From Sept. 10 through Nov. 13, the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens celebrates Billy Wilder's genius as a writer-director with "Some Like It Wilder: The Complete Billy Wilder." Born in Austria in 1906, Wilder worked as a journalist in Vienna and Berlin before becoming a screenwriter and emigrating to the U.S. in 1934. The retrospective will feature all 26 of the films Wilder directed, including classics as "Some Like It Hot," "Sunset Boulevard," "Double Indemnity," "The Seven Year Itch" and "The Apartment" as well as underappreciated gems like "Kiss Me, Stupid," "Avanti!" and "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes."
Schedule:
"The Major and the Minor"
Saturday, Sept. 10, 2 p.m.
1942, 100 mins. Restored 35mm print from the UCLA Film and Television Archive. With Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland. Wilder toyed with the censors in his Hollywood directorial debut, a hit comedy about the budding romance between an engaged soldier and a woman posing as a twelve-year-old girl.
"Double Indemnity"
Saturday, Sept. 10
Sunday, Sept. 11, 4 p.m.
1944, 106 mins. Restored 35mm print. With Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson. Wilder teamed up with novelist Raymond Chandler to create the essential Hollywood film noir about an insurance salesman lured to his doom by a predatory femme fatale.
"The Bad Seed" (Mauvaise Graine)
Sunday, Sept. 11, 2 p.m.
France, 1934, 76 mins. Directed by Wilder and Alexander Esway. With Danielle Darrieux, Pierre Mingland. Wilder's fast-paced directorial debut about the adventures of a young woman and a gang of car thieves, was made in France and showcases a freewheeling style that prefigures the films of the French New Wave.
"The Seven Year Itch"
Saturday, Sept. 17, and Sunday, Sept. 18, 2 p.m.
1955, 105 mins. With Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell. Restored 35mm CinemaScope print. Best known for Monroe's iconic performance as the alluring blonde who cools off above a subway grate, "The Seven Year Itch" is a subversive comedy about marriage, temptation and sexual repression.
"Kiss Me, Stupid"
Saturday, Sept. 17, 4 p.m.
1964, 126 mins. Restored, uncensored 35mm print. With Dean Martin, Kim Novak. This delightful farce about infidelity and mistaken identity features a startling self-parody by Martin as "Dino," an alcoholic playboy musician who falls for the charming wife of an aspiring songwriter.
"The Lost Weekend"
Sunday, Sept. 18, 4 p.m.
1945, 100 mins. With Ray Milland, Jane Wyman. Temperance advocates feared that Wilder's Best Picture Oscar winner about a writer's alcoholic binge would encourage drinking, while liquor industry lobbyists offered Paramount five million dollars to destroy the negative.
"Some Like It Hot"
Saturday, Sept. 24, 4:30 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 25, 4:30 p.m.
1959, 120 mins. Restored 35mm print. With Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon. Frequently called the greatest American sound comedy, Wilder's impish gender-bender follows two musicians who pose as members of an all-woman orchestra in order to elude cold-blooded gangsters.
"A Foreign Affair"
Saturday, Sept. 24, 2 p.m.
1948, 116 mins. With Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, John Lund. Wilder mined his experiences as a German émigré for this story of a love triangle between an American soldier, a Congresswoman from Iowa and a German singer who meet in postwar Berlin.
"Stalag 17"
Sunday, Sept. 25, 2 p.m.
1953, 120 mins. With William Holden, Don Taylor, Robert Strauss. This unlikely comedy, set in a German POW camp, alternates brilliantly between dark comedy and pathos as seen through the eyes of a cynical prisoner, played by Holden in an Oscar-winning performance.
"The Front Page"
Saturday, Oct. 1, 2 p.m.
1974, 105 mins. With Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Carol Burnett. Wilder boldly adapted the same play that inspired Howard Hawks's immortal "His Girl Friday" for this comedy.
"The Apartment"
Saturday, Oct. 1, 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 2, 4:30 p.m.
1960, 125 mins. Restored 35mm Dolby Digital print. With Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine. Wilder's multiple-Oscar-winning satire about sex and the workplace rat race centers on a pushover company man who lends his apartment to executives for their affairs-- until he falls for his boss's latest girlfriend.
"Irma La Douce"
Sunday, Oct. 2, 2:00 p.m.
1963, 144 mins. With Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine. The stars of "The Apartment" are reunited in Wilder's biggest commercial success: this screwball farce about the affair between a Parisian prostitute and a well-intentioned policeman.
"Love in the Afternoon"
Saturday, Oct. 8, 2 p.m.
1957, 126 mins. With Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier. In this sublime homage to Ernst Lubitsch, and Wilder's first of twelve screenwriting collaborations with I.A.L. Diamond-- a partnership which would go on to include "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment"--Cooper plays an aging playboy who hires a detective to locate a mysterious young woman.
"Sabrina"
Saturday, Oct. 8, 4:30 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 9, 4:30 p.m.
1954, 113 mins. With Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden. A charming Holden and a gruff Bogart are wealthy brothers who compete for the affections of their chauffeur's daughter in Wilder's seductive Cinderella story.
"Avanti!"
Sunday, Oct. 9, 2 p.m.
1972, 143 mins. New 35mm print. With Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills. Lemmon is an uptight businessman who travels to Italy only to fall in love with the daughter of his late father's mistress in Wilder's wistful late-career gem.
"The Emperor Waltz"
Saturday, Oct. 22, 2 p.m.
1948, 106 mins. With Bing Crosby, Joan Fontaine. Wilder's first and only musical is a lavishly produced love story about an American phonograph salesman and a bankrupt Austrian countess.
"One, Two, Three"
Saturday, Oct. 22, 4 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 23, 4 p.m.
1961, 110 mins. With James Cagney. This breathtakingly rapid-fire Cold-War satire set in West Berlin features Cagney as a Coca-Cola executive whose promotion rests on his ability to look after his boss's flirtatious daughter.
"Five Graves to Cairo"
Sunday, Oct. 23, 2 p.m.
1943, 96 mins. With Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Erich von Stroheim. At the height of World War II, Wilder updated a World War I espionage tale to create a taut thriller/propaganda film set in Egypt about a spy who must conceal his identity to obtain key Nazi secrets from General Rommel.
"Ace in the Hole (a.k.a. The Big Carnival)"
Introduced by Ed Sikov, author of "On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder"
Saturday, Oct. 29, 2 p.m.
1951, 111 mins. With Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling. In this acidic portrayal of a media circus that's as relevant as ever, Douglas plays a reporter who turns the attempted rescue of a mine cave-in victim into a national frenzy.
"The Fortune Cookie"
Saturday, Oct. 29, 4:30 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 30, 4 p.m.
1966, 125 mins. With Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau. Lemmon and Matthau's first screen pairing is a scathing satire with Matthau as an insurance salesman who concocts a scheme to cash in on his brother-in-law's injury.
"Buddy, Buddy"
Sunday, Oct. 30, 2 p.m.
1981, 96 mins. With Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau. Wilder's last film is a bitter and brilliantly constructed comedy with Lemmon as a would-be suicide who finds himself continually crossing paths with a professional assassin.
"The Spirit of St. Louis"
Saturday, Nov. 5, 1:30 p.m.
1957, 150 mins. With James Stewart. With Stewart in the lead as transatlantic pilot Charles Lindbergh, Wilder flings aside his trademark cynicism to create a widescreen love letter to America and to an American hero.
"The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes"
Saturday, Nov. 5, and Sunday, Nov. 6, 4:15 p.m.
1970, 125 mins. New 35mm print. With Robert Stephens. Re-edited from its original three-hour running time, "Private Life" is both an elegiac evocation of late Victorian England and a boldly modern take on the dark side of the "real" Sherlock Holmes.
"Witness for the Prosecution"
Sunday, Nov. 6, 1:30 p.m.
1957, 116 mins. With Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton. An unusual murder case tempts an ailing barrister (Laughton) back into action in this Hitchcockian courtroom drama based on an Agatha Christie play.
"Sunset Boulevard"
Friday, Nov. 11, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, Nov. 13, 2 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
1950, 110 mins. Directed by Billy Wilder. With William Holden, Gloria Swanson. "I am big. It's the pictures that got small!" intones Swanson as aging silent-film Norma Desmond, who ensnares Holden's young screenwriter in Wilder's magnificent valentine to Hollywood-a valentine written with a poison pen.
"Fedora"
Sunday, Nov. 13, 4:30 p.m.
1978, 113 mins. With William Holden, Hildegarde Knef, Marthe Keller. The sun-dappled yet ghostly Fedora is a swan-song variation on Sunset Boulevard, with Holden as a faltering producer bent on resurrecting his career by bringing a popular-and eternally youthful-looking-actress out of seclusion to star in his next picture.
