MovieChat Forums > Midnight (1939) Discussion > Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder

posted 17 years ago by trpdean
4 replies | jump to latest

This movie was the last one Billy Wilder wrote - that he did not direct.

Robert Osborne on TCM said this was the "final straw" for Wilder - he was so mad that Leisen changed his script so much, that so much of it didn't make it on to the screen -- that Wilder swore he'd never let another person direct one of his scripts again.

But I have no idea what he might have written that didn't make it to the screen! The movie just seems so perfect, so tight - without a wasted scene, without a wasted line! The plot is so well-wound like a minuet!

Anyone have any idea?

[–] lubin-freddy 15 years ago

This is a difficult issue for discussion. Writers are often upset at the way a director changes his script, and while we usually tend to stand with the writer, especially when it's someone as great as Wilder. But the director is often correct in his decision.

"Sometimes you have to take the bull by the tail, and face the truth" - G. Marx

[–] johnlsullivan 14 years ago

I'm not sure what he meant by "the final straw." That same year (1939) he also co-wrote "Ninotchka" which Ernest Lubitsch of course directed. Wilder presumably didn't have any problems with the way that one came out. (In fact, at one point Wilder named it one of the ten greatest movies ever made.) And as much as I love Ninotchka, I don't think it's any better than Midnight. My hunch is Wilder disliked Leisen personally and let that color his opinion of the final product.

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Rheli 13 years ago

While I think the movie is amazingly good, some of the attitude changes among the principals at the end seem a bit quick and forced. I'd like to think that Wilder's script had those occur more naturally and believably.

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