Hope you’ve had a restful, rejuvenating Sunday, friends!
Watching the time pass until I can leave my apartment again
If you’ve got a little bit of time, I’d really recommend you read this New York Times piece about the disaster facing domestic workers during the pandemic. Here’s a brutal paragraph we should all keep in mind:
“The ordeal of housekeepers is a case study in the wildly unequal ways that the pandemic has inflicted suffering. Their pay dwindled, in many cases, because employers left for vacation homes or because those employers could work from home and didn’t want visitors. Few housekeepers have much in the way of savings, let alone shares of stock, which means they are scrabbling for dollars as the wealthiest of their clients are prospering courtesy of the recent bull market.”
And a little #NewsYouCanUse: FiveThirtyEight has a good explainer on how to make indoor air safer.
Lastly, today I filed my final review from TIFF after a full 11 days (don’t cry for me, as I’m already in the thick of covering the New York Film Festival). It’s been a real pleasure to cover the selection, and this year especially, it was a true honor. The festival cut back press accreditation from several thousand writers to just 500 in 2020 in response to distributors’ concerns over piracy.
I’m lucky to have a full-time job that allows me not to treat writing as a “hobby with benefits,” but there are a number of people freelancing in this and other professions who do not enjoy such a safety net. If you’ve enjoyed my coverage, consider throwing some support to the Freelancers Union and their COVID-19 relief fund. They’re providing payments to those affected by the pandemic to help them make payments for food and utilities during these trying times.
Now, what you came for…
DAY 192: Stalag 17 (available for free on Pluto TV)
Though I’m now knee-deep in the festival circuit once more, there was a time this summer when I allowed myself to tune out new releases almost entirely and binge on an old director’s filmography. Back in July and August, I went deep into the works of Billy Wilder, the great multi-hyphenate filmmaker who won a paltry 6 Oscars. What came out on the other end was a piece of writing and scholarship I’m deeply proud of for Bright Wall/Dark Room, “The Sense of an Ending: Billy Wilder’s Parting Shots as Auteurist Stamp.” Here’s a key paragraph that helps establish what I wrote about:
“With a proficiency achieved by few others in history, Wilder deftly genre-hopped at the height of his career. Rather than rest on his laurels by pioneering the film noir with 1944’s Double Indemnity, he excelled in making romance, farce, war drama, satire, courtroom drama, biopic, and plenty of films that combined elements of each. The most persistent criticism against Wilder is that his work was cynical, no matter what kind of movie he made. But closer examination reveals a much more complex picture. Wilder’s versatility belies a shared sensibility across all his work that becomes most apparent in one section of his films: the ending, particularly the final shot or line of dialogue.”
One of the key films that serves as a hinge in Wilder’s career is 1953’s Stalag 17, made directly after his pitch-black media satire Ace in the Hole proved a disastrous bomb. This prison escape movie helped Wilder rebound by reminding audiences that he could still make a raucous fun adventure with a little bit of bite. It’s a fizzy cocktail of fun with a little bit of vinegar slipped in at the end by Wilder and co-writer Edwin Blum.
Stalag 17 is also a great vessel to understand the tremendous charisma of Golden Age Hollywood leading man William Holden, a talent on par with the Cary Grants and Jimmy Stewarts but perhaps lacking their contemporary name recognition. He’s an unpredictable live-wire here as J.J. Sefton, one of the many Americans held in tight quarters within a Nazi P.O.W. camp. He’s got his eyes on the exits, companions be damned, but he’s not afraid to patiently wait out his golden parachute. His calculating maneuvers earn suspicion from fellow soldiers, and that proves particularly troublesome when it comes to light that an informant lurks in their barracks.
Much of Stalag 17 plays out like a WWII-era whodunit, a Knives Out with real Nazis rather than just an alt-right troll. It’s got humor and suspense in equal measure bolstered by tight direction and a brilliantly slippery leading performance. I won’t spoil the ending or the “parting shot” in detail, but it both gives you what you’re looking for in a genre movie and complicates the picture if you’re really paying attention. What more can you ask from a movie?
Be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall