So Billy Wilder Is Cool Again...
Was Billy Wilder ever un -cool? No, I doubt it. But one of the surprises of the newest edition of the Sight & Sound poll is how well-represented Wilder is. He placed 3 films in the top 100 - "Sunset Blvd." (#78), "The Apartment" (#54), and "Some Like It Hot" (#38). On the surface all of this love seems excessive. Without dissing Wilder per se, citing him 3 times is a bit silly when there's a whole slew of other legends of the art form with 1 or 0 mentions (to name a specific contemporary I personally prefer, Douglas Sirk landed only 1 film in the top 100). "The Apartment" is a film which I fully appreciate and understand the appeal of. "Some Like It Hot" is... not. And that's a bit strange, I feel, because in a lot of ways those are extremely similar movies. What Wilder does in both cases is craft a dark comedy about the relationship between sex and power - a novel, bordering on unheard of idea at the time (at least in th...