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Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna ed. by Noah Isenberg

2022; Volume: 52; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/flm.2022.0004

1548-9922

Scott T. Weiss,

European history and politics

Reviewed by: Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna ed. by Noah Isenberg Scott Weiss Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna. Edited by Noah Isenberg. Translated by Shelley Frisch. Princeton University Press ($24.95) With books, revivals of music, film festivals and hit television series, “Weimar” is much in the air these days. I frankly cannot recall a time when it was not. The years just before the Nazi takeover of Germany (and shortly thereafter Austria) have remained an interminable source of artistic speculation and interpretation since the violent and abrupt end of the government that destroyed it. Glowing in the footlights only 21 years after the destruction of Hitler’s Reich, Cabaret (based on Isherwood tales) preserved in that most sensational American form, the Broadway musical, the thrilling sensuality, intrigue and ultimate decay of that doomed German capital where Weimar culture unfolded. That colorful, tuneful take has persevered through time with generational revivals, most recently in 2014. And Weimar perseveres in publishing with glossy coffee table books of Babelsberg film stars selling well both here and in Germany. Recent republications of novels like Berlin Alexanderplatz and Grand Hotel sell well through the New York Review Books publishing arm. Histories marking the centennial of the creation of the Weimar Republic abound. And a weirdly punked-out 20s So with shadows of contemporary mores is the cool setting for the German international hit the neo-noir Babylon Berlin (released here through Netflix). So, Weimar is alive, quite well, and commands interest and audiences broadly, inside and outside the academy. So the market will welcome with interest the first translations of the 1920s German newspaper writing of the then unknown and future Hollywood maestro, Billy Wilder. Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna is edited by Noah Isenberg whose studies on Weimar cinema as well as Hollywood and often how they interconnect are all much admired. We encounter in this relatively concise volume a world and age apart from Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, or Some Like It Hot. Here is the young Billy Wilder, born Shmuel Wildr (yid.) in 1906 to Polish Jews in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His mother named him “Billie” out of an affection for all things American and Wilder took the name “Billy” when he came to the United States. In the years 1925–30, before venturing east across the ocean, however, he did have a stint as a journalist for newspapers first in Vienna then (thanks to a tag-along offer from bandleader Paul Whiteman) in Berlin. It is examples of this writing, all quite brief, with which we are presented in this volume. Isenberg provides an economical introduction to the volume sharing, I’m guessing, whatever can be shared about this short and distant period in Wilder’s life. Wilder, whose later creative life would soon be well documented by studios, film journalists and biographers, was in the late 20s in his early 20s and a young man hustling his journalistic talent in the thick and busy streets of Vienna and Berlin. We encounter a man of focus and good humor chasing celebrities and entertainers and not too distracted by the broader world problems with which we understand the time and place today. As such, he is very much a character of a hot and hopping 20s Berlin. It is, I gather, an article of faith how much of this remained clear and precise in his memory later in life when as a senior enjoying longevity he would grant many interviews, boasting of how in those days he met Viennese luminaries such as Freud and Schnitzler and Richard Strauss though no evidence exists of these encounters. But the boast is the charm of the master of the dream factory – so take it or leave it. What does exist, as collected in this volume, is exciting and clever and delivers what was hitherto absent for the English-speaking film aficionado or scholar - a portrait of the artist as a young journalist living in a historical epoch. Billy Wilder’s journalism serves as much as a [End Page 61] unique and valuable...