“He was full of interesting ideas”: the director who greatly influenced Billy Wilder
There aren’t many directors in cinema history to have been anywhere near as influential as Billy Wilder, so it would make perfect sense that the only people capable of influencing such a towering figure in celluloid would be the fellow pioneers who also helped bring the art of the moving image to new heights.
It’s stating the obvious to say that writing, directing, and producing are three of the most important components in putting together any motion picture, and with Wilder proving himself to be a near-unmatchable maestro in all three, he was almost the perfect embodiment of a triple threat player.
With seven Academy Award wins from 21 nominations and a filmography bursting with greats like timeless noir Double Indemnity, seminal black comedy Sunset Boulevard, the best work of Marilyn Monroe’s career in The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot, top-tier war drama Stalag 17, and tour-de-force romance The Apartment, Wilder’s back catalogue is a thing of beauty.
He may have been the industry’s greatest Austrian import, his side of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Still, it was another countryman who he looked towards for inspiration and guidance, which came in handy when the filmmaker in question was also an occasional actor who worked under Wilder’s direction twice on the aforementioned Sunset Boulevard and World War II story Five Graves to Cairo.
A trailblazer in silent cinema recognised as being pivotal to auteurism’s gradual adoption by cinema at large, Erich von Stroheim has been cited as a touchstone by everyone from Stanley Kubrick to Christopher Nolan. Wilder knew him as a director, an actor, and an acquaintance, so he’d be foolish not to pick up a trick or two when they were in such proximity.
“He was fascinating, le grand seigneur at all times. There was something very noble about him, although he wasn’t a ‘von’ at all, his accent belonged to one of the rougher suburbs of Vienna,” Wilder told the British Film Institute. “Of course, he influenced me greatly as a director.”
Having cast him as high-ranking Nazi figure Erwin Rommel in Five Graves to Cairo, Wilder couldn’t help but marvel at the position he found himself in, with von Stroheim just as keen to embrace his status as constantly being in front of the curve.
“When I first saw him at the wardrobe tests for his role as Rommel, I clicked my heels and said, ‘Isn’t it ridiculous, little me directing you? You were always ten years ahead of your time,'” he said. “And he replied, ’20.'”
Unsurprisingly given his status, Wilder found von Stroheim to be “full of interesting ideas.” He even wanted the prop cameras he wore on-screen to have film in them because “the audience will sense if the films aren’t inside,” and it was his suggestion to have butler Max von Mayerling responsible for writing all the fan mail sent to Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.
He had one of the keenest eyes celluloid has ever seen for even the smallest of details, with von Stroheim providing a learning tree Wilder was all too happy to sit under whether they were working together or not.
