On Sunset Boulevard: The Life And Times Of Billy Wilder: Amazon.ca: Ed Sikov: Books

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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 Booklist

Sikov's unauthorized biography of moviemaker Billy Wilder is better written than Kevin Lally's Wilder Times (1996). Otherwise, it is remarkably similar, despite Lally's greater access to Wilder (Sikov confesses he shared Wilder's reaction to the prospect of interviewing for the book: "the idea . . . made him want to throw up"). Both books concentrate on Wilder's movies and their humorous cynicism and sullied idealism about life and love. Sikov places greater emphasis on Wilder's seeming mission to confront American pretensions to virtue with the seamy truth as he saw it; the central Wilder film, then, is the bitter Ace in the Hole, in which an opportunistic reporter transforms an accident into a media circus. Sikov also stresses Wilder's obsession with sexual vulgarity and depicts him as flouting respectability because he felt--prophetically, it turned out--that greater sexual candor onscreen was inevitable as well as honest. Like Lally, Sikov doesn't visually analyze Wilder's movies, and he can't make Wilder personally appealing, either. Still, Sikov's is the better overall appreciation of the monstrously amusing filmmaker. Ray Olson

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First Sentence
On June 22, 1906, in the Galician village of Sucha Beskidzka, south of Krakow, Eugenia Wilder went into labor with her second child. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews

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4.4 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Good Could Have Been Better, Oct 13 2002

By

Michael Charton - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Sunset Boulevard: The Life And Times Of Billy Wilder (Paperback)

I decided to read this, because I just read the New York Times Rewview of Ed Sikov's new book about Peter Sellers.
The part of the book I enjoyed the most was from the beginning to World War II. The later in his life it got, the denser and more academic it became. Mr. Sikov teaches film and it got more like a textbook.
The end of the book, I have to agree with the reviewer from Vienna. It was more a book for film students. The beginning in Europe was a great look through a certain person into another time. Make Billy Wilder fictional and you have a great historical fiction piece.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Very Good, but Nobody's Perfect, Oct 8 2002

By

Michael Samerdyke (Big Stone Gap, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: On Sunset Boulevard: The Life And Times Of Billy Wilder (Paperback)

This is a very good biography of Billy Wilder. It revealed a lot about him and his career I didn't know. I disagreed with Sikov on his evaluations of a few films (I like "Love in the Afternoon" much better than he, but Sikov really seems to hate Gary Cooper) but we agreed on a lot. (Heck, we even liked the same scenes in "Fedora.")

I gave the book five stars, but I have a few reservations. My problems came when Sikov went beyond Wilder's career -- or didn't. His descriptions of politics in Interwar Europe struck me as okay, but superficial. Okay, this book will be nobody's first choice to learn about such matters, but a little more polish here would have helped. Then, toward the end of the book, Sikov keeps mentioning that Wilder was out of step with Hollywood. However, there is really nothing about what the rest of Hollywood was doing, namely how Wilder stacked up against Mel Brooks or Woody Allen in this era. I would have liked to have seen that issue addressed.

However, as a "life" of Wilder and not a study of his "times", this is a great book. Fans of Wilder's films will greatly enjoy it.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling bio of one of Hollywood's most fascinating men, July 17 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: On Sunset Boulevard: The Life And Times Of Billy Wilder (Paperback)

This bio of Billy Wilder is a totally fascinating one, filled with both world and cinematic history. Billy Wilder, a Polish Jew, proves to be a man of unique intuition and fast thinking as he rises from the ranks of stringer journalist to screenwriter in pre-World War II Europe, escapes the Nazis, gets a U.S. resident visa and, without speaking English, is hired to write for the movies. The author beautifully captures the ambiance of pre-war Europe and a Hollywood filled with emigres. Ultimately, the book left me sad, as Wilder ages, his friends die one by one, and he is unable to keep up with the times in terms of the types of properties to which he's attracted, how Hollywood works, and what the public wants. However, there is no denying his fantastic track record, his six Oscars, and the amazing legacy of brilliance he left behind. The rollercoaster ride of Wilder's life is well chronicled in this very satisfying, thought-provoking book.

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