The only director Billy Wilder called a genius: “He could be absolutely brilliant”
The word “genius” gets bandied about far too often these days when talking about movies or the people who made them, but somebody would have to travel mighty far to find any self-respecting cinema fan who doesn’t think Billy Wilder is worthy of the term.
Quite frankly, the man’s credentials are ludicrous. 20 competitive nominations split across writing, directing, and producing is borderline absurd, never mind six wins from three different categories. All that, and Wilder helmed several of the greatest and most beloved pictures in Hollywood history.
Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend are noir classics, Sunset Boulevard is one of the most influential films ever made, Some Like It Hot remains a timeless comedic masterpiece, and that’s without mentioning The Apartment, Sabrina, Witness for the Prosecution, A Foreign Affair, or any other of his top-tier titles.
No list of Tinseltown’s most remarkable auteurs is complete without Wilder, who was undoubtedly a genius in every filmmaking sense. As for his peers? There were many he admired, but only one he placed on a similar pedestal as the one to which he was propelled, although there may have been an element of bias involved when Erich von Stroheim was also one of his actors.
“He was fabulous, a genius,” Wilder told Pop Culture Classics of the multi-hyphenate who dabbled in writing, directing, producing, and acting, all while navigating the evolutionary leap between silent cinemas and the talkies, while continuing to create work of the highest quality.
His 1924 effort, Greed, continues to cast a shadow over many modern directors a century on from its release, and Wilder was such a fan that he could barely believe he’d enlisted such a towering figure to play an onscreen role in his 1943 wartime thriller Five Graves to Cairo.
“I had never met him,” he recalled of their first encounter. “My opening line was, ‘Mr von Stroheim, the idea that I should be directing you is overwhelming. The problem you had was always being ten years ahead of your time’. He said, ’20’. He could be absolutely brilliant.”
They hit it off to such an extent that Wilder also handed him the memorable role of Sunset Boulevard‘s enigmatic butler, Max von Mayerling, and his contributions to the film went well beyond acting. “Norma Desmond is not forgotten because every week she gets 300 letters from fans,” von Stroheim told him. “Wouldn’t it be beautiful if we find out that it was I who wrote all the letters?”
Even though it wasn’t his movie and he’d only been hired to embody a character, von Stroheim still went above and beyond to elevate something he didn’t have any stake in other than being part of the cast. That’s a genius-level move right there, and one Wilder always appreciated: “I give him credit.”
