Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder’s Comedies

An eight-film series celebrating one of the most incisive, irreverent, and enduring writer-directors in Hollywood history. 

Spanning almost three decades of Billy Wilder’s long career, the series concentrates on the director’s comedic genius, featuring classics, such as Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), and Sabrina (1954), as well as equally brilliant if less widely seen films: the Lubitschian Love in the Afternoon (1957), with Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper (in a role conceived for Cary Grant); the bold and controversial Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), with Dean Martin and Kim Novak as “Polly the Pistol”; the advertising satire One, Two, Three (1961), with James Cagney in his last starring role; The Front Page (1974), Wilder’s take on Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur’s 1928 hit play (also an inspiration for Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday) and Avanti! (1972), set in the dreamy Italian island of Ischia.