“Conversations with Wilder”
by Cameron Crowe
(Alfred. A. Knopf, New York
1999)
“Fritz
Lang: The Nature of the Beast”
by Patrick McGilligan
(St. Martin’s Press, New York 1997)
by William S. E. Coleman
Cameron Crowe’s recent book, Conversations with Wilder (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999), is a gold mine of information. It is coffee-table sized, profusely illustrated. If it can be faulted, it is that Crowe does not rearrange his interviews in a manner that allows us to follow a clear sequence of Billy Wilder’s life and career. Instead, he allows his conversations to range freely. They cover a long, productive life, but the reader has to put it all together.
The director who gave us Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, Double Indemnity, and Some Like It Hot comes across as a simple, direct man unaware of the metaphoric richness of his better work. He is, though, as tough as his stories; and his sense of ribaldry is hilarious. Check out one story about Mailyn Monroe’s urination habits!
He speaks candidly of his successes and his regrets. He feels that The Spirit of St. Louis never quite got off the ground, but he laments the lack of public acceptance of the mordant Ace in the Hole (also known as The Big Carnival). His memories include the practical aspect of writing and directing for the screen, the process of production, acid comments on a few actors, and praise for others.
Perhaps the most valuable section to writers is his description of his collaborative work with I.A.L. Diamond and Charles Brackett.
His own personal tastes in recent film are surprising—Forest Gump and Sleepless in Seattle.
Conversations with Wilder is expensive, but it is worth every penny of its cost.
(It makes an ideal companion piece to Ed Sikov’s On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (Hyperion, New York, 1998). A few stories are repeated, but there is much that is new to this reader, at least. One gets a sense that Wilder was often wearing a mask with Crowe, hiding complexities and depths from the idolizing young director. Reading this book along with the Crowe book makes for a full, multi-dimensional reading experience.)
In contrast, Patrick McGilligan’s Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1997) is lengthy, better organized, but less satisfying. Part is due to a pedestrian writing style, part to a persistent search for scandal.
Like the Wilder books, this, too, deals with a director who co-authored his screenplays. I fought my way through the book because I wanted to know more about Lang, but it was often a struggle. McGilligan persistently attempts to dig out any dirt he can find about Lang. Lang, it must be admitted, was a man of enormous ego. He probably not pleasant to work with.
McGilligan sometimes stretches to paint the dark side of Lang. For instance, he implies that Lang and Thea Harbou may have murdered Lang’s first wife. There is no proof of this other than the speculation of a disgruntled actor.
McGilligan also tries to revise Lang’s relationship with Joseph Goebbels, asserting that Lang at first collaborated, then fled. The point to me is that Lang left a position of great power in the German film industry to find a new life and career, first in France, then the United States.
The man who created M, Metropolis, and Die Nibelungen fought his way back to a semblance of his early greatness in film noirs like Fury, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, Man Hunt, and The Big Heat. Critics can argue the superiority of these later films, but I feel they have a diminished vision, even though that vision is a valid exploration of the human condition.
To McGilligan’s credit there are many quotations from actors and writers who worked with Lang. It is here his book has its greatest interest. It is not in his attempts to make his book fit his title. Arrogance and colossal ego are not new to Hollywood, and they are standard equipment on most European artists. (Of course, we American artists are always modest and self-effacing!) These attributes often are part of what gives major artists a unique worldview, a way of looking at the world that gives us a sense of astonishment.
I found myself skimming the lengthy and involuted plot summaries of Lang’s films, but within the mass of this book there is much that is valuable as film history and even more regarding the writing and directing process.
Even more fascinating is the role of the artist trying to exist within a totalitarian state. Ironically, he barely escaped the blacklist. The impact of this on a refuge from Nazi Germany was profound. However, his politics did less damage to his career than his ego and uncompromising pursuit of his artistic vision.
Lang remains an enigma after reading this book. That is not a fault because I think the man was an enigma to himself. In the pantheon of great directors he certainly belongs in the second rank, but there is no disgrace being there. So much of what we enjoy is in that second rank. Lang, above, all engaged us with his storytelling ability.