The Seven Year Itch
Directed by Billy Wilder
1955
The subway grate photograph is more famous than the film: Billy Wilder strands a Manhattan husband alone for the summer, Marilyn Monroe moves in upstairs, and the fantasies start immediately.
★ 3.2
The Movies canon
Sourced and screened.
Every film chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Sabrina
Directed by Billy Wilder
1954
Humphrey Bogart hated making it and it barely shows: Billy Wilder puts Audrey Hepburn between two brothers on a Long Island estate and lets Paris do the transformation offscreen.
★ 4.2
The Lost Weekend
Directed by Billy Wilder
1945
Distillers reportedly offered to buy the negative and destroy it: Wilder filmed four days of a writer's drinking with none of the period's usual comedy, and Best Picture followed.
★ 5.8
Stalag 17
Directed by Billy Wilder
1953
Wilder made a POW comedy in 1953 and refused to soften the Americans in it: a barracks works out that somebody inside is trading information to the Germans, and starts looking around.
★ 5.8
Witness for the Prosecution
Directed by Billy Wilder
1957
The closing credits ask the audience not to reveal the ending, and audiences mostly obeyed: Wilder turns an Agatha Christie courtroom into a comedy about a barrister who is supposed to be resting.
★ 5.8
The Apartment
Directed by Billy Wilder
1960
A comedy that breaks your heart and stays funny while doing it: Wilder took the sourest possible subject, a man lending his bed to his bosses, and made it warm.
★ 8.8
Double Indemnity
Directed by Billy Wilder
1944
Film noir gets its blueprint here: Wilder and Chandler wrote dialogue nobody has matched for hardness, and set the pattern of the doomed man telling his own story.
★ 9.0
Some Like it Hot
Directed by Billy Wilder
1959
American comedy has never been funnier, and the Legion of Decency was appalled: Wilder ran a single disguise for two hours without ever letting the joke thin out.
★ 9.4
Sunset Boulevard
Directed by Billy Wilder
1950
Hollywood has never been crueler about itself: Louis B. Mayer told Wilder he had disgraced the industry, which is the highest praise the film could possibly have received.
★ 9.5