Noah Isenberg on Billy Wilder
April 6th, 2012
On the tenth anniversary of Billy Wilders death, Noah Isenberg, author of Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era, has written a great review of the directors life and career for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
In the essay entitled Tales of Buffalo Billy (Wilder was named after the famous Western hero by his America-infatuated mother), Isenberg recounts Wilders life from his early days in World War I Vienna to his success as an expatriate director in Hollywood. Along the way, Wilder lived in Berlin, where he got his start in the film industry and where he moved from to come to America, sensing the impending danger of Hitler.
Isenberg offers an appreciation of the many virtues of Wilders films. He was a director, who did not take himself too seriously, and a man of uncommon wit and unforgiving sarcasm. As Isenberg points out, one of the most enduring influences on Wilders work was fellow émigré director Ernst Lubitsch. I
Tags: Billy Wilder, Noah Isenberg, Wilder
