Billy Wilder

The writer-director Billy Wilder was responsible for some of the most unforgettable stories in cinema history, from Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard, to Some Like It Hot and The Apartment. Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode celebrate his extraordinary career and ask - what was the Wilder touch?

Born in Sucha, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1906, Wilder began his career as a journalist in Vienna, before moving to Berlin in the 1920s. In 1933, as a Jewish man fleeing the Nazi regime, he left Europe for Hollywood, where he became one of the leading figures in the studio system.

Ellen talks to critic and film historian Pamela Hutchinson about Wilder’s early years as a journalist, his experience in Hollywood and some of his most significant works, from The Lost Weekend to A Foreign Affair.

Meanwhile, Mark speaks to two people who knew Wilder and his work firsthand.

First, he talks to actress Juliet Mills, who starred alongside Jack Lemmon in Wilder’s 1972 Italian-set romcom Avanti!

And then, Mark talks to German director Volker Schlöndorff, who got the chance to ask his cinematic hero, 'Billy, How Did You Do It?' in a series of conversations filmed in the late 1980s, and later broadcast by the BBC.

Producer: Jane Long
A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4