Word: wilderness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Agnew, the wilder youngsters are a "breed of losers," to whom he juxtaposed "our heroes" returning from Viet Nam "without limbs or eyes, with scars they shall carry the rest of their lives." The burden of the message was clear: right-thinking Americans must choose between those who win the red badge of courage and those who wave the red flag of dishonor. Without question, the more extreme antiwar partisans have earned that kind of comparison. The real issue, however, is not the courage of those who fight the war but whether their courage is being expended wisely...
Another marked result of the progression of Wilder's nastiness from Fortune is the clear phase-out of love and romance as important elements in the director's world view. In the latter, most recent picture, Wilder once and for all stops paying his rather vulgar homage to Ernst Lubitsch's lyricism and reduces love to a mere pawn in the chess game of human greed. Those who were fooled into thinking Wilder had some subconscious joie de vivre underneath his cynicism by his earlier pictures can't possibly believe that after The Fortune Cookie , where he shows...
...three later pictures, The Apartment (1960), Irma La Douce (1963), and The Fortune Cookie (1966), Wilder again provides nice sympathetic victims (Jack Lemmon in the first two, Ron Rich in the latter). But, perhaps to counteract this, he makes the victimizers increasingly grotesque. Walter Matthau's conniving lawyer Whiplash Willie in the recent Fortune Cookie is Wilder's most terrifying caricature of humanity. Matthau, constantly shifting his eyes trying to locate the quickest buck, fails to say one generous thing during the entire picture. The cruelties of this character, as you might expect, contrast sharply with the mild evils...
...Welles.) Of those the one you cannot miss, whether you've already seen it or not, is Some Like It Hot. This comedy which revolves around two third-rate musicians who become members of an all-girl band to escape some murderous Chicago gangsters, is in every way Wilder's masterpiece. The nastiness is gentle but omnipresent: the evocation of the twenties' setting is beautifully detailed; the screenplay by Wilder and long-time collaborator I.A.L. Diamond is relentlessly hilarious. In addition, the amazing performances of Monroe and Curtis show Wilder's often underrated ability with actors...
Marilyn Monroe's performance in Some Like It Hot is particularly worth a revisit, for she is the ultimate Wilder victim. During the film she is constantly being manipulated and that upon. While her role takes on a special kind of poignance in the light of the disastrous end of her analogous personal life, the part is also important for showing Wilder's ultimate sympathy for the genuine and vulnerable individuals preyed scheming mass...