Billy Wilder 101 The films of Billy Wilder are more famous than Wilder himself. As with Howard Hawks—another director beloved by cinephiles but with little name recognition among the general public—Wilder’s work spans so many genres and styles that he becomes impossible to pin down, definable only by the skill inherent even in his weakest efforts and by a somewhat skeptical worldview. Advertisement Actually, “skeptical” is being polite. The word critics most often reach for is “cynical,” and while that absolutely fits films like Ace In The Hole, which are so caustic they’d be controversial if produced today, it’s an insufficient description. The biggest thread through Wilder’s career is his clarity when it comes to his characters’ motives, which are almost always self-centered and vain. Even his purest and most idealistic heroes are lying to someone, working their own angles, willing to compromise their beliefs. No one is selfless, which Wilder sometimes views with amusement, sometimes with contempt, but rarely without sympathy, and never with sentimentality. In the climactic moment of his POW drama Stalag 17, when every other director would be affirming the bond between this band of brothers, Wilder’s hero tells his fellow prisoners, “If I ever run…