Film Forum

U.S., 1945
Directed by Billy Wilder
Starring Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Howard Da Silva
Screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Jackson.
Based on the novel by Charles Jackson
35mm. Approx. 101 min.

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Failed writer Ray Milland hits the sauce and the bottom in Oscar winner for Best Picture, Screenplay, Director and Actor. Among the famous sequences: the bat and mouse hallucination and the desperate trek for money past actual Third Ave. pawnshops closed for Yom Kippur.

Presented with support from the Robert Jolin Osborne Endowed Fund for American Classic Cinema and the Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film.

Reviews

“New York brutally stripped of all glamour.”
– Tom Milne

“A landmark of adult filmmaking in Hollywood.
– Leonard Maltin

“…a hard film to sell that Paramount decided to promote on the strength of its ‘realism.’”
– Richard Koszarski, “Keep ’em in the East”: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance