Billy Wilder

Director | Writer

Date of birth : 06/22/1906

Date of death : 03/27/2002

City of birth : Sucha, Austria-Hungary (now Sucha Beskidzka Poland)

"If for 90 minutes someone managed to forget what money he would fill the fridge with, for Wilder his work would already have been worthwhile." Billy Wilder was an Austrian-born film director, screenwriter and producer. Master of Hollywood comedy between the 50s and 60s, noted for focusing his work on controversial issues that were considered unacceptable for cinema, such as alcoholism, prostitution, among others. Escaping from Nazism, he emigrated to the United States with actor Peter Lorre, where he went through some tough early years until he got a job as a screenwriter at Paramount. He had the chance to collaborate with Lubitsch, his great master, in Ninotchka (1939). Double Indemnity (1944) was his first success as a director, a noir that established conventions for the genre such as the illumination of "Venetian blinds" or the voice-over narration, and where he began to confront Hollywood censorship. Some of his successes were The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Seven Year Itch (1955) where he created one of the most emblematic images of cinema with Marilyn Monroe's skirt-lifting, Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960). Six-time Oscar winner (one as producer, two as best director and three as best screenwriter).