I think when I was thirteen years old I made the decision that Billy Wilder was the greatest filmmaker of all time. I didn't reach this decision lightly. What impresses me now as then is the immense versatility of this creative force that Wilder was. Wilder created four films that are among the greatest of all time: this one, Some Like It Hot, Double Indeminity and Sunset BLVD- Roger Ebert put all four in his first book of Great Movies - and they all hold up just as well decades after they came out. For any other filmmaker The Apartment would be their masterpiece. I'm not even sure this ranks in the top five films Wilder made. (I have a fondness for Witness for the Prosecution, which I'll write about at some point and The Lost Weekend is part of the lexicon.) And of course he also co-wrote some incredible works, including Ninotchka, which I'm still kind of astonishing got made in 1939.

God bless Blockbuster, I'd seen all of those films by the time I was thirteen as well as One, Two, Three, Sabrina, The Fortune Cookie and Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks with Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper) It took me until 2008 to finally see Ace in the Hole and god help there are still some Wilder films that I'm not sure are ever going to come out on streaming or anywhere else. I'm still hoping that Five Graves to Cairo, Fedora and Avanti will come out in some form in my lifetime.

Of course The Apartment is a perfect film. The reason I'm fairly confident in not calling it Wilder's best film is because Wilder made more perfect films in his career than anyone before him with the exception of Hitchcock who was his contemporary and who made his last film not long before Wilder stopped making them. Both Spielberg and Scorsese have passed him in that number, Altman and Lumet had nearly as many as Wilder and it is possible Christopher Nolan will surpass Wilder someday. But none of them had the subtelety that Wilder possesed as a director and only Nolan actually wrote his own films. There has never been a filmmaker like Billy Wilder and it will be a long time before there is ever one who comes close.