Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder (1906 – 2002) arrived in Berlin in 1924 as a tour guide and was able to establish himself as a screenwriter in the movies. He achieved his breakthrough with MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG (1930). However, recognizing the looming danger in 1933, he left the city immediately after the Reichstag fire. Wilder first emigrated to Paris, where he worked as a ghostwriter, but also made his directorial debut with MAUVAISE GRAINE (1933) alongside Alexander Esway, before traveling on to the U.S., assisted by Joe May, whom he still knew from Berlin. He was very successful in Hollywood thanks to his exciting, sophisticated and punchy narrative style, but returned to Germany with the U.S. Army at the end of the war and supervised the editing of the concentration camp documentary DIE TODESMÜHLEN (1945) as a “film officer.” His own family had been murdered at Auschwitz. He subsequently returned to the USA. He cast a satirical eye on displacement and new beginnings in the destroyed Berlin that was once his home in the postwar satire A FOREIGN AFFAIR (1948), starring Marlene Dietrich. He shot the comedy ONE, TWO, THREE again in Berlin – where he was surprised by the building of the Wall and then had to move some of the exterior shots to Bavaria Studios in Munich.