November 3, 2000

Billy Wilder: Ready for a Close-Up

By THOMAS DOHERTY

In the pantheon of directors from Hollywood's golden age, he is the absolute last man standing. Still alert and acid-tongued, he is more critical than nostalgic about a career that began with silent German cinema, thrived during the heyday of the studio system, and stretched into the era of blockbuster-minded movie brats of the 1970's. Like the medium, he is a cultural hybrid. Today, at age 94, the writer-director Billy Wilder has never been more praised and popular, as if his grateful