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English
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Description
In this critical study, Joseph McBride offers new ways to understand Wilder’s work, stretching from his days as a reporter and screenwriter in Europe to his distinguished as well as forgotten films as a Hollywood writer and his celebrated work as a writer-director.
A searching new study by the film historian Joseph McBride.
A remarkable biographical and critical treatment.
A trenchant reappraisal of Wilder’s half-century-long career.
[A] brilliant exegesis of Wilder’s life and work . . . [McBride's] approach works well, illuminating Wilder’s themes and obsessions across the entire span of a lifetime, and therefore across almost the entire twentieth century.
Easily the most insightful, lively, and thought-provoking book on film I’ve come across this year; no one is better than McBride when it comes to exploring and clarifying the complex intersection between cultural, historical, and psychological forces that yields an artist’s work, and his volume on Wilder is as good as anything he’s ever written – which means it’s as good as anything any film critic has ever written.
Urgent and essential.
Joseph McBride-penned biography on the legendary Billy Wilder. Need any more words be said?
What we really appreciate is the organized approach and his entertaining prose, not a given in serious film studies. Billy Wilder comes alive as a remarkable man… Of all of Joseph McBride’s film books, I think this is the one I’ve enjoyed the most . . . it’s a serious contender for film book of 2021.
A comprehensive, invaluable critical study of one of the most admired and enduring filmmaker-satirists of the post-World War II era . . . Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge shares the complexity and humanity of its subject and his films. It is highly recommended.
This book, like Wilder’s films, excised Wilder’s phantoms of the past and informed us of the versatility of his International filmography.
Joseph McBride is one of the best film critics and historians. His Billy Wilder is a crowning achievement. He casts considerable new light on Wilder’s early life in Vienna and Berlin and reevaluates his artistic status, including his great later work. The cliché of Wilder as cynic and misanthrope is not to McBride’s taste. Instead, he reveals the complexity of the man and the coherence of his eclectic oeuvre.
Only Joseph McBride could have given us Billy Wilder in such fullness, as he’s done previously with Lubitsch, Ford, and other masters. The breadth of research is staggering, yet it is always placed at the service of McBride’s free ruminative style, unbound by dutiful chronological study—instead, we have a sensibility, and a conversation. By placing the production histories and legacies of collaboration into the widest possible historical frame, McBride reanimates Wilder’s life and art, returning us to the masterpieces to see them with fresh eyes, and hungry to discover the films we’ve missed.
With his walk-on-the-dark-side comedies and refusal to sentimentalize, Wilder’s reputation has only grown with time, and this magisterial critical study does full justice to his complex talent. McBride draws stunning connections between the life and the art, and his discussion of Wilder’s treatment of women is especially fresh and persuasive. Both massive and entertaining, this is a must-read for Wilder fans.
A superb study of Billy Wilder and an ideal companion to McBride’s recent How Did Lubitsch Do It? This book is rich with information about the Viennese/Weimar culture that helped shape Wilder and wonderfully attentive to his artistry. It’s the best critical account of a great filmmaker, showing exactly how he did it.
The most complete and profound study of Billy Wilder to date, one in which the work and the life illuminate each other, and two worlds that seemed separate are joined and complemented with unsuspecting coherence. A book that brings us closer to Wilder, humanizing and explaining him like no other.
Unquestionably the book of the year.
Engaging . . . McBride makes a convincing case that for all his wisecracks and moxie, Wilder was ultimately laughing to keep from crying.
Joseph McBride has delivered the ultimate critical evaluation of Billy Wilder’s career as a journalist, screenwriter and film director.
Joseph McBride is a film historian and professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. His many books include the critical study How Did Lubitsch Do It? (Columbia, 2018) as well as acclaimed biographies of Frank Capra, John Ford, and Steven Spielberg and three books on Orson Welles.
A searching new study by the film historian Joseph McBride.
A remarkable biographical and critical treatment.
A trenchant reappraisal of Wilder’s half-century-long career.
[A] brilliant exegesis of Wilder’s life and work . . . [McBride's] approach works well, illuminating Wilder’s themes and obsessions across the entire span of a lifetime, and therefore across almost the entire twentieth century.
Easily the most insightful, lively, and thought-provoking book on film I’ve come across this year; no one is better than McBride when it comes to exploring and clarifying the complex intersection between cultural, historical, and psychological forces that yields an artist’s work, and his volume on Wilder is as good as anything he’s ever written – which means it’s as good as anything any film critic has ever written.
Urgent and essential.
Joseph McBride-penned biography on the legendary Billy Wilder. Need any more words be said?
What we really appreciate is the organized approach and his entertaining prose, not a given in serious film studies. Billy Wilder comes alive as a remarkable man… Of all of Joseph McBride’s film books, I think this is the one I’ve enjoyed the most . . . it’s a serious contender for film book of 2021.
A comprehensive, invaluable critical study of one of the most admired and enduring filmmaker-satirists of the post-World War II era . . . Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge shares the complexity and humanity of its subject and his films. It is highly recommended.
This book, like Wilder’s films, excised Wilder’s phantoms of the past and informed us of the versatility of his International filmography.
Joseph McBride is one of the best film critics and historians. His Billy Wilder is a crowning achievement. He casts considerable new light on Wilder’s early life in Vienna and Berlin and reevaluates his artistic status, including his great later work. The cliché of Wilder as cynic and misanthrope is not to McBride’s taste. Instead, he reveals the complexity of the man and the coherence of his eclectic oeuvre.
Only Joseph McBride could have given us Billy Wilder in such fullness, as he’s done previously with Lubitsch, Ford, and other masters. The breadth of research is staggering, yet it is always placed at the service of McBride’s free ruminative style, unbound by dutiful chronological study—instead, we have a sensibility, and a conversation. By placing the production histories and legacies of collaboration into the widest possible historical frame, McBride reanimates Wilder’s life and art, returning us to the masterpieces to see them with fresh eyes, and hungry to discover the films we’ve missed.
With his walk-on-the-dark-side comedies and refusal to sentimentalize, Wilder’s reputation has only grown with time, and this magisterial critical study does full justice to his complex talent. McBride draws stunning connections between the life and the art, and his discussion of Wilder’s treatment of women is especially fresh and persuasive. Both massive and entertaining, this is a must-read for Wilder fans.
A superb study of Billy Wilder and an ideal companion to McBride’s recent How Did Lubitsch Do It? This book is rich with information about the Viennese/Weimar culture that helped shape Wilder and wonderfully attentive to his artistry. It’s the best critical account of a great filmmaker, showing exactly how he did it.
The most complete and profound study of Billy Wilder to date, one in which the work and the life illuminate each other, and two worlds that seemed separate are joined and complemented with unsuspecting coherence. A book that brings us closer to Wilder, humanizing and explaining him like no other.
Unquestionably the book of the year.
Engaging . . . McBride makes a convincing case that for all his wisecracks and moxie, Wilder was ultimately laughing to keep from crying.
Joseph McBride has delivered the ultimate critical evaluation of Billy Wilder’s career as a journalist, screenwriter and film director.
Joseph McBride is a film historian and professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. His many books include the critical study How Did Lubitsch Do It? (Columbia, 2018) as well as acclaimed biographies of Frank Capra, John Ford, and Steven Spielberg and three books on Orson Welles.