[Essay Today] Billy Wilder

"The audience is never wrong. One audience member may be a fool. But if a thousand foolish audience members gather in a theater, they become geniuses."

The words of film director Billy Wilder are likely true. Especially, audiences watching successful films scrutinize the work thoroughly as a vast collective intelligence. They even discover foreshadowing and symbolism that the director or writer did not intend. In the process, the film evolves from mystery into myth. Director Wilder understood that film is the art of the audience. He left behind numerous famous film-related quotes that are still quoted today: "The audience is a fickle entity." "Grab the audience by the throat and never let go." "Show only up to 2 plus 2, and let the audience figure out that the answer is 4 themselves."

Few film directors have swept both the Academy Awards and the Cannes Film Festival with a single work. Director Bong Joon-ho and his film Parasite, which won four Academy Awards, are therefore even more remarkable. As the French newspaper Le Monde reported on the 11th of last month, "The Academy Awards, voted on by about 6,000 film industry professionals, mostly Americans, coincided with the choices of the Cannes Film Festival jury." It was a feat not seen in 55 years since Delbert Mann's Marty won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1955 and the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1956. Wilder himself won both the Academy Award in 1945 and the top prize at Cannes (until 1954, the top prize was called the Grand Prix, not the Palme d'Or) for The Lost Weekend. However, it should be noted that eleven films, including Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City, received awards simultaneously.

The biographical dictionary introduces Wilder as "a Jewish American journalist, film director, playwright, and producer born in Austria in 1906." At that time, Austria was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Wilder's hometown was a place called Sucha Beskidzka, which is now in Poland. Wilder's original name was Samuel, and Billy was a nickname used by his mother Eugenia when calling him. He dropped out of the University of Vienna, became a journalist, and then moved to Berlin, Germany, where he entered the film industry. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and persecution of Jews intensified, he emigrated to the United States via Paris. His family, who could not leave Europe, were scattered across various concentration camps and lost their lives. Wilder succeeded as a playwright and director in Hollywood. Until his death today in 2002 in Beverly Hills, California, he left masterpieces such as Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch, That’s Life, Love in the Afternoon, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment.

As his journalism background suggests, Wilder was an excellent writer. However, when he first arrived in the United States, he did not speak any English. Wilder learned English by listening to the radio and watching films. He memorized twenty words a day. With the English he studied this way, he wrote works that remain historic in Hollywood. But reaching the highest level with sentences alone is difficult. William Holden, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for starring in Wilder’s film The 17th Parallel, described Wilder as "a man with a heart full of razor blades." Wilder was honest and cynical. He was gifted with a sense of humor, but his wit carried a sting. Geniuses grasp the depths of life in an instant. Wilder was such a person. Most of his famous quotes have become classics. One of them is the advice: "You must have a dream to get up in the morning."

Heo Jin-seok, poet and professor at Korea National Sport University