“Nobody’s perfect!” The Palace celebrates the great Hollywood writer-director Billy Wilder, including seven classic comedies and dramas from the 1940s-‘60s.
The Palace is delighted to present a season of films accompanied by introductions, fixed ticket prices of £6/£8 all shows and a season loyalty card available from the cinema (buy tickets for 5 films, get the 6th and 7th for free). The season also launches Dementia-Friendly Palace screenings at the Palace including snacks, intros and reminiscence sessions. Please click below for full details of each:
Sunset Boulevard – Fri 21, Sun 23, Tue 25 Aug
The Seven Year Itch – Fri 28, Sun 30 Aug; Tue 1 Sept
Witness For The Prosecution – Fri 4, Sun 6, Tue 8 Sept
Some Like It Hot – Fri 11, Sat 12, Sun 13, Tue 15 Sept
The Apartment – Sat 19, Sun 20, Tue 22 Sept
Double Indemnity – Fri 25, Sat 26, Tue 29 Sept
Sabrina – Fri 2, Sun 4, Tue 6 Oct
Please click here for details on our: Dementia Friendly Palace screenings – Billy Wilder
Who is Billy Wilder?
Multi-Oscar winning and one of the rare talents that would go on to create the golden age of Hollywood, Billy Wilder was born Shmuel Vilder in 1906 in a small town in what was Austria (now Poland) where his parents ran a chain of cake shops. As a young man he moved to Vienna, where he started in the entertainment industry as a journalist, and then to Berlin where he also found work as a ‘taxi dancer’ for hire before finding work as a screenwriter and producer at Babelsberg Studios. Evading the growth of Nazism in the early 1930s, he moved first briefly to Paris – where he had a first director credit under the name ‘Billy Wilder’ – and from there, like so many other Jewish filmmakers of the period, to America.
In Hollywood he began again, his first big successes a few years later as co-writer of Ninotchka starring Greta Garbo and Ball of Fire starring Barbara Syanwyck before heading into directing with Ginger Rogers and The Major and the Minor, all now considered classic ‘Billy Wilder films.’ In this season we celebrate just some of this uniquely wonderful work, from romcom Sabrina (1954) which glories in the loveliness of Audrey Hepburn’s wardrobe at the same time as criticising post-war consumerism, to noir melodrama Sunset Boulevard (1950) in which Gloria Swanson plays the bitter, egotistical star for whom we cannot help but feel sympathy. Wilder’s work is so varied, from hard-hitting 1957 drama Witness for the Prosecution (named one of the top 10 courtroom dramas ever made by the American Film Institute) to one of the funniest films ever made, Some Like it Hot (1959) the last line of which gifts us our season title, “Nobody’s perfect!”. His brilliant visual style and unparalleled dialogue reveal humans and their foibles as no other, with honesty, generosity and an incredible wry eye; Discussing screenwriting, Wilder once famously said: “If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window, that is at once interesting.”
We are very grateful to have received support for “Nobody’s perfect!” from the BFI Film Audience Network, awarding funds from the National Lottery in order to bring this project to more audiences across the UK. They, in turn, would be very grateful for your feedback on the screening/s you attended as part of the season – thank you very much if you could spare 5 minutes for this short Audience Survey https://online1.snapsurveys.com/ymhad6?A=HUB&P=SE78
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogarde, Wiliam Holden & more!
Year: 2022
Language: In Spanish with English subtitles
Country: USA
Running time: 1hr 40mins