Word: wilderness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Wilder is by definition of course, the director of some of the most critically and financially successful movies to come out of Hollywood in the past twenty years. But what does he want from us? That's the tricky question, and one which must be asked, since Wilder's movies are not only among Hollywood's most successful but among its sickest as well...
...more of Wilder's stuff you see, the more you will be amazed by the man. He has done everything: trial drama ( Witness for the Prosecution ). Hollywood gothic ( Sunset Boulevard ). farce ( Some Like It Hot ), upper-crust romance ( Sabrina ). alcoholic melodrama ( The Lost Weekend ). He has done everything, and yet, he always wants the same thing from his audience-total distrust. Cynicism of the nastiest sort creeps into all of his work. While that doesn't exactly make his films pleasant, it certainly makes them unique in the history of American cinema...
...Wilder just doesn't believe in anything or anybody. His movies are full of dishonest people, thieves and charlatans, cheats and frauds, phonies and liars of all types. In film after film, nobody ever actually is what he seems...
Unlike the characters, the audience is let in on the mistaken identity aspects of the plot from the beginning-and that's the point. Wilder wants us to share with him his contemptuous laughter for all affairs human...
...nasty as Wilder is, he is also undeniably entertaining. I don't know quite how to explain that, except to say that he is intelligent enough to eschew a sledge hammer approach. In his best films-and his best films are gems-he keeps things moving so quickly and so lightly that you hardly have time to wince...