Billy Wilder
Directing
Born 1906-06-22
Died 2002-03-27
Sucha, Galicia, Austria-Hungary
104 credits
Read biography
Billy Wilder, born Samuel Wilder; (22 June 1906 - 27 March 2002) was an Austrian-born director, screenwriter and producer who is regarded as one of the most successful filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age. Today he is best known for his comedies, although he also directed dramas and film noirs. Wilder is one of only five people who have won Academy Awards as producer, director, and writer for the same film (The Apartment).
Wilder's career began in Germany, where he worked as a writer for comedy films from 1930. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, he emigrated to the United States, where he continued to write screenplays, including Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939) and Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire (1941). From the early 1940s, Wilder was allowed to film his own screenplays and thus made a name for himself as a director. Initially, his greatest successes included predominantly dramatic film noirs such as Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951). It was only then that he increasingly turned to comedy, including Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954) and The Seven Year Itch (1955), although he made a small detour to courtroom drama with Witness for the Prosecution (1957). With Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960) he made his most famous and probably most successful comedy films, the latter even receiving five Oscars. In One, Two, Three (1961), Wilder dealt with the conditions of the time in his former adopted country, Germany, and made the successful romantic comedy Irma la Douce (1963). In the two decades that followed, Wilder made seven more films, which were less well received by critics and audiences, although the German-French drama Fedora (1978) is viewed somewhat more favorably today by predominantly pretentious film experts. Some time later, Wilder was under discussion as director for Schindler's List, which he had wanted as the end of his long career, but ultimately had to turn it down due to his advanced age.
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Filmography
— top 60 of 104
Film '72
Les Rendez-vous du dimanche
Spécial cinéma
The Oscars
German Film Award
Witness for the Prosecution
Sunset Boulevard
Cinépanorama
The Apartment
The Kennedy Center Honors
Some Like It Hot
Sabrina
The Seven Year Itch
The American Film Institute Salute to ...
Double Indemnity
Sabrina
Sternstunde Kunst
One, Two, Three
Irma la Douce
Stalag 17
Avanti!
Fedora
The Front Page
Ninotchka
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
What Women Dream
Ace in the Hole
The Bishop's Wife
Audrey
The Fortune Cookie
Emil and the Detectives
Love in the Afternoon
Ball of Fire
Buddy Buddy
The Lost Weekend
A Foreign Affair
Kiss Me, Stupid
Un film et son époque
The Spirit of St. Louis
A Song Is Born
That's Entertainment, Part II
Directed by William Wyler
Five Graves to Cairo
Bluebeard's 8th Wife
Death Mills
The Major and the Minor
Der Teufelsreporter
Audrey Hepburn: Remembered
Bad Seed
Witness for the Prosecution
Arise, My Love
Film Lesson
Midnight
The Lottery Lover
That Certain Age
People on Sunday
The Emperor Waltz
The Legacy of 'Some Like It Hot'
La Garçonnière
Madame Wants No Children
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