ITT: overrated directors

ITT: overrated directors

this guy was like the joss whedon of his day

You're right. His films are only worth looking at when a good cinematographer shot them, which seems to have been a total crap shoot, he barely knew what he was doing and never really got any better. A big favorite of writers who want to get into the movies but resent the director's status - Wilder is literally just the screenwriter taking the director's job title and doing nothing.

How could one post be so perfect?

Sunset Boulevard is brilliant.
Double Indemnity is shit though and Some Like It Hot is just alright.

>Double Indemnity is shit though
nice, that was the movie that led me to make this post

Sunset Boulevard's one of the ones that looks good, much better than Double Indemnity. The same guy shot it, the Gothic setting probably helped wake him up.

>Sunset Boulevard is brilliant.
>Double Indemnity is shit
You're the complete opposite of me. But back to the OP, yes he's overrated as fuck.

Yeah, there were some good parts, but overall it was terrible and a waste of time. I don't understand how someone could make something as good as Sunset Boulevard and also make shit like that;.

Literally fucking how? Isn't Whedon about social justice and crappy sci-fi shit? That's nothing like Wilder.

It's the only major studio noir I can think of where it just looks like they got a normal lighting set-up and then turned a few of the lights off, rather than working out the dynamic, expressionist lighting designs we associate with noir. Really poor.

The Lost Weekend is his best film.

I'll check it out.

he tried to make a noir movie but ruined it by filling it with quips and neglecting real relationships and motivations

I assume OP was thinking not of the specific trends of their time, but of the fact that both are screenwriters with a bias towards dialogue-heavy characterisations, who got into the director's chair by virtue of their success as screenwriters, but never developed a visual way of thinking.

u got it

This. Double Indemnity is excellent. Sunset Blvd was a chore to sit through.

I don't know how anyone could arrive at this conclusion. Astonishing.

What are this thread's thoughts on The Apartment?

Good office set ripped from from Vidor's The Crowd. Wilder thinks he's overcome his misogyny and badly fails - Shirley McLaine is good, but only because she's good, not because her character's well-written. Her choices are cock A, cock B or death. From what I remember the cinematography's not too bad.

>thinks he's overcome his misogyny

You know, I take this back, it sounds good but Wilder wasn't that capable of self-criticism.

The thing with Wilder is that English wasn't his first language. That's why in was so interested in our strange American figures of speech, and used them often in his scripts.

One of the five best movies ever made.

What the fuck does this have to do with anything? He was a screenwriter with no directing talent.

Why have you only seen five films?

That and Ace in the hole is my personal favorite

I thought by calling him Joss Whedon you were saying his movies were all quips, and I was just saying why.

I've probably seen more movies than you have, and The Apartment is one of my favorites.