We complete Billy Wilder's filmography in the 1940s with three very different titles, both in theme and tone. In 1945, the filmmaker releases Days Without a Trace, a drama with a thriller aesthetic that tells the story of an alcoholic writer. The ravages of addiction are depicted in all their rawness and without ambiguity, including a famous and daring delirium tremens sequence that has justly gone down in history. The film won four Oscars: best movie, address, script and actor, for a magnificent Ray Milland. In 1948, Wilder returns to Berlin after the war to shoot West Berlin, in which, in the form of a comedy of emotional embolism, sour and sour like all hers, construct a narrative of political scope, with an unguarded criticism of the actions of the American troops and the government in those post-war years and their intervention in the reconstruction of the city. Wilder considers it one of his best films and in it he offered his good friend Marlene Dietrich an ambiguous and fascinating character for which the actress is still remembered. In contrast to the cynical look he had displayed in West Berlin, that same year premieres The Emperor's Waltz, a friendly musical comedy with Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine, set in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century and that is, may be, the least Wilderian of his films. So, it is easy and pleasant to recognize the flashes of his genius and that of Charles Brackett, his co-writer, in many moments of this entertainment.
22.04.26 WEDNESDAY / 18.00 h
23.04.26 THURSDAY / 20.00 h
West Berlin
A Foreign Affair
BILLY WILDER. USA. 1948. VOS VALENCIA. B/N. 115′. DCP.
Int. Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, John Lund, Millard Mitchell, Peter von Zernech, Stanley Prager, Bill Murphy.
A committee of US congressmen moves to post-war Berlin to investigate the morale of US troops. Among them, a strict congresswoman from Iowa who, worried about the events that are taking place, decides to investigate who is protecting a cabaret singer accused of fraternizing with the Nazis during the war.
