Billy Wilder on Assignment by Noah Isenberg (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

and coughed. “It’s nothing,” he said, and it really was nothing but a tiny red dot.

That is what he died of.

Tempo, August 12, 1929

* Dinner dance.

 IIIFilm and Theater Reviews

As a means of engaging with the contemporary film and theater scene, and to earn a little rent money in the process, Wilder wrote dozens of reviews and short accounts of studio and industry developments. He attended movie premieres and theater openings, covered the latest hits and flops, and wrote about most of these productions within the restricted space of a capsule review. His reviews cover the final phase of the silent era and the advent of sound, using the new Tri-Ergon sound-on-film technology, which came comparatively late to Germany. He notes the talent of the great silent stars Chaplin and Norma Shearer, of the newcomers Marlene Dietrich and Henny Porten, and also of the beloved down-market duo Ole and Axel (or “Pat und Patachon,” as they were called in German). He offers a mixed review of Erich von Stroheim’s epic Greed (1924) but has plenty of good things to say about the film industry of the late 1920s in general. In “First Silhouette Sound Film,” Wilder writes admiringly of the pioneering animation work by Lotte Reiniger and its impact on Fräulein Fähnrich (Miss Midshipman, 1929), and his review of the American director Arthur Rosson’s The Winged Horseman (1929) affords him the chance to wax rhapsodic about the filmic portrayals of the American West—the source of his own nickname and the cultural mythology that captured the hearts of scores of European filmgoers—churned out on the backlots of Hollywood studios.

Wilder’s theater reviews feature a piece marking the fiftieth performance of Bertolt Brecht’s megahit Threepenny Opera, extolling the virtues of Kurt Weill’s music as well as the supreme acting of cabaret greats Rosa Valetti and Kurt Gerron, and a somewhat skeptical piece on John van Druten’s Young Woodley at Berlin’s Deutsches Theater. Although Wilder never showed much interest in Zionism elsewhere, in his review of Springtime in Palestine, an oddly compelling documentary of 1928 by Josef Gal-Ezer, he exhibits a degree of genuine curiosity, even sympathy. “We see European girls from bourgeois families who did office work or studied at universities back home now building streets,” he writes, “men previously unaccustomed to agrarian life now cultivating the soil.” He closed by noting that the applause in the theater was noticeably enthusiastic, something he himself would strive for, and nearly always achieve, in his own subsequent work as a writer-director.

 Broken Barriers (1924)

A NEW SHEARER-MENJOU FILM

A film like a hundred other American ones; the interesting part is the subject matter, which is amazingly liberal; also of interest are four outstanding actors: Norma Shearer, James Kirkwood, Adolphe Menjou, Mae Bush.

The subject: Ward Trenton, who has been separated from his wife for years, is a misogynist, until Grace, a saleswoman, the youngest member of the impoverished Durland family, comes his way, in the following manner: Tommy Kemp, a friend of Irene and Gerti’s co-worker, organizes an orgy. Trenton is also there, and he makes sure Grace gets home before the explosion. Grace is in love with Ward Trenton. She (an American girl from a good family!) wants to break down the barriers imposed by morality and conventions and devote herself unconditionally to Trenton.

Meanwhile, Ward’s wife comes back, and the three—Grace, Ward, and Ward’s wife—happen to meet up at the home of Frau Reynolds; ugly scenes ensue: Frau Trenton will not hear of a divorce and insults Grace, who, in order to prevent a scandal, leaves the party. Now Grace knows she can never become Ward’s wife. And she wants to belong to Trenton more fervently than ever.

Ward struggles with himself, and goodness wins out. Grace now sees Ward less often. But one night, four old friends take part in a car trip: Grace, Mr. Durland, Irene, Ward Trenton, and—at the steering wheel—Tom Camp, dead drunk. The car drives through a forest at breakneck speed and flips over; the four of them have an accident. Tom Camp dies in Irene’s arms, Grace recovers quickly, Ward Trenton winds up in the hospital. There the physician sets up a little trap; he leads Trenton’s wife to believe that Ward will always remain a cripple. Then she demands a divorce from him and moves out. Now Grace can marry Trenton, who has a full recovery.

The cast: Grace Durland is played by Norma Shearer, a very personable young actress, beautiful, good figure, talented. Mae Bush, an outstanding actress who unfortunately receives too little attention, plays Irene. James Kirkwood does a solid job as Ward Trenton, playing him as serious and aristocratic, fully aware that his role entails embodying a Yankee imbued with the morality and conventions of America.

And then there is Adolphe Menjou (Tommy Kemp). His is only a supporting role, but it is brilliantly acted, full of inspiration and spicy details. Menjou, discovered by Chaplin and launched by Lubitsch, is today one of the most appealing and ingenious figures in American film.

Die Bühne, April 8, 1926

Ehekonflikte (Marital Conflicts, 1927)

AT THE PRIMUS PALACE

A wife is surprised by her husband while in her boudoir with another man. She pretends that she was attacked and that he is the burglar. But as the police are about to take him away, she reveals the hoax. She travels to Nice, the other man travels to Nice, the husband travels to Nice, and all three take up residence in the same hotel. And here the ludicrous game with the superficial conflicts continues, with the theft of a secret treaty added in for good measure, until the other man—who is the document thief—brings the married couple back together.

The writing, by Erich Herzog, and direction, by Alfons Berthier, are unbelievably clumsy. The second half was greeted with more and more laughter and whistles, and when the title card “These were awful hours” appeared toward the end, the audience chimed in with uproarious approval. Too bad that Lotte Lorring, Werner Pitschau, and Victor Colani were willing to