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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
German-born Billy Wilder (b. 1906) is one of the last survivors of Hollywood's Golden Age, the writer and director of seminal films like Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot and his masterpiece, Sunset Boulevard. By naming this attempt at a definitive Wilder biography after the savagely humorous 1950 classic, Sikov (Laughing Hysterically: American Screen Comedy of the 1950s) invites a risky comparisonAand pulls it off with a broad, well-documented overview of Wilder's life and work. Considering Wilder "the fastest, funniest, meanest mind in Hollywood," Sikov admires his subject without succumbing to reverence. Wilder is an infamous raconteur, and Sikov wisely lets him hold forth on his self-made legend, including his acerbic assessments of fellow Hollywood players, his outrageous and wrenching accounts of Europe before and after WWII and his steely insights into American culture. Though the preface acknowledges that the work is "unauthorized," it presents so many Wilder quotes (of Raymond Chandler, "I was all that he hated about Hollywood"; of Audrey Hepburn, "After so many drive-in waitresses...here is class") and authoritative accounts of his comings and goings that it reads almost as if Wilder's own hand were behind it. The book's film criticism works best as a tool for gleaning Wilder's sensibility from his scripts and direction. The often irascible, always witty Wilder emerges from these pages as shrewd, eminent and, especially in comparison with today's tepid Hollywood fare, daringly authentic.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From The Washington Post
A careful and thorough researcher, Sikov has pieced together more about Wilder's European years than the previous biographers. But lacking Wilder's cooperation, he has had to rely on other biographers and interviewers for a sense of the man himself, and none of them has penetrated through to his emotional core.
See all Editorial Reviews
German-born Billy Wilder (b. 1906) is one of the last survivors of Hollywood's Golden Age, the writer and director of seminal films like Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot and his masterpiece, Sunset Boulevard. By naming this attempt at a definitive Wilder biography after the savagely humorous 1950 classic, Sikov (Laughing Hysterically: American Screen Comedy of the 1950s) invites a risky comparisonAand pulls it off with a broad, well-documented overview of Wilder's life and work. Considering Wilder "the fastest, funniest, meanest mind in Hollywood," Sikov admires his subject without succumbing to reverence. Wilder is an infamous raconteur, and Sikov wisely lets him hold forth on his self-made legend, including his acerbic assessments of fellow Hollywood players, his outrageous and wrenching accounts of Europe before and after WWII and his steely insights into American culture. Though the preface acknowledges that the work is "unauthorized," it presents so many Wilder quotes (of Raymond Chandler, "I was all that he hated about Hollywood"; of Audrey Hepburn, "After so many drive-in waitresses...here is class") and authoritative accounts of his comings and goings that it reads almost as if Wilder's own hand were behind it. The book's film criticism works best as a tool for gleaning Wilder's sensibility from his scripts and direction. The often irascible, always witty Wilder emerges from these pages as shrewd, eminent and, especially in comparison with today's tepid Hollywood fare, daringly authentic.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From The Washington Post
A careful and thorough researcher, Sikov has pieced together more about Wilder's European years than the previous biographers. But lacking Wilder's cooperation, he has had to rely on other biographers and interviewers for a sense of the man himself, and none of them has penetrated through to his emotional core.
See all Editorial Reviews
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