This analysis brilliantly reclaims Wyler from the shadows of auteur theory, showcasing a director whose genius lay in his absolute transparency and service to the story. It is a definitive guide to a career where technical precision and emotional depth were never mutually exclusive.
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William Wyler - The Definitive Ranking
Added:William Wiler.
Uh, you can see my complete thoughts on William Wiler as an unsung great of the American cinematic tradition here.
Otherwise, I'm just going to jump right into the rankings. Uh, so let's just get started.
Number 33 is Funny Girl. This is a compromised production. Apparently, Barbara Strazand was so insistent on kind of directing herself on set that William Wiler gave her a director's bullhorn at the rap party, congratulating her for her very first directed film. Uh, it's also a film that Wiler didn't want to make. Sydney Lamett was lined up to make it and Lamett dropped out and Wiler got brought in to take over. So, he didn't want to make it. Braver Strazand was just kind of this incredible force on set directing herself and Wiler just seems to have disconnected. Uh that's not why I have issues with the movie. My issues with the movie is like the first half is almost all performance. There's almost no story. It is just Barbara Strazan playing a Ziggfield Folly's girl as she walks into the Ziggfield Theater and just kind of takes over. And it's really just Strian starting around the stage performing, singing. Yeah, a bit of dancing. That's not always great. Um, and it's it really is just performance.
There is no real story going on for the first half of the film. And it's not like it's bad. It's just since we're just essentially getting a review show of Barbara Strazan performing, I'm just not that engaged for a entire hour. And then the second half of the film there is a story and it is a romance between uh Barbara Stysand and Omar Sharie. Omar Sharief is a gambler. Uh she is a famous Ziggfield folly girl. They get married.
They have a child. They have a daughter Francis. [music] [snorts] And there is tension within the relationship. And [music] again, I have problems here because, you know, her falling in love with this, you know, attractive man who's like charming and everything kind of makes [music] sense. Uh, but then him falling in love with her doesn't make that much sense. Uh, she's regularly described as kind of plain [music] looking, but she is, you know, rich and famous, so okay, there we are. And so, [music] I don't really buy this great love story between them. and I can't get into [music] kind of the big swings of the melodramatic ending. I just I I end up very muted through the whole thing. [snorts] It's not that the film is bad. There are entertaining things along the way, but ultimately it's just I'm kind of disconnected through pretty much all of it.
Number 32 is Carrie. Uh this is very much a melodrama, and for a very long time, this was Willie Wilers's like least movie until Funny Girl came along.
I think it is pretty [music] good. It's the story of our titular Carrie played by Jennifer Jones and she's a hay seed who moves to Chicago, falls on hard times, and she ends up shacking up with Charles played by Eddie Albert. And you know, it's uh this is made during the Hayes office period, so there's a lot of like not really saying what's going on.
Uh but it it [music] kind of borders on prostitution what we're seeing. Uh however, uh Carrie very quickly meets George who nominally owns a a [music] nightclub and they fall in love. George is played by Lawrence Olivier. However, George is married to Miriam Hopkins and Miriam Hopkins technically owns everything and she her mission in life is to make George squirm. She would rather see him squirm than be happy. So [snorts] um the the weird thing about this film is that Carrie becomes a very minor character for a very long stretch.
George becomes the main character and a lot of this is really helped by the fact that Lawrence Olivier was a very good actor. Uh this is actually one of his more subtle performances and I think it's very very strong and it really kind of carries the very episodic nature of a large bulk of the second half where we watch him lie to Carrie about divorcing his wife and they move in together and they get married and you know it's just a steady degradation of their life since he can't actually keep work and they just get poorer and poorer and poorer.
[snorts] Um this would be fine. You know, it can be called Carrie and it can be about someone else. That's fine. The problem perks up in the very final like 20 minutes when it suddenly becomes Car's story again. She leaves George and she suddenly becomes famous. It's like all of a sudden it's like a very quick montage of her going from poverty to complete fame and it's just it's so quick and it feels like a disservice to our title character. Um, I I find it frustrating in this way, but at the same time, the movie is really carried by Olivier. Um, I do think the story like flows decently well, but there just feel like these little shortcuts [snorts] uh around Hayes Code moral requirements and around Carrie herself as a main character. The overall package is pretty good, but this does, you know, end up being minor. Imagine being so good a filmmaker that this is your minor stuff.
Number 31 is Dead End. This was based on a very popular Broadway play and I wonder if it was more of a cultural touchstone than an actual piece of great drama because this is the movie about the Great Depression. It tries to be everything about the Great Depression and it brings in so much across so many characters that the central [music] point seems muddled at best, if not completely contradictory on other levels. It's it's [music] interesting.
However, the characters are all really well written and they're all very well acted and the movie is fantastic to look at.
Greg Toland is a great cinematographer.
Uh so it's the story of a small you know uh Riverside community in New York that is facing the Great Depression. It is an ensemble piece. There are like a dozen main characters. If there's uh if there are main characters, there are like three of them. One is played by Sylvia Sydney. She [music] is kind of an earnest uh older sister to a younger boy Tommy who is just trying to like make ends [music] meet. The other is Joel McCraea who is an architect who can't find work. So he's the educated guy who did everything right and he still can't make it in the Great Depression. And then there is Babyface played by, you know, Humphrey Bogart before he got famous. And he is uh he was the kid from the area who made it good by going criminal. And then there are like nine other characters. Uh there there's stuff about uh kind of there's a big high-rise full of rich people right next to the the poor neighborhood, but [snorts] everything and there's dialogue about how like the the rich always stay rich.
Uh but it's contrasted with like the Boery boys who are like stealing things from the rich guys. It's it's weird.
It's also this was what he made immediately after Come and get it which is about a poor guy who made it rich who became one of those robber barons through hard work. So, it's just it's an interesting little historical contrast, but the ensemble piece is just trying to be the Great Depression movie. And I just I find all of the characters trying accompanying all these different little aspects of it kind of thin in collection and a bit contradictory. Where the film really shines is in the character. Every character is very well written and very [snorts] well acted. So watching Sylvia Sydney kind of cry because her brother is going down the wrong path is compelling. Watching Joel McCrae kind of like cozy up to her and and develop a relationship with her is nice. Watching Humphrey Bogart face the fact that the neighborhood hates him because he went criminal is good. There's [snorts] a lot of good stuff in here. I just I find the ensemble approach to be a little [snorts] unwieldy. I don't think it comes together and I think that's kind of the point. So, the overall film is good. It looks fantastic. It's full of great acting. Uh, I just don't think it's central premise actually comes together quite as well as it should.
Number 30 is Tom Brown of Culver. Now, this is a great example of why I think William is one of the greatest of filmmakers. This is number 30 [music] in my list, and this is a meaty, convincing drama. This is like solidly good stuff.
It's only undone a bit by its ending, which feels a little too pat, but this is like this is number 30. This movie is actually really good and like no one knows about it. Uh, so it's the story of Tom Brown. He's he's played by a guy named Tom Brown. I don't know why he shares the same name. There was apparently a small series based on him or something. I don't know. Uh, but he is an orphan of a military combat veteran who uh died during combat. And uh Tom Brown has no time for his father's legacy. He carries around a medal, but he it means nothing to him.
[snorts] And then after a boxing match where he wins $10, he is convinced to go to Culver Military Academy by people who knew his father. And so it is Tom Brown going into the military academy and learning to kind of accept legacy and accept tradition. And it has this complex portrait of a young man facing a legacy from his father that he didn't want and grows to appreciate. And then there's a curveball halfway through where this is a spoiler, but like every synopsis of the film like spoils it. So his father's not dead. His father shows up and he's actually been a deserter.
And the way the film treats the relationship and the resolution of the conflict between them is really, really compelling. This is on top of all of the little elements as Tom Brown kind of grows to appreciate um the the traditions of military life. There's this great little scene where his roommate Robert forces him to uh salute a gold star on the ground because, you know, it represents [music] people who've lost their lives, including their own fathers. [snorts] And it they get into a fight, but then Tom Brown takes the complete blame for it. So he's building this relationship with the military even though he kind of rejects it on a certain level. It's it's actually shockingly complex stuff. What kills the film, not kills, what hurts the film is its finale. Uh his father's a deserter. The military would not take that well in the film. The military takes it well. It just it beggars belief. It it's a nice feeling ending.
It's like, oh, this is heartwarming and everything. Uh, but it feels like it goes beyond belief. I I I don't actually buy into it, it feels wrong. Um, so like the meat of it through its first like 70 minutes, the movie is only like 78 minutes long. The first like 70 minutes is like really really good and then its finale just kind of fumbles things. Uh, the mo the movie is like quite good.
Really quite good. And this is number 30. [laughter] Number 29 is The Westerner. Uh so this is the story of Cole played by Gary Cooper. He shows up uh to judge Roy Bean, played by Walter Brennan in Texas.
They get drunk together. Takes about 30 minutes and then the movie kind of restarts once Cole gets away and he ends up with a farmer and they discover that there is a larger conflict between ranchers and cattlemen. And you know, it's it's typical western stuff, but the film has this weird pacing issue in the first like half hour where everything just feels kind of languid and more like a character piece than what we actually get. Uh, I think there could be a re-edit of this that takes the minute down by like 3 to 5 minutes total, just tightening up the first act, that actually makes it a better film. That being said, uh the the film is really inefficient in getting to the point where kind of western convention takes over. But once western convention actually does take over, the film is just kind of pure western fun. There's an obvious subtext going on underneath.
Uh this was made kind of as World War II was just, you know, [music] burgeoning up. And so there's this effort to be like, "Hey, we don't need to fight. We can just talk." Which is kind of the core of the story. Cole ends up being this centralized figure between Judge Roy Bean and the ranchers and he's just trying to get them to find some sort of reconciliation. However, doesn't work.
Um uh there there's a lot of stuff about uh trying to convince uh Roy Bean that uh Cole has a lock of hair from a singer that he loves. Uh the singer actually coming to the area and like getting a special show for Bean to watch. Um and it's At the same time, there are like big fires and shootouts and stuff and it's fun. Uh, I do think the film kind of fumbles the ending a little bit. Uh, we have this kind of implied catharsis and [snorts] mourning over over Roy Bean as he lays dying, but the film has never presented him as little anything else other than just a corrupt monster. So, it it falls flat. How? So, the the film is kind of a mix of things. I I think it starts too slow. I think it ends kind of weird, but most of it is just kind of solid western stuff. It's kind of wellrooted in how Wiler kind of began making movies with Universal with the Bem movie westerns and like the Blue Streak series. And I think it it works decently well. I think it's pretty good. Uh I just I have these issues especially towards the beginning and end. Otherwise, it's it's it's a solid entertainment.
Number 28 is The Stolen Ranch.
This is the earliest surviving William film, and it makes me want to discover so much more of what's lost in this era.
This is part of the Blue Streak series, a series of five real westerns, and it uh post-dates his uh Mustang series, which were two real westerns. So, those would have been like maybe 15 minutes, 20 minutes long. These are about 50 an hour long. you know, a real was roughly 10 minutes. And the movie is it's it's short. It really would have benefited from like another 30 minutes or so. But what is there is shockingly strong. It's the story of Breezy and Frank. They're friends from World War I. Uh Frank is dealing with shell shock, but Frank also has inherited his uncle's ranch. However, the overseer of the ranch questions the validity of the will and wants the uh ranch for himself. So, the conflict is about, you know, who owns this ranch.
And the core of this film is the relationship between [music] Breezy and Frank. They are close friends. They're very good friends. And Breezy is there to help Frank. Frank has serious mental issues because of shell shock. And Breezy is there to help. And the relationship created within this silent space is shockingly [snorts] compelling. It's really, really good.
Where the film needs more time is there are two romantic subplots, one for each of the men, and they feel prefuncter.
There are certain plot mechanics that get fed because of them, but ultimately the relationships with the women just feel like afterthoughts, and they feel mundane and wrote. Uh they needed more time to kind of work out. Uh the uh other issue is with the fact that the uh Frank kind of just gets over his shell shock all of a sudden late in the film.
Uh it's like, you know, it it's built in dramatically, but it kind of doesn't have any sort of level of psychological realism that, you know, dealing with shell shock would kind of lend itself to. So it ends up kind of breaking a certain level of suspension of disbelief. Uh that being said, the film is solid. It is good. I I I it's an incredible introduction to early Wiler.
He was working very fast. These movies took like a couple weeks to film, but he's showing real promise and it's surprisingly compelling.
[snorts] Number 27 is The Shakedown.
This is his second surviving film. It's about 3 years after The Stolen Ranch, and it shows a continuing embrace of visual complexity and confidence with character-based stories. It is the story of Dave. He is part of a con. It's a traveling boxing show where if anyone can beat the star boxer named Rough, then they win $1,000. Dave shows up to the next town before the boxing uh people arrive. He builds himself up in reputation so that people will bet on him and then he tanks the fight. Uh we start the film with him doing it and not doing it terribly well. So when he's sent to the next oil town in order to do it, you know, he's he's got this need to sell himself even better. And what he finds at the next oil town is uh the waitress Marjgerie, with whom he develops a romantic relationship, and a young boy named Clem. The relationship between Dave and Clem is kind of the core of the film where Dave has this older brother mentality, defending him against bullies, kind of teaching him how to box. And all of this ends up leading to Dave having to reveal to Marjorie that he's actually part of this con. And you know, he he's down and out and he has to end up proving himself. Is this complicated stuff? Is this wellworn territory? It was probably well worn in the 20s. But you know what? It works really well because the character specifics around Dave and Clem in particular are so solid that when Dave says, "I'm going to turn this around and I'm going to do this right." It is a triumph of character. It's like, "Yes, you know, this is what I want to see because I like Dave. He's a likable lead and he's well written and I want to see him succeed." So the end result is him having in the actual boxing match and it's it's thrilling fun stuff. Wiler was showing incredible visual complexity early. There are shots where like someone is on the left side of the frame uh and then we have this deep focus to the outside the bar and you know we are you know both pieces of information are important to the scene. Uh [snorts] the acting is very good. The writing is surprisingly solid for something like this. And it's just this is just a solid solid silent entertainment. You know, it borders on melodrama, but ultimately it is really just kind of the the [snorts] little guy rising up over his obstacles.
It's just good solid entertainment. And it was the second movie of his that I could find.
Number 26 is Mrs. Minver. This is one of Williamer's best picture wins. And I think it's one of those films that's really about topical moments uh rather than kind of enduring art. The film is good. I I like the film, but there it's obviously a call to arms. Uh Gobles himself called it one of the best pieces of propaganda he had ever seen, even though Germany is never directly mentioned. Uh there's a one minor German character who in one scene and it's a wonderfully tense scene. Uh my problem is there is some weird tonal whiplash going on within this film. It's essentially two major plots. The first is about kind of the the homeront view of the war trying to deal with uh sudden privation and bombings. It's it's tense psychologically real stuff and it's it's the best parts of these films. There's a bombing scene that's all sound design and it's great. And then there is this subplot about Lady Bedum, the kind of the upper crust member of society in the London suburb who wants to win a rose competition that she holds for herself.
Um, it's it's really weird seeing these scenes where like characters die in bombings and then we are immediately brought into this Rose stuff, especially towards the end where, you know, we have this focus on, oh, our people are dying.
And then all of a sudden, oh, and Lady Bedum has to learn how to like be a better person by admitting that the yman who runs the train station is has a better rose than her. It's weird.
I It's It's the This stuff about the rose is nice. It's It's class focused and it's it's about kind of, you know, admitting that the yman has the advantages to English society. It's nice. Um, it it's weirdly placed up against all of this much more realistic war stuff, [music] though. I don't think the combination actually works very well.
However, [snorts] uh, the film is very well acted. Uh, it looks very good. The stuff focused on the Blitz Creek and that one scene with the German who kind of shows up at Mrs. Minver's house is like marvelously tense. Uh, I just I just feel like this combination of subplots clashes and undermines the film overall. I I don't mind that it's propaganda. I I find propaganda interesting when it works.
Uh, this one is not really undermined by the fact that it's propaganda. It's undermined by the fact that it has weird tonal clashes.
Number 25 is Weathering Heights. Uh, studios do this like all the time. they they want to borrow uh reputation from literary sources. So they adapt literary sources. They want to be taken seriously. And Samuel Goldwin was no different. Uh he uh funded this adaptation of the Bronte Weathering Heights. And William directs it kind of wonderfully.
Um it's he's he's the actors are all great. The compositions look all really good. The problem is the script is essentially a cliff's notes version of the film and especially like the first 40 minutes feel like these clipped abridgements of scenes pushed together just to get us through uh where you know as we introduce ourselves to Heathcliffe and Kathy they end up feeling like these just like little moments that don't breathe as actual dramatic scenes and so the building blocks of the story end up feeling really staccato and truncated.
It's really weird. [snorts] However, once Kathy marries her rich man uh and Heathcliffe leaves for a few years and then comes back, the film actually does actually settle down into a more dramatic rhythm. And the scenes in the latter half of the film play out a whole lot better. So, if you're going to have to clip parts of a a story to fit it into a relatively abbreviated runtime, you clip the beginning and you let the latter half breathe a bit more because that's what Wiler does here. And the latter half feels more compelling on its own as as individual scenes as Heathcliffe and Kathy kind of turn each against each other and try to make the other miserable through their own following of their own lives, especially when Heathcliffe marries Isabella.
[snorts] And it's compelling stuff. It's compelling grim stuff. And all of it is anchored by the fact that the performances are really really good, especially obviously from Olivier.
Olivia was a very good actor. Uh sometimes he needed direction in order to kind of draw things back. Uh but you know, Wiler does it well here. Merl Oberon is is a quality actress here. She does fine. She does well. Uh and you know what? I I think the dramatics play out pretty well. Um I I'm not the biggest fan of the book. Uh, but in terms of packaging this book into a film, this is a handsome, relatively compelling version of it. And I think Wiler covers he doesn't cover himself in glory, but he he makes the most of what he has.
Number 24 is the love trap. Now, one of my favorite things in all of film is the first sound film. a director who starts in the silent era and has to go through into the sound era. And this is Wiler's first. It was actually part silent. I I suspect I don't know the production history, but I suspect they were part of the way through production when the Jazz Singer came along and then they shut down production and when they came back they finished the rest of the film in sound. you know, they're probably roughly filming in chronological order and like the last 30 minutes is sound and the rest is silent. So, that's that's my guess. Uh, so it's the story of a young woman played by Laura La Plant. She is a penniless chorus dancer who loses her job and she ends up at a party uh run by a family and she gets a bad impression with the older man. Uh, you know, it it involved, you know, tricks around trying to get her to undress in a younger man's bedroom. Uh, it's it's actually more innocent than it sounds, but it looks really bad.
[snorts] And then she ends up cast out from her own apartment while there all of her stuff on the sidewalk. And another man, Paul, comes along and orders a series of taxi cabs to take her stuff. Now, the film is nominally a comedy, and this is where the comedy works least. Paul, a stranger, is taking all of her stuff into the countryside and ordering taxi drivers to do weird turns so that she falls into her arms and they're eventually stranded. This is supposed to be comic and it feels weirdly dangerous, which prevents it from actually being funny. [snorts] However, they end up, you know, getting married and all that stuff and Paul ends up related to the family that she went to that party with. And because of her bad reputation, because of that undressing episode, uh the family kind of rejects the marriage.
And the movie, uh this is about the time where the movie becomes a sound film and it actually becomes more of a straight drama for like 20 straight minutes where there are these very tightly written dialogue scenes of people like like in complete conflict with each other that work really really well. However, the final 10 minutes is pure comedy and it's really fun. Uh, it it takes a bunch of stuff set up early and [snorts] it completely plays it all up again and there's energy and it's it's really really funny stuff. So, the film is a shocking accomplishment for what probably happened. You know, shutting down production for a couple of months so you have to come back with, you know, a completely new production method. I think of other films that have [snorts] gone through similar things. I think of John Ford's The Black Watch, which is kind of embarrassing to watch because of decisions about how del how actors were going to deliver dialogue. Uh, and then I think of like the absolute height of it, which is the early sound stuff from Erns Lubich, which are just technical marvels.
>> [snorts] >> What's amazing here is that Wiler delivers a an ending that feels like it fits comfortably in the precode period from like 1933 and it's made in 1929 right at the start of sound. It's it's really accomplished.
But on top of that, it ends really really funny. I just I find like the first half hour weirdly like distancing in terms of its comedy. It just I don't think it works. It's a little too weirdly dangerous, but it ends very, very well.
Number 23 is Friendly Persuasion. This is based on a novel by Jessamine West, and it feels like it. Uh, the novel itself covered a period of about 40 years. Uh, Jessimine West did their own part to try to uh adapt the film to something like a few month period. It's really focused on 1862 and the arrival of some Confederate bushwhackers into southern Indiana. But I it's obvious that there was this need to hold on to particular events from the book that they just liked even if it didn't really fit. So it's the story of a Quaker family headed by Gary Cooper and they all have their little vices and their little foibless. Uh we have scenes of them going to their meeting house on verse day [snorts] when you know at the same time just down the road is the Methodist house where we can hear their singing. Uh the meeting house is quiet, almost no one speaks. Uh the Methodist church is full of singing and so you can hear it wafting over them and it's a nice little contrast. Uh there are a lot of little events, you know, uh the the youngest kid watching a a gambling match and kind of pointing out how how what is going to win each time. So he's not actually gambling, but he's kind of participating in it. Gary Cooper loving music and buying an organ, you know, all this little fun stuff. And it's just this portrait of kind of a family and a community and it's it's nice. Uh and then we have this like 20 minute long sequence where the oldest son gets trapped by a woman with three daughters and she wants him to marry one of them.
The the oldest son is played by Anthony Perkins. And it's like it's this 20 minute long scene in the middle of this movie that has never really had much narrative drive and suddenly we're just in this like one scene. Um and it's I I find it frustrating. I kind of wish it had been cut out.
Uh the actual meat of the story is the conflict between the Quaker uh ethos and uh adherence to non-violence and the approaching uh Confederate forces and [snorts] you know the eldest son h decides to take up arms and the surprising maturity that the film embraces when he is actually [snorts] firing into a crowd of Confederate cavalry men and how it's affecting him. That stuff is great. The ending of this movie is kind of great.
[snorts] The ending of this movie is kind of great. However, I really feel like the bulk of the film is just way too fatty. The the center of it is that 20-minute sequence with the woman and three daughters. It has nothing to do with anything else. It has a little something to do uh the Gary Cooper gets a faster horse that he can race against his neighbor and actually win, but that's not worth 20 minutes. Um, it's I I find the film's fattiness kind of frustrating, but the final act ultimately very very worth it because it has this very cleareyed appro approach to character and implication. It's it's very good stuff. But I it's without that big meat at the beginning.
I I really feel like this this could have been better. Um, but it is what it is and I think it's good.
Number 22 is a house divided. This is very early sound stuff and we can really feel the limitations of sound technology on Wiler visually. There are moments that are filmed silently that actually have that more three-dimensional look to them, but once there are sound, things just get flatter. It's it's an unfortunate reality of early sound design. It it kind of had to happen. It took a few years, but they did eventually break out of it. So, it's the story of Seth and Matt. They are a father son. Seth is the richest man on the island, the seaside island, where he was the first to build a house, and he has the biggest house, and he can throw together a wedding party at the drop of a hat. His wife has died, Matt's mother has died, and he writes off to have another woman come and be his wife. He settles on a middle-aged woman, but the middle-aged woman is already married.
And so, a 19-year-old girl from Montana shows up instead. And [snorts] so, uh, Seth decides to marry her. Ruth decides that she's going to stay because she wants to escape her life in Montana and Matt falls in love with Ruth and Ruth kind of falls in love with Matt. So that's the conflict. And the movie is essentially just these three characters.
Most of the action is within the house itself. There are plot twists like Seth ends up falling down the stairs and kind of uh breaking his back so he can't walk. Uh, Seth is played by Walter Houston and Seth will not take being crippled laying down. So, he works on getting himself back up, but everyone is is driven by very specific desires. Uh, you know, Seth wants a a maid that he doesn't have to pay. Ruth wants to escape, and Matt wants to escape as well, but he's also in love with Ruth.
So, it's it's all of these very specific character desires kind of thrown against each other within a very confined space, and it actually works really really well. However, I do think the character side of things is a little thin. I don't think the relationship between Seth and Matt rises up to anything other than just antagonism. They just seem to hate each other, and that's it feels kind of thin. Uh, we never have anything from Ruth until she shows up at the door. And so we don't really have a good idea of what she's running from. So there's no real contrast between what she had and what she has now. And uh I I the relationships between especially Ruth and Seth feel kind of thin. So, when we actually get to the film's ending, which is actually something of a special effects extravaganza for the time, there's a lot of highriting emotions that I don't quite buy into because I feel like the relationships and certain elements of people's characters have not been built up enough. I think this movie would have done well with about 10 extra minutes. That being said, it's pretty solid drama, and I think it it it's an a minor accomplishment.
Number 21 is The Gay Deception.
Now, this is obviously one of those films that William Wer made in attempting to mimic Erns Lubich's style, and I think it is an accomplished example of it. I don't think it is great. I don't think it's the best example of what Wiler could do with it, but it is solidly good. It's a [snorts] story of Mirabel. She is a factory worker in upstate New York, and she wins $5,000 in a lottery. And so, what does she do with it? She decides to live it up for a month and she goes to New York.
She checks into the Wall Store Hotel and she ends up meeting Sandro, a bellboy who is so cheerfully unafraid of offending anyone, including his superiors, that it just creates all these little comic opportunities. He is her bellboy when she comes in. He kind of criticizes her and her expensive hat and then he gets cheerfully fired on the elevator down because his superior witnessed it all. And then he ends up just getting a series of other jobs at other hotels and gets fired again and again and again. It is one of the recurring comic setups within the film.
However, [snorts] Sandro isn't just a kind of a a young foreignb born man. He is Prince Alisandro of the Kingdom of Aleandro. And he's he has snuck over to America to learn about the hotel business because he wants to get into the hotel business. Sure, why not? Um uh and so it's all about mistaken identity.
It's it's about farce and the relationship between Mirabel and Sandro is is kind of the core of it, but it's very like wrote stuff. The characters aren't quite deep enough to actually create emotional connection with the audience. So that by the latter parts of the film when Sandro is kind of defending her within this the context of a big society dinner where Sandro reveals himself, it it doesn't have the emotional grip of something else that like Lubich would have done at his height or even Wiler would do at his height when he's mimicking Lubich.
[snorts] Uh however, it's enough there for us to buy it. Uh just not quite enough for us to like feel it. It is a nice fun little lubic homage and I think it works well. Uh it's not the good fairy. It's not Roman Holiday. It's not How to Steal a Million, but you know what? It is good and it's entertaining and it it has some real fun to it.
Number 20 is Jezebel.
Samuel Goldwin entered into some sort of informal uh competition with David Oelsnik to release a movie based on a novel about a southern bell in pre-war South be for each other. And because Snick kept firing directors and dragging out the production of Gone with the Wind, uh Goldwin won. uh he won when he hired uh uh William Wiler to make this adaptation of Jezebel starring Betty Davis and it's good. I I there are weird elements to the story especially late that I have trouble with and I am I really wish the film had been made in color but other than that it is another actor focused uh full of strong performances incredibly well visually designed film that is an accomplished addition to the Warner Brothers catalog. So, it's the story of Miss Julie, played by Betty Davis. Uh, she is she flaunts convention wherever she goes. Uh, you know, she like rides her horse and like beats it into submission and then she walks into a society dinner thing still in her riding clothes. Oh, the controversy. And she just delights in having controversy surround her. She is engaged to Preston played by Henry Fonda and she decides to make a show early of how she is willing to just be her own woman. The convention is that unmarried women wear white to balls. She buys this red dress and she decides to make the herself the center of attention and she hates it once she gets there and Preston forces her to dance in front of everyone and it breaks the relationship. This is where I feel like the film should be made in color.
The dress looks black. I'm sure it was actually red in real life, but it looks black. Now, there were technical limitations to what they could actually do. More contractual limitations.
Technicolor was the main color factory in Hollywood at the time, and the contracts that Technicolor used with studios were extremely stringent. They didn't allow a lot of freedom from directors to actually do what they want.
So, it makes sense that Wiler would walk away from a contract like that and just film it in black and white. Uh, that being said, uh, the character of Miss Julie is awful throughout. Uh, she's interesting, but she's awful. She manipulates people, she lies to people.
Uh, she is is generally a terrible person.
uh the final few minutes of the film where Preston has come back from the north with a wife Amy and [snorts] suddenly there's you know a yellow fever outbreak in New Orleans and you know Preston gets the yellow fever and he has to be shipped off to a leopard colony and so when Miss Julie decides oh I'm going to go with him is this a change of heart or is this a continuation of her deciding that she's going to flaunt convention and just have what she wants by going with Preston and trying to be his wife even though he's already married. The movie has this implication in terms of how it's presented that uh she has actually had a change of heart, but I don't buy it at all. I think she's still a conniving woman who is just trying to steal a husband. So, it it mutes the ending for me a good bit. Still, the movie is fantastic to look at, even though I wish it was in color. It's very well acted.
Henry Fondo was a great actor. Betty Davis was very good. And you know what?
It's it's compelling on its own within the context of what it is. I just don't find the very final minutes to be what I think the film wants it to be. And I [snorts] wish it was in color.
Number 19 is Hell's Heroes. This is adaptation of the story Three Godfathers, and I think it's a little better than what John Ford made a couple decades later. Uh this is also one of his very early sound films and if you know anything about early sound film technology uh they could not capture sound outside of sets. It was really hard and so about 15% of this movie or so feels like it actually had sound captured live. There's a lot of stuff that feels like it's just you know kind of soundtracks being cut from one strip of film and added to another. There was no real mixing in the first few years.
Uh so it's it's it's an interesting thing to to witness. So again, it's the story of three bad men. They uh rob the town of New Jerusalem. They take the bank. They run out into the desert and they happen across a woman in the desert. And first thing they argue about is who gets to rape her first. It's they these are bad men. Uh there is no shying away from it. They are killers and they are potential rapists. They they are bad men. However, they can't do it because she's pregnant and she's actually giving birth right then. And so, with the woman dead, uh, having died in childbirth and the child, they suddenly have this need to do something, [music] you know, it's like, what are they going to do with this baby? And they decide they have to go back to New Jerusalem. And so, it's a journey of hardship. Uh, there's never uh they never lose sight of comedy. Uh there's this running argument between a couple of them about who shot who that actually reverses [music] as the film goes uh as they're trying to kind of, you know, make themselves better [music] men. And they slowly die off until they actually get to New Jerusalem on Christmas Day. It's not the most subtle of things. Uh and I really feel like it is [snorts] the better packaging of the idea of bad men getting better by self-sacrifice [music] through helping a baby. It's it's good stuff. Where the film falters is that scene with the woman. It is a shockingly long scene for a surprisingly short film. The movie is like 70 minutes long and I think this [music] scene is like 15. It It's really long and it really feels like the sort of thing that was happening in early sound where you producers and creatives were saying people are buying tickets for sound. We need to give them sound.
So where can we up the amount of sound within the context of this film? and they chose this one scene [laughter] and you know it's obviously filmed on a set and they it just it it kind of goes on way [music] too long. I kind of wish the film had been made like 2 or 3 years later when we were still in the pre-code period so you could still have these terrible people but the sound element was more solidified. That way we could have more evened out the actual application of sound across the film and not just like frontloaded it into this one scene. Uh the the film is good. I I [music] really think the character journey is earned and uh it's surprisingly funny and entertaining as it goes. I just I really feel like that one sound section just kind of is so flabby it kind of drags the film for a large section.
Number 18 [music] is The Liberation of LB Jones. This is Wiler's very final film and it was a critical disappointment and a financial failure and he was never able to work again. And you know what? I think the film is actually quite good. It was obviously made in the wake of the success of In the Heat of the Night and uh I think this is actually a little better. It is a story of Lord Byron Jones. He is the black undertaker of a small Tennessee town called Somerset. He's married to a younger woman named Emma. and Emma is having an essentially open affair with the local police officer Willie Joe. Uh Jones wants a divorce from Emma, so he approaches uh Hedgepath uh played by Lee Jay Cobb who is a the local lawyer. And the entire film is ultimately about how you know there is law and then there is the unspoken law that keeps unjust systems thriving and hedge path ends up um sympathizing more with Willie Joe than with Jones because if the the the affair comes out Willie Joe will suffer.
He'll suffer professionally and his family will leave him. Now, if this movie has a flaw, this movie does have a flaw. It's Willie Joe himself. It's two, it's multifaceted. It has two main elements. The first is that as presented, Willie Joe is nothing more than a monster. Uh [snorts] he slaps Emma around. He's having this sort of open affair with another man's wife. And he actually rapes a girl at one point in the film. And he's so completely unrepentant. there is absolutely no dramatic room for him to have any sort of wrinkle around him. It's just it's just flat out he's a bad guy. [snorts] The other aspect is that he does have wife and children and we never see them.
Not once. They are mentioned but we never actually see them. Uh this is an issue because it it feeds into the idea that he's actually just this monster and we actually need him to have more wrinkles [music] to make him more interesting. So, I don't wouldn't expect him to be like this great family man, but like him like having a good relationship [music] with his son would be something.
And so the unspoken rules that Hedgepath is kind of sort of enforcing by giving uh Jones bad advice about trying to get Emma to drop her suit to prevent the divorce ultimately leads to actual tragedy where all of these hush conversations behind closed doors in order to pres preserve the real law of the town ends up leading to tragedy.
[snorts] And it's really compelling stuff. It really is. Um, there's this interesting kind of subplot where Yafet Cotto shows up. He's a minor character kind of flirting behind the in the background of scenes. He's there because he wants to kill a police officer who beat him 15 years before. And so, he has this mirrored journey as Jones and Willie Joe that really kind of gives the film this thematic textual quality that I really appreciate. Still, Willie Joe is just kind of a badly written character. He's one note, and I I really feel like he needs to be uh more multifaceted. Uh I really feel like that would have helped the drama a lot.
Still, overall, the film is good. It's It's surprisingly good. It is. It is quite good.
Number 17 is Detective Story. Uh this is interesting. It's based on a stage play and it's something of an ensemble piece but with an actual central character.
The central character is played by Kirk Douglas. He is a detective in the 21st precinct of New York. His central focus is on a case around Schneider, a a doctor who has a baby mill thing. That's that's bad. Apparently, the original was that he was actually an abortionist, but Hayes Code uh forced this to change into something like a baby mill factory.
Yeah. What does that mean? It means that he's like doing he's delivering babies on the cheap or something. It's it's it's a weird little change. But there are a couple of other little cases going on at the same time. There's a young man who stole $800 to, you know, from his employer in order to fund his model girlfriend's life. Uh he is there not with his girlfriend but with his girlfriend's sister who is, you know, actively trying to support them and they develop a little romance which is actually one of the nicest parts of the film. The other is a pair of cat burglars. And so what we end up seeing across these three main things, mostly seeing through the eyes of a minor character, a young woman who stole a handbag, who occasionally comments on what she sees, is these different levels of criminality and how kind of individual responsibility evolves over time as criminality increases. So the young man who stole the $800, well, you know what, that's his first offense and it could get worse.
>> [snorts] >> And Kirk Douglas is seeing that it could end up like the cat burglars or even Schneider. And um how Douglas handles all of this, you know, he's just kind of bouncing between the cases and, you know, questioning things is really compelling. However, where the movie has one scene that I kind of hate, um, there is this reveal between Schneider and Kirk Douglas's wife and it leads to Kirk Douglas having one of these big actor focused moments and I feel like it's wrong. [snorts] Uh, you know, Douglas is giving all he can to make it the performance of his life.
It's it's a good performance in a moment. I just feel like the moment is wrong because it keeps him being this one note cop. You know, he's kind of a proto dirty hairy who follows his own rules instead of doing something else.
You know, what I came up with was like him having a blind spot about his wife's past. You know, where he discovers that his wife is not as pure as he thought, but he's like, I don't believe it because my wife is pure, even though it's like the truth. I I think that would have been more interesting. I I kind of hate this one scene. However, everything outside of that is kind of great. Once again, we have Wiler just making the limited amount of set space interesting from beginning to end because he just knows how to frame a shot and he does it over and over and over again. Acting is really good. The evolution of the plot as things move on is really interesting. I just I kind of hate that one scene, but everything else is kind of great.
Number 16 is Counselor at Law.
Uh this is another early sound film from Wiler. It's largely set in a single set and because of the limitations of that production uh matched with the limitations of sound design at the time.
Wiler actually is in his element here.
He has a limited space, but that gives him more time to actually find interesting camera angles. And the film looks really good. It's one of his best looking early sound films. It's really, really good. It's a story of a prominent New York attorney played by John Barrymore. He's just won a murder case.
He's got his client off of murdering her husband and he's got a bunch of plates spinning in the air. Like he has inside information about a a Supreme Court decision that's about to be handed out and he's trying to take advantage of it through his uh stock broker. He's got a wife who obviously is having an affair with someone else, but John Barrymore doesn't care. Uh he's too busy. Uh he's got a secretary who's obviously smitten with him. He's got a junior attorney who's something of a communist. It's interesting. Uh and he is all of these plates are spinning. However, the portrait the the the film is not a portrait of a man whose kind of life is kind of a bit out of control. It's the portrait of a man whose life is about to collapse. And that happens when it comes out that his first big case uh is based on a lie. uh some uh uh witness for someone he defended ends up having uh lied about it and has been revealed that to the district attorney and [snorts] everything could collapse. And so he has to manage all of that along with all of these different pieces of his life. And it is this self-reflection of a man who made himself who brought himself from the old country and you know grew up in a Jewish ghetto and reached the top of American life and he's on the verge of having to go back to that ghetto. And this portrait of a man is really hinged on Barry Moore's performance. This was a later performance from Barry Moore. He was apparently in declining health, but he is a very good actor and he like he gives such life and humanity to this man who is watching his life potentially fall apart. Uh it's it's really good character study. There's all these wonderful biting scenes of dialogue between people that work really really well and it's wonderfully compelling. It is just this very good early sound film from Wiler that shows that he is really evolving as a filmmaker into someone who can take, you know, a popular play that Universal purchases and really make it feel cinematic, make it feel alive on its own.
Number 15 is The Collector. Now, this movie has four credited actors, and one of them is seen from behind for like one shot. Uh, the original cut of this film was apparently about 3 hours long, and it's just about two hours now. So, one of those characters got cut down to just the back of his head. Um, so it's it's really a story of two people. One is uh Terrence Stamp. He's an awkward young man who suddenly came into a bunch of money and he buys a tutor mansion. and he has loved this woman from afar for a while, played by Samantha Edgars. And he decides that he's going to kidnap her, keep her in his basement, and make her fall in love with him. Why should she fall in love with him? Can he sing? Can he dance? Can he tell a story? No, he can't do anything. And he wouldn't even dain to tell her a dirty joke because that's not what gentlemen do. He has nothing. Um, but he he chloroforms her.
brings her in and he he chains her down and he expects her to fall in love. And of course, this is not going to work. Uh the film would be boring if it weren't made by Wiler. It uh it's it's very Hitchcockian. Wiler actually decided not to use Bernard Herman as the composer for the film because he already knew that the comparisons with Hitchcock were so strong. So uh it it it is sort of like his Hitchcock movie. Uh but it is really limited to this very small space where it's essentially a couple of sets and two actors. There's a third actor who actually does show up for a prominent scene and it's just this conversation back and forth about how they can never fall in love that Terrence Stamp will not receive. Uh there's this wonderful scene in the middle where the neighbor comes by and introduces himself. But at the same time that Terrence Stamp has allowed Samantha Edgars to bathe and [snorts] you know so he has to like tie her up in the bathroom and try to get the guy out as fast as possible. The guy uh shows him a priest hole in the house which never comes up. I imagine it does than like the three-hour cut. Um so you know there are elements of a longer cut that feel like missing within the context of the film. However, the the it it's a really effective little look at how this crazy young man cannot make the connection.
The actual connective moment is when he tries to talk to her about Catcher and the Rye and they cannot come to an agreement. It's it's it kind of breaks him. And so, the ending is is tragic and terrifying and I kind of love it. And it's a sort of thing that would have been really really effective immediately after the fall of the haze code in the opening up of censorship requirements in England. And I think it works really really well. This movie is something of a hidden gem. [snorts] It could be a good entry point to people who are trying to discover movie history but like really need genre. This this could be a really good entry point for you.
Number 14 is Come and Get It. And quite coincidentally, it's also number 14 in my Howard Hawks list. Uh, this movie is really good. It is uh, as I said in my other video, it is a production that was cut up in two. Samuel Goldwin hired Howard Hawks to make this film. Goldwin was unhappy with how Hawks was approaching the material, fired him, and brought on Wiler. This creates scenes that feel very distinctly made by different filmmakers. Wiler had a more sophisticated three-dimensional approach to film making, although he couldn't build like his favorite two-tiered set, so he made the most in what he had.
[snorts] Uh, it's the story of a a tree baron in uh the American North who made his fortune uh foresting and then kind of the generational tale as his his children kind of move on from him. And it's really a story about loss, about how, you know, you can't hold on to everything because our main character, you know, he yearns for a younger woman who looks like the woman he fell in love with before, but he can't have her.
[snorts] And it's ultimately quite tragic. Uh it's but at the same time uplifting at the same time. No one really dies. It's just an old man kind of learning that he can't have everything. It's a man who bought everything. who who who made himself into everything by building up this empire of forestry suddenly presented with something that he can't just buy anymore. You know, he spent decades just buying things and he can't buy this which would make him happy. It's it's tragic but at the same time heartwarming as he's ringing that final bell in the end saying come and get it and he's accepting the limitations of what he can do. Um it's it's wonderfully acted by everyone all around it. It's shocking how cohesive the production is considering the history of it. Yes, there the like the two halves or so of the film look relatively different.
Again, it's it's not like Wiler was, you know, heavily influenced by German expressionism and, you know, there were suddenly a bunch of shadows everywhere.
It's just, you know, uh, compositions gained three dimensions, which Hawks didn't really, you know, emphasize all that much. Uh but still, you know, firing a director and bringing someone else on, that's that's really uh disruptive. And having a cohesive film like this, especially when the reason Hawks was fired was he was going off script so much that it just it it works so wonderfully well, is kind of testament to the talents of both men.
It's just it it is a very good film. And I I really don't think it gets enough appreciation from either fan base, uh, Hawks or Wiler. It's it's really good and I think it deserves more attention.
Number 13 is The Desperate Hours. Uh, this movie is it's essentially a proto Straw Dogs by Sam Peekenpaw. If this didn't inspire Sam Peek andPaw in some way, I would actually be somewhat surprised because it is a movie about violence. Uh, it's the story of a trio of prison escapees who decide to randomly shack up in a suburban town outside of Indianapolis as they wait for one of their girls to show up with some money from Pittsburgh. And the lead robber is played by um the lead prisoner is played by Humphrey Bogart and the patriarch of the little suburban family is played by Frederick March. And the sense of terror is so complete that the prisoners bring to their family, you know, essentially reversing the roles that they had had in prison that when he lets them go out and live their lives normally over the course of the 3-day siege, we completely believe that like the father or the mother won't say anything to anybody because their kids are still there and they could get hurt And we fully believe that the three prisoners led by Bogart would hurt them. It's it's this is a film that really really relies on performance and the two central performances are by Bogart and March and they are wonderful. Bogart is just threatening and awful and it's it's one of his more interesting performances and I kind of love it. Uh March is the more interesting one. Uh he's a man who has removed himself from violence in the world. He's he's [music] grown up. He's brought his family up in this safe suburban environment. And it's actually unclear if he's ever encountered violence before. Marge was obviously part of a generation that could have participated in World War II, but it's never clear if he actually did as a character here. And [snorts] so, suddenly faced with violence, something that he has actually actively assued for a long time, he has to grow as a character in order to kind of embrace it. Uh I do have an issue with this movie where I just feel like it's first like hundred minutes or something is a little a little too loose. I I I wouldn't cut individual scenes, but I would want, you know, a couple months in the editing bay to bring it down by like 10 minutes, just, you know, chipping away at scenes here and there to kind of make them a bit tighter. But the final 20 minutes is remarkable. It's taught.
It takes everything that has been brought up before and brings it all together. It is wonderful, wonderful film making. The last 20 minutes is outright great. And it is great in a way that is building on what came before.
This movie is so good.
Number 12 is Dodsworth.
Uh this movie is is great. Uh it's the story of Sam. He is a rich industrialist. He built up a car company from the ground up and he sold to a larger company and he's suddenly faced with retirement. So he takes his wife Fran and they go on a transatlantic cruise to Europe and it becomes obvious that they don't actually know each other. They've been married for 20 years. They kind of start the film marrying off their daughter. Uh but they don't really know each other. It almost feels like a honeymoon rather than just kind of a a vacation and they immediately start to part ways. uh you know she kind of flirts with the captain of the vessel played by David Nan. He ends up developing a little relationship with Edith who it seems like a more natural match but they eventually reach Paris and they kind of try to make it work but the way they interact is more about like scheduling business meetings where they have to meet up later in the day as they go off in different directions. He goes to museums. She tries to ingratiate herself in society.
[snorts] And this break just continues where Sam ends up feeling dedicated to Frra even though she ends up obviously cakolding him with a man named Iceland and he goes back home. You the relationship with Iceland fails and she comes back but the relationship just it cannot sustain. And so you know in Europe they end up splitting again. you know, he ends up connecting with Edith again. She finds a baron and they just end up completely different people. And [snorts] what makes this work is that everything that kind of went into creating the characters from their backstories to their interactions to the actual little plot mechanics that they follow through is that everything crescendos into one focused ending that's focused entirely on emotional catharsis. And it is wonderful how it works out where Sam has to grow as a character [snorts] where Sam has to realize that Fran is essentially a monster that you know she is completely unappreciative of everything she has and that she desires something she can never have which is acceptance into a society that will never accept her. It's this is wonderfully complex stuff. It's based on a play which is based on the Sinclair Lewis novel and it works wonderfully well. This is a great film. It's it's kind of small and in terms of its scope.
We do like get tours of Europe and stuff, but ultimately it's really just a story about essentially a couple. And it works marvelously well. Uh I find it interesting because it's also ultimately in support of divorce and it actually sells it really really well because these two people just probably shouldn't be together. [snorts] Uh the movie is wonderful. It has Wiler's wonderful visual flare. It has Wiler's incredible work with actors. It's got a bunch of great performances. The movie is great.
Number 11 is The Big Country.
Now, this is kind of the movie that kicked off my desire to discover William Wiler. It was in my Netflix DVD queue forever ago. It slowly made its way up and I eventually watched it and I was kind of blown away. Here's the man who directed Ben Hurst starring Gregory Peek and uh Charlton H and Jean Simmons and it's it's this great movie and it's like I'd never heard of it before. What's going on? And so it kind of kickstarted my desire to discover the rest of Wilder and it's I I have this interesting reaction to it because there are parts of it I actively actually dislike.
There's an implicit moral equivalence where the film is kind of this analogy between the United States and the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War, which I just I wish I didn't know about the film because it irritates me. And it doesn't affect the actual story within the context of the story. I like it. Um, and I don't actually like Gregory Peek like at all. I I I have never seen a performance from him where I'm like, "This is the guy where it's like no one else could have done this better or anything like that." or even just like no one else could have done this better and it would have been hard to find someone. Um I I find him stiff as board.
I don't like him. And it's the same thing here. So that's interesting way to start my rave of this film where I don't like the main actor. Uh he plays uh McKay. He's a new arrival in this farm in this ranch and the ranch is having a conflict with the neighboring Hennessy ranch run by Burl Ies. And everyone around McKay, everyone around Peek is great. Jean Simmons is great. Charlton H is great. Burl Ives is great. And they create this reality of just stuff around him that completely makes up for him. Uh McKay is written as the new socialist man. He has absolutely no flaw in him and he's always right and that kind of irritates me. But he has these great scenes like his first night he arrives in the in the ranch, he just goes off.
He he's a Navy man. He knows how to use the stars to navigate, but he just goes off and he's able to navigate himself back without problem because he uses the stars and everyone is surprised at it, but he's like, "Yeah, I do it." Then there's that great scene where he and Charlton H like beat each other in the middle of the night with no one watching. It's a fantastic moment.
[snorts] And the overall plot is this conflict between the two ranches where they're arguing over water rights. And it's actually this really compelling look at how these two sides just cannot find a middle ground and in walks McKay who actually helps make it happen. It's really compelling stuff. I I genuinely love the film, but I just have these weird issues off to the side that I can't quite resolve. The the Cold War analogy and the fact that I don't like Gregory Peek. Um that being said, I don't let Gregory Peek's presence drag the film down. Um he's he's fine in the role. Uh I would have preferred someone like even like a Joel McCrae would have been more interesting. Uh that being said, the movie is genuinely a grand entertainment. It is a great western entertainment in the tradition of stuff like The Searchers. I I love the film. I just I have these weird issues about it because whatever.
Number 10 is How to Steal a Million.
Now, uh, old Hollywood had this reverence around Erns Lubich where no one really felt like they could replicate him where his particular brand of comedy was very specific to Lubich himself. Wiler, I think, had the Lubich touch. The Lubich touch is a very specific joke construction as described by Billy Wilder. And I think Wilder was able to do it well. Wilder was a bit more overt in terms of sex than Lubich was. Uh, and Wiler had it. Wiler was very good at it. And I think this is a great example of that. So, it's the story of Nicole played by Audrey Hepburn. She is the daughter of Charles who is a an art forger. He has just made his greatest coup, which is selling a fake Saan for half a million dollars.
[snorts] And, you know, he won't stop.
you know, he's he's working on a new fake Van Gooff. How they pronounce Van Go entertains me. And they um uh but he he won't stop. They have enough money and it's all fine. And into their lives comes Simon. He breaks into their house in the middle of the night. Nicole finds him. He's got the Van Go. She obviously thinks he's a thief. And she, you know, the interplay between them is just the perfect stuff of romantic comedy. Peter Oul and Audrey Hepburn had obvious chemistry and Wiler allows them to play and it's it's very fun stuff. However, [snorts] the actual plot of the film is that uh the Charles's father created a fake sculpture and it is now on loan to the French Museum and the French museum is bringing in an expert to make sure that it is authentic. So, if it gets authenticated, they're going to discover it's 500 years old and not a couple of hundred years old. So, Nicole needs to have the statue stolen, and she knows only one thief, and it's Simon. And so, they have to work together to have this statue stolen. And it's wonderful stuff.
There's one like threeinut sequence during the beginning of the actual thief part, the actual heist that irritates me because it goes on for so long. And it's about like recreating like getting a key through magnets through a wall. And I just wish they had like shortcircuited it with like, hey, I made an impression of the key. Let's just go. Um, outside of that, it's like the there's this wonderful escalation as things just kind of go crazier as they're relying on human nature and some bits of technology to get them through.
And it's really fun. What kind of pushed this into just love for me was the fact that there's a subplot dealing with Eli Wallik. He wants the statue, but he also wants to marry Nicole. [snorts] And this just felt like an extra bit of business for a long time until the end of the film where all of the subplots kind of coales into one thing. And it just tickled me so much. A lot like a lot of Erns Lubich's best movies, all I can really do is sit back and say, "Ain't it grand?" And that's what I end up doing here. This movie entertains me so thoroughly, and I love it.
Number nine is The Children's Hour. And it doesn't happen often, but sometimes filmmakers remake films that they made earlier. This is a remake of these three, and it actually might be more accurate to call it a readaptation of the stage play. [snorts] These three took out the actual kind of secret hidden beneath the characters. On the stage play, it was latent lesbianism.
And in these three, it became an affair between a man and a woman. Here, the Wiler retains the latent lesbianism. And I think the film is a little less great than these three. And it has it doesn't have to do with the change in subject matter. It has to do with kind of a late stage character decision. I think the movie is great overall. I just feel like there's a small misstep late. So, it's the story of a children's school run by Karen and Martha. Karen is played by Audrey Hburn. Martha is played by Shirley Mlan. Karen is engaged to Joe, played by James Gardner, and [snorts] they have put in all the work and they've made the school into a small profitable enterprise. And they also have Lily, who is one of their like aunts, who is kind of an aged actress who's out of work. She's played by Marian Hopkins wonderfully. Um, and she just kind of leeches off of them. And [snorts] then one of their problem students, Mary, decides to invent a lie about how Karen and Martha are actually lesbian lovers. And she tells her grandmother, Amelia, and Amelia begins to believe the rumor and spreads the rumor. And the school fails. And we end up with a a trial uh with kind of like escalating emotional tensions as things fall apart and a trial. And it's all so well-andled. I I looked up one of the New York Times' reviews of it and they actually critiqued the film for not including the trial. And trial scenes are awful. And I am so happy it's not in here because what's important is the emotional change as uh Karen and Martha get increasingly bitter towards Lily, who could have kind of gone to the trial as a witness and helped them, but she disappeared to act for a few weeks. And [snorts] so what's important is the betrayal from Lily and not showing up and helping. Uh the latest stage uh uh issue I have uh is around Karen and Joe.
Uh Joe has stood by her through the whole thing and then Karen rejects her because of like a doubt that he has in his mind. Uh and you know she pushes him away and I just feel like it's wrong especially since that doubt is something that actually ends up mattering to her.
I it feels a little wrong. I it doesn't break the film by any measure, but it's just it's something that isn't in these three that is in here. And I it's I don't quite buy it. It feels just the slightest bit wrong. However, Joe is more of a sideshow in this, so him like being pushed out a little unnaturally is not a big deal. Um [snorts] the film uh ends in tragedy, as it probably should, and I love it. This is a great return to kind of the more contained films that Wiler obviously thrived in after the bigness of the big country. And it's it's kind of great. It it is great.
Number eight is the letter. So William Wiler got hired by Warner Brothers to make a noir and he made a ripper of a noir. Uh, this is all salacious and compelling and beautiful to look at with heavy shadows done in an exotic location and it's just great noir stuff. Betty Davis plays Leslie. She starts the film shooting a man Jeffrey in the back as he flees her house. He shoots her, she shoots him four times in the back as he's laying on the ground dying. And everyone agrees, you know, the Leslie's reputation as a good woman, Jeffrey's reputation as a womanizer. It it makes it clear, well, Leslie was obviously acting in self-defense when Jeffrey tried to rape her. However, this being civil society, the rules must be followed and so starts a an investigation. This is actually an interesting contrast to the to the liberation of LB James. Uh, and the investigation focuses on Leslie's lawyer, Joyce. He discovers that there is the aonomous letter, the letter written by Jeffrey to Leslie from that morning that kind of makes it clear that they were having an affair and that she killed him in cold blood. And uh we have this wonderful dynamic. So, it's set in like a colonial setting. And so, we have this wonderful visual contrast between colonial era stuff and, you know, the the actual natives where Joyce has to actually go into like a Chinese shop surrounded by all this, you know, Chinese stuff in order to negotiate something that is colonial in nature.
It's kind of wonderful to watch it play out. And [snorts] where the film really really shines is in this character-based reveal of Leslie's monster qualities. She she's kind of a terrible person. And we are watching that develop as information gets revealed over time. And the fact that Leslie is not our main character is actually a huge advantage. It's all being seen through the eyes of Joyce.
You know, he we're discovering things along with him. and it just it kind of helps maintain the various similitude of the entire film. Uh it's it's it's seedy noir stuff. It is so elegantly made. It is one of his best looking films. Uh there it starts with this wonderful tracking shot uh that shows that moves kind of like through the poorer parts of this little plantation towards the door of the uh of the bungalow where Jeffrey runs out and gets shot. It's I the movie is just this wonderful example of a great filmmaker walking into a genre that he's not really like familiar with because he's never really made it and just making a great example of it. It really recalls how Hawks had never made a noir before and then he made the big sleep which is [snorts] great and then he never made another noir. It's it's interesting like the best filmmakers can kind of do this sort of stuff and William Wiler was definitely definitely one of the best filmmakers.
Number seven is these three. This is the original version of the children's hour as directed by William Wiler, obviously based on a play called The Children's Hour. And this is obviously the one that removed the lesbianism for an affair.
And I think it works a little better. Um uh it's it has to do with the fact that it's it's missing a change late. It's missing a decision late in the film that the children's hour does and the fact that it actually has a happy ending. Are you allowed to have are you allowed to like happy endings more than daer endings? Um I I think it can work uh if it's earned. It's a story of Martha played by Miriam Hopkins who plays Lily in the later version and Karen played by Merl Oberon. Uh Karen is engaged to Joe this time played by Joel McCraea.
[snorts] And you know, the first 30 minutes is kind of light comedy as everyone gets to be known. You know, we get to know Lily, the aunt, we get to know Karen, we get to know um Martha, we get to know uh the little girl who decides that she's going to invent a story about an affair that isn't happening. [snorts] And then all of that works really well as the film progresses because we end up really liking a lot of these people, especially our main three characters as things fall apart around them. And you know, the the real anger that the characters feel towards Lily for disappearing ends up benefiting the film really a whole lot because we started liking these people and we want them to get off and we know that they are innocent of the charges. Uh and [snorts] so where this film differs from the uh the remake is that yes, it's not the lesbianism, it's an affair and we we have a happy ending. You know, it's the truth comes out and little Mary gets her comeuppins and it feels earned. It it feels like the the film actually was working towards this ending where something good could happen. It doesn't have to end in like the relationships falling apart and people potentially even dying. It doesn't have to end with that. It can end with good being triumphant and a little girl who decides to be a little monster getting her comeuppants. That's fine. Uh so I I they are fairly equal in terms of quality. I think they make different choices um in terms of how they actually play things out late. I I I I still wish The Children's Hour hadn't had that weird resolution with Joe. Um, and I feel like Joe standing by his woman through all of this through all of these accusations and everything or the woman in this case, the woman standing by him [snorts] is beneficial. It's it's it's heartening. It's we're we're seeing, you know, good people triumph. And you know what? Sometimes that can work in drama, and that's fine. Uh, you know, it's I I love this film. I I think it's wonderful. I I don't have niggling issues with it like I do with the children's hour. I think it's wonderful.
I I loved these three.
Number six is Benhur.
This is an absolutely grand entertainment. It is pure Christian entertainment and it is apparently ground zero of why the young Turks at the Kahi de Cinema hated or were largely dismissive of William Wiler. They saw it as impersonal Hollywood film making instead of personal stuff that you know they ended up making. Do you know what?
Screw him. This movie is great. Uh, this movie is an an amazing technical achievement. It is an incredibly intimate portrait of a man, you know, torn between identities. It is full of spectacle and human weight. And I absolutely love all of it. It is 4 hours. It flies by. It is one of those heights of when the studios were just trying to drag people out of their homes away from their televisions by giving them huge entertainments that they couldn't see at home. You know, you cannot see Benhur on an on an 8 in black and white television. You have to go and see it in Cinemascope at your local Cinniplex block book today. Um th this movie is both the grand spectacle and the intimate character portrait that is kind of the staple the the grand [music] achievement of epic film making where you are telling incredibly human stories through grand sites. So watching Judah Benhur go into slavery [music] and break himself out and you know uh achieve vengeance upon his uh enemy who was his friend a long time ago is satisfying.
But the film is more than that. It's it's ultimately about redemption. It's about forgiveness and it's about you kind of moving on. And so as the movie [music] continues for like another 30 minutes after the end of the chariot race when the literal plot of the film has been resolved, it it [music] makes perfect sense. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that Wiler himself was able to adapt the novel so well. Thi this is [music] an incredible human story just told with, you know, thousands of extras and giant sets and matte paintings all over the place. It is it is an incredible entertainment.
It's touching on a human level and I absolutely love it. Charlton H gives an absolutely powerhouse performance. He was genuinely a great actor. Even when he's in minor stuff like the greatest show on earth, he's giving some of the most compelling [music] stuff within the entire film. And when you put him in the middle of all of this, it's just it's it's going to be a little harder for him to stand out because he's surrounded by so much great stuff. But it's he is the anchor on which everything is built and it is great. I I I adore this film. This film is amazing.
Number five is Roman Holiday. Remember how I said I don't like Gregory Peek while talking about The Big Country? I actually like Peek here. It's kind of one the one example of his acting where I'm like, you know what? I think you fit. I think you're doing the right thing. Uh it's the story of Princess Anne played by Andre Hepburn. It's essentially one of her first roles and uh she is completely controlled during her whirlwind tour of Europe. So she decides that she's going to escape one night and she ends up bumping into Gregory Peek who has no idea who she is because this obviously would not be Princess Anne. She's just some rich drunk girl. And so he lets her stay in his apartment for the night. And he ends up discovering that he's got the scoop of his life. He is a newspaper man and he could easily raise $5,000 from a covert interview and a series of pictures taken by his photographer friend uh Eddie Albert and you know make a small fortune on off of it which would get him out of Rome which he is [music] his desire and the film is based on this deception a two-natured deception and uh character work and uh charm of actors and [snorts] it's obvious that Pek and Hepburn actually had a bit of chemistry, which is why I think that yeah, I don't mind Peek in this film. Uh it's it's this wonderful growth of a relationship between the two as they're both hiding realities about them. [music] And yes, this is very much a Lubich film. You know, it's I love talking about Lubich because I feel like he's underappreciated, but you know, Wiler was an avowed Lubich fan and he brought him out whenever he could. And this is very much that. You know, you have uh the Lubich touch, which is that specific tier of a joke. And we see it play out very early when Audrey Hepburn has to, you know, she's getting bored standing and greeting people. So, she takes a foot out of her heel and then she sits down, but she leaves the heel out and it's this little bit of business as people have to cover it up. It's the escalation of the situation that creates the joke, which is the exact structure that Erns Lubich built. Uh, I have to say that this was embracing a more cinema verite production style. You know, just going out onto Rome and filming the streets. I've lived in Rome and so watching them just kind of jaunt from the Trevy Fountain to the Spanish Steps is always kind of funny cuz it would take a little while to walk between the two. Um, but you know that change in production methods doesn't allow Wiler to have like the intricate visual aesthetic that he's [music] most famous for when he's more setbound. So, it it feels a bit more generic visually.
However, that does kind of fit uh Lubich's overall style. Lubich was not a great intricate visualist. He was more, you know, focused on actors and comedy.
And so I think Wiler is prioritizing the right thing by deciding, okay, I can let go of the intricate visual quality while I focus on actors as they go through these specific character beats and comic beats. [music] It's it's genuinely a wonderful film. I I I love the film. I think it's wonderfully entertaining and touching, and it is one of William's crowning achievements.
Number four is The Best Years of Our Lives. This is another one of his best picture winners and I adore this film.
It is the story of three men coming back from World War II who decide to pick up their lives in the same small town. And it's obviously born from the fact that Wiler actually did serve time in the military during World War II making films. He was a a part of a a small group of filmmakers who did that like John Ford and George Kukor.
and he obviously developed this incredibly strong affinity for the men that he served beside and filmed and talked to. So these are marvelously human characters played by Dana Andrews, Frederick Marge, and Harold Russell.
Harold Russell was obviously a real World War II vet who lost both of his hands. And th this plays particularly well into the film. It's it's kind of his major thing within the film. And so we have these three main characters who are trying some way to reconnect with life. Dana Andrews is trying to reconnect with his wife who kind of can't stand him. Can't stand the fact that she has to degrade the level of her existence in terms of like quality of living once he returns because his, you know, army pay is done. Frederick March is a family man who has to reconnect with his family, in particular his daughter Teresa Wright, who ends up developing a little love affair with Dana Andrews. And then Russell has to kind of uh show the world that especially his family that he can be a real man even though he doesn't have his hands anymore. And I think Russell is he he gets a lot of attention because he was a non-acctor and he actually won two Oscars for this role which no one else has done. and he won an honorary Oscar uh because no one thought he would win and then he won the actual award. Um and I think it's a testament to Wiler as a director's filmmaker because he completely understands Russell's limitations as an actor. He he films him very very tightly. Not necessarily in terms of like an an inordinate amount of close-ups or anything like that, but in terms of what he's asked to do. You know, there's a moment where he cries and we actually just see the back of him. So, Wiler was not trusting him to actually cry on camera in a convincing way, but he found a way to have the moment, make it emotionally resonant, but not actually demand too much of his actor. It's really interesting. Uh, and speaking of another actor, Dana Andrews, I don't like Dana Andrews. I It's I've seen him in a bunch of stuff. like the stuff that he started with Fritz Lang uh is he's kind of awful and he's a drag and everything. Uh it's he's really only brought out by a couple of filmmakers.
Uh Wiler brings out the best of him and Otto Premier surprisingly another filmmaker I have issues with. Um brings out [snorts] the best in Dana Andrews and here he's he's quite good. You know, it's not the best performance we could ever imagine, but he's surprisingly solid and grounded as he tries to navigate the conflicting relationship with his wife, the fact that his like new buddy that he shared war with, well, sort of, um, is is the father of this girl that he suddenly has feelings for.
It It's all like complex stuff and it's all human stuff. As you we have this portrait of these people who are just trying to live their lives in a world that they don't really know anymore.
It's wonderful. It's heartfelt. It is touching. And I absolutely love it.
Number three is The Good Fairy.
You know, people don't respect comedies, but when comedies work, they're wonderful. This is another Lubich homage, and it has heavy Preston Sturgis influences. He wrote the screenplay.
This was before he started directing.
And it's this wonderful combination of different kind of approaches to comedy.
So our main character's name is Louisa Ginglebusher. Uh which is, you know, Preston Sturgis like to make silly names. Uh but everything about the kind of the nature of uh um of farce and masquerade is is obviously stuff derived from Lubich. Uh there's stuff about like the corruption of money, which is kind of a Preston Surges thing. Um, so it it's a combination of of a couple different mentalities within comedy that actually merge together really well under the opaces of William Wiler directing. So it's the story of our Louisa played by Margaret Sullivan. She is an innocent young girl taken from an orphanage to be to work in a movie theater and she runs into a the butler of a nearby hotel who kind of decides to protect her and invite her to a party.
And at the party she meets Conrad, played wonderfully by Frank Morgan. And uh you know, Frank Morgan is playing this character who's very uncomfortably a womanizer. And we have this scene in a private dining room that kind of mirrors something from the merry widow made the year before that was made in pre-code.
This made was made during the code era.
And uh there's no bedroom in the room in this one where there was a bed there was a bed in the room in the Merry Widow. Uh so the implication has been shorn away but it's obvious that uh Frank Morgan is trying to sleep with her even though he's very uncomfortable with it. And [snorts] a lot of the comedy is our butler played u is our butler friend trying to get her out while trying to make her realize that she's in this situation that she probably shouldn't be in and definitely doesn't understand.
[snorts] And so she decides to be the good fairy and she says that she has a husband. and she picks a random name out of the phone book and says, "This man is my husband. Go give him a job." And Morgan decides to do it. Uh, however, uh, she feels bad about that and so she go and so she goes visits this man played by Herbert Marshall and she tries to make it up for him by saying, "Oh, by getting him to kind of decline the job."
Uh, and so again, they meet, they fall in love, there's masquerade, there's farce, and it's just delightful from beginning to end. The light touch of comedy, uh, the escalation of comic set pieces within individual scenes is all stuff from Lubich, and Wiler handles it rather perfectly. You know, this is partly written, but a lot of it has to do with how it's filmed and it's edited.
And it's he handles it so incredibly well that I really feel like if there was actually a crediting issue and this was actually a Lubich film, I would totally believe it. Um, this really does feel like the most Lubich film that Lubich ever made. You know, you have to give a lot of credit to Preston Surge for writing it, you know, and he definitely inserts himself into it. So, it's not just like Lubich homage, but Wiler takes the entire package and he makes a wonderfully entertaining film out of it. It's uh increasing visual sophistication after the introduction of sound. Uh it's wonderfully acted by everyone, especially by Sullivan and Frank Morgan. And it's just it is this delight from beginning to end. It's like 95 minutes long. It entertains me thoroughly from beginning to end, and I absolutely love it. It is a complete lost gem from William Wilder's career, and it is completely worthy of discovery.
Number two is The Little Foxes.
Uh, this movie is great. It is the portrait of an absolutely terrible set of people in the old south as they v against each other in order to claim the largest part of a financial plan that should recover the family financially if things go well. But everyone except for a couple of minor examples are conniving bastards. [laughter] And they're all wonderfully written and they're wonderfully compelling. I was actually reminded of my reaction to Jezebel, which is a story of a conniving, terrible woman. And I felt this reserve against the film where it's like, "Oh, well, the final minutes are asking me to kind of sympathize with her, and I refuse to." Here, you're never asked to sympathize with them. They are terrible.
In fact, they actually get worse as the movie goes along. The center of it all is Regina, played by Betty Davis. She is the one of three siblings of a an old south southern family name that is seeing its fortunes collapse and they are trying to get in on a railway project. Regina is married to Horus played wonderfully by Herbert Marshall and they are separated but not divorced and then he comes down and you know kind of stuff plays out and they have a daughter Xany played by Teresa Wright.
Uh Xany is the is the only moral person in this movie. A couple of other again minor characters, but Xany is the only one. And what's interesting is that Horus is shown as moral early, but he actually ends up just as bad as everyone else. So, he's been having bonds stolen from the bank. Uh he doesn't know who's doing it and he hasn't involved anyone in the investigation and he's looking into it. And so he discovers that one of his brothers-in-law isn't is responsible. And he decides that in order to hurt Regina, he's not going to tell anyone about it. And he's going to let the theft go through. [snorts] And the the irony is he starts the film, you know, talking big about, you know, trying to preserve welfare for the workers, but this entire plan is actually bad for the workers according to everyone involved. And so he is giving up on his ideals in order to just hurt his wife. Everyone is awful. Now thi this could just be miring and misery except for Zany. [snorts] Um in my other video I focused on some shots from this film where Zany is in the background and she's just kind of passive and she's central to the scene because she's listening to all the conversations of her awful mother and aunts and uncles you connive against each other. And then [snorts] because she is actually the moral center because she can actually have a bit of agency on her own. She ends up our anchor through all of this.
We have to have that moral center on which to grasp and she is wonderful the way she just decides to break free from her family by the end. It's marvelously earned and wonderful. On [snorts] top of that, this might be Wiler's most sophisticated looking film. It was lensed by the great Greg Toland and it has that sort of two-tiered set that he was very famous for and he makes the absolute most of it. The the movie is so complex visually and it feels so effortless at the same time as he's shifting the camera around, actors are moving around and everyone settles into these perfectly composed shots, sometimes two or three times within an individual long take. It is an incredible technical achievement and I think it's remarkably well written. I think it has this wonderful moral center and I find it wonderfully entertaining as everyone is acting at the absolute tops of their games. This is a great film and I absolutely love it.
Number one is the Aerys. If William had a millia, it was kind of chamber pieces centered around women and this is the absolute height of that. It's the story of Katherine Slloer played wonderfully by Olivia Dehavlin. She is an unremarkable, shy, and talentless girl who is heir to a small fortune. Her father, Dr. Slloer, is very keenly aware of the faults of his daughter. She is boring and shy, and there is no reason that any man should be interested in her, and he is not shy about letting her know that she does not live up to her own mother. Uh so along with Aunt Levvenia played wonderfully by Miriam Hopkins uh she is trying to push herself out into society and she attracts the attention of Morris played by Montgomery Clif who he's attractive, he's charming and he was the recipient of a fortune that he completely floundered and is now living on the edge of New York society.
And suddenly [snorts] he's deeply in love with this unremarkable shy girl.
And Dr. Slloer is convinced he is just a gold digger. And he has to get Catherine to understand this. And the drama is between these three characters.
Catherine wanting to believe that Morris loves her. Morris as played by Clif giving this wonderful performance where we can really believe that he does genuinely love her. And Dr. Slloer seeing through it all and saying no this relationship is bad. So he like takes Catherine away for 6 months to Europe.
And all of this is really really vital.
You know we we completely believe all these characters in particular Morris so that when things completely fall apart in the second half when she comes back from Europe it's completely devastating.
she is but at the same time she's actually grown wonderfully as a character and this is a testament to dehavlin as an actress. Uh I can imagine a lesser form of this where they take the mousy young girl in the beginning you know they dress her up in that particular way and by the latter half when they need her to look more powerful they actually pretty her up you know they let down the hair they add makeup they like you make her bustier or whatever it takes in order to make her appear more confident. She looks exactly the same in terms of costume, hair, and makeup in the beginning and the end, but she performs very, very differently. So, it's entirely hinging on her own performance. She stands taller. She has a deeper voice. And it's just it's wonderful to watch as she comes into her own and she has to make her own way forward in a situation that is devastating to her. And so, she's not like curled up into a ball crying. She's grown as a character and she's taking it on her own and it's wonderful to watch.
This is a wonderful, strong woman to witness and I absolutely love doing it.
The film is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The top of William's filmography is full of just gorgeous looking films. Uh I think the the little foxes might look a little better, but this is gorgeous.
It has that sort of two-tiered set in a few different places. It's it's heavily heavily shadowed. It looks fantastic and [snorts] performance are absolutely great. The writing is pitch perfect. I really think this is the absolute top of William's filmography.
So that's it. William Wilder uh I think he made out of 33 finished films that are surviving, I think 32 of them [music] are good or great. This is one of the best filmographies you can discover. It crosses genres, although it does heavily lean towards, you know, dramas, but it it shows such skill across so much work, you know, and that sort of stuff is not accidental, you know. It's like bad filmmakers didn't get good scripts in the studio system.
[snorts] They got crappy scripts, you know, you know, and filmmakers still had the ability to work with writers to actually make them better. And Wiler getting consistently good scripts and making consistently good movies is a testament to him as a craftsman. He didn't have a strong authoral voice through it all. But what he did have was an incredible amount of discernment and taste in choosing projects and making the projects he had as good as possible.
The man was an insane talent. He he's genuinely one of the greatest filmmakers to have ever lived. and his movies are the proof, you know. So, so piss off Kayeda Cinema because the movies aren't personal. The movies are great. They're consistently great, you know. I'd rather have impersonal greatness rather than personal mediocrity. [snorts] And you know what? I got impersonal greatness, but I still feel the person.
>> [snorts] >> It's not that it doesn't come from him, from his heart, from his soul, from his, you know, idea, from trying to shape the world. It comes from his desire to tell great stories. [snorts] And that is the greatest legacy a filmmaker could have, that he told great stories. And William Wiler is one of the best of these. He is absolutely fantastic. And he needs much more love. So go. I've done my part. Now you do yours. Go watch more William movies.
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