, Norma Desmond, now obsolete during the age of talkies. She was big at one time. Though Norma insists she is big. “…it’s the pictures that got small.”

Joe is caught in Norma’s web, feeling obligated to write her story while she provides him with all the money and clothes that she can, to keep him close with no opportunity to escape. Even a sneak away to a New Years Eve party leaves Joe feeling compelled to return to Norma where Max has set up living quarters for him.

Holden’s voiceover narration is wry and descriptive like a novelist’s words being emoted vocally. Feelings are shared allegorically. It lightens the mood of Wilder’s film which is a quite dark and strangely sad depiction of a one time film star who has aged amid her isolation and is all but forgotten among the Hollywood elite. Even Cecil B DeMille (playing himself) doesn’t carry much interest in Norma anymore. It’s especially quite telling later in the film when she unexpectedly shows up on the Paramount lot. She had been called upon, but not necessarily for a new role, rather something else entirely.

Swanson is unforgettable as Norma; one of the greatest and most memorable film characters to ever grace the screen and the part is drawn out so well within the Oscar winning script from Wilder and his long time collaborator Charles Brackett. Swanson gives honesty to Norma’s madness; look at the famous final stair descending scene. It doesn’t get much better or more impactful than that. Don’t believe me? Go watch Carol Burnett spoof that moment. It’s one of the greatest cinematic moments ever placed on celluloid.

I digress.

Yet, I get Norma’s refusal to accept the changes to Hollywood films. She tells the modern screenwriter, Joe, that back then they had FACES, not dialogue. I get it Norma. I truly get it.

Joe is challenged to maintain his own present state of mind. He’s a writer with ideas like a baseball picture. Only he needs a producer to invest. Sure the money comes to him easy from Norma but it’s conditioned under her rules and unwavering possessiveness. It’s a shame when Joe only gets an opportunity at something following meeting Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson), a pretty, up and coming writer herself, and engaged to his best friend. Joe is stuck. He has to be covert in sneaking away to write with Betty unbeknownst to Norma. Worse, he has to resist the urge to get intimate with Betty as well. Joe has multiple problems to contend with here all stemming from being stuck in someone else’s past that offers no stimulation sexually or creatively. Wilder and Brackett pen a perfect character conundrum. Joe has no escape.

It may sound silly but I couldn’t help but think of Paris Hilton while watching Sunset Blvd. I’ve never followed the heiress’ comings and goings. However, I recall a time in the early 2000s when Hilton would be all over reality TV. She was in every magazine and on every gossip headline. Not anymore. Reality TV, like network TV, is losing its flame quickly to the newest medium of streaming services. Hilton is now 15 years older. (Desmond is only 50 in the film, when she’s all but washed up.) Could Paris be wondering what’s become of her starlight? Is Paris waiting for the “Joe” who she’ll insist on being her boy toy? My mind actually drifted towards this subject!!!!

If anything, it tells me that Sunset Blvd still holds relevance. Mediums change and those that were once prominent sadly become obsolete. Either we change with the times, or we opt to be abandoned by an ever developing future.

Sunset Blvd should be seen simply as a reminder that our history never stays stagnant. However, a danger lies in refusing to move on or in Norma’s case losing the opportunities to move on. We might all be ready for our close up Mr. DeMille, but doesn’t that mean someone needs to be holding the camera?

THE APARTMENT

By Marc S. Sanders

You ever come across a film that begins as sweet screwball, and then segues into serious sensitivity?  If you have, then maybe you have seen Billy Wilder’s classic film The Apartment.  Beyond the film being an Oscar Best Picture winner, Wilder’s film demonstrates that there is a screwball mentality in all of us, but we also know when the party must end.

Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, one of over 31,000 people who works for Consolidated Life in a Manhattan high rise.  He’s a likable fellow who happily does his work with a typewriter amid a sea of other desk jockeys on a floor that seems to expand beyond the architectural limits of the building.  When his eight hour day comes to a close, he’s normally the last one to leave for home because it is likely his apartment located outside of Central Park is occupied with one of the company big wigs that liberally uses his pad to entertain a lady friend beside their respective wives.  Baxter has been relegated to a door mat who holds out hope that any one of these ranking supervisors may one day promote him to an executive position with a private office and a view of the city.  Promise finally opens up when the President of the company, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), summons Baxter to his office to commend him on the positive feedback from the other men in the office and to request some time with the apartment himself.  Sheldrake would like to have some time away from his wife and children to host Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the building’s elevator operator.  If Baxter had the availability to his own apartment and a little bit of bravery, he may have asked Fran for an evening out together on another occcasion.

The Apartment begins almost like a farce or sitcom as the revolving door of Baxter’s apartment welcomes one new executive after another.  You may be expecting confusion and misunderstandings that’ll lead to outrageous laughter.  However, poor Baxter is the victim to all of this coming and going by even surrendering his home to Joe Dobisch (Ray Walston) who calls unexpectedly at eleven o’clock at night requesting the place for an hour.  Baxter takes shelter on a park bench in the December cold. The humor of this arrangement is not so funny any longer.  After Sheldrake’s regard for Fran is more apparent, then it’s more clear that these characters are not spawned from the happy home life scenarios of 1950’s television programming.  Sheldrake is only charming to an adorably likable woman like Fran for as long as he cares.  Some might say he’s not terribly cold hearted though.  After all, though he forgets to shop for a Christmas gift for Fran, he offers her a hundred dollar bill from his wallet instead.  Up until this midway point, Shirley Maclaine has been so good at maintaining a cheerful disposition that suddenly her self worth seems a whole lot less than a hundred dollars following Sheldrake’s latest disregard.  Surprisingly, Fran overdoses on a bottle of sleeping pills.  When Baxter discovers her in his bed, he races to revive her with the aid of a doctor neighbor.  Baxter does not give up on helping Sheldrake make this right, while tending to Fran’s recovery on Christmas Eve.  Yet for Sheldrake, this is all an inconvenience and now without even looking for a better way to live, Baxter finds an opportunity to allow his own personal strength to come through against the executives at the office, as well as Mr. Sheldrake, and most importantly with the woman he cares for, Fran.

Jack Lemmon has a energetic method to his performance, as I find he does with most of the roles in his career.  He plays men who never break to sit and breathe.  They are always on the go.  They almost never sleep.  So, his fast paced delivery and flirtation with Shirley MacLaine let Wilder’s film perform at a fast pace.  The range of both Lemmon and MacLaine really work for The Apartment, because they can be naturally funny and intensely serious when the moment calls for it.  Lemmon can sell me as a guy who will use a tennis racket to strain his spaghetti while at the same time standing up for his convictions when life can not allow humor for a moment.  MacLaine can portray a woman with a menial job like an elevator operator and yet still be considered valued and recognized as genuinely hurt when disregarded.  For Fred MacMurray, I think it’s fair to say he actually makes for an effective villain, someone you love to hate, with his portrayal here.  I knew of MacMurray with his television program My Three Sons before I ever saw The Apartment.  What a departure the two roles are.  Here, he is a charming fellow on the outside with a hollow mentality inside.  He’s a man who only cares for his immediate needs.  He can not be inconvenienced with someone else’s feelings whether it is Baxter’s inconvenience or Fran’s despair.  Nothing else matters.  No one else matters.

The film may be called The Apartment, but office politics seems more at play here. Billy Wilder’s film is surprising but it’s honest too.  I doubt many of us would ever surrender our own home night after night to the more powerful and influential.  However, many of us, with a drive to climb a corporate ladder likely have compromised our ideals to get to a higher plateau at one time or another.  Personally, I have to shamefully admit that I have committed such an act.  The Apartment questions when enough is enough.  What’s special about Wilder’s film is that C.C. Baxter must discover if he lives to work or works to live.