A Foreign Affair : Billy Wilder's American Films

Gerd Gemünden

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781785334757
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish émigré from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low.

Table of contents

• A Foreign Affair
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. An Accented Cinema
• Chapter 2. The Insurance Man Always Rings Twice
• Chapter 3. In the Ruins of Berlin
• Chapter 4. Ghosting Hollywood
• Chapter 5. All Dressed Up and Running Wild
• Chapter 6. Being a Mensch in the Administered World
• Chapter 7. In the Closet of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Chronology
• Filmography
• Bibliography
• Index
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