cinemadiso's - Directed by Billy Wilder List

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C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) knows the way to success in business...it's through the door of his apartment! By providing a perfect hideaway for philandering bosses, the ambitious young employee reaps a series of underserved promotions. But when Bud lends the key to big boss J.D.

Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), he not only advances his career, but his own love life as well. For Sheldrake's mistress is the lovely Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), elevator girl and angel of Bud's dreams. Convinced that he is the only man for Fran, Bud must make the most important executive decision of his career: lose the girl... or his job.

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When Chicago musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) accidentally witness a gangland shooting they quickly board a southbound train to Florida, disguised as Josephine and Daphne, the two newest and homeliest members of an all-girl jazz band. Their cover is perfet...

until a lovelorn singer (Marilyn Monroe) falls for "Josephine", an ancient play-boy (Joe Brown) falls for "Daphne", and a mob boss (George Raft) refuses to fall for their hoax!

Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), naive insurance man. Falls for the seductive charms of his beautiful client Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) Together they plot to get rid of her dull husband and collect on the "double indemnity" life policy.

American businessman Wendell Armbruster is summoned to Italy after a car accident claims the lives of his father and his father's secret mistress! And when the mistress' daughter also arrives - and the bodies of both of their parents disappear - the two instant foes are brought together in a baffling mystery...and an affair of the heart!

When a wealthy widow is found murdered, her married suitor, Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power), is accused of the crime. Vole's only hope for acquittal is the testimony of his wife (Marlene Dietrich)...but his airtight alibi shatters when she reveals some shocking secrets of her own!

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Shirley MacLaine is Irma, a popular Parisian prostitute who has just hired a new pimp, Nestor (Jack Lemmon), a former honest cop who was fired and framed by his boss after Nestor inadvertently had him arrested in a raid.

However, Nestor's love for Irma is making his newfound vocation impossible, so he poses as a phoney British lord who insists on being Irma's one and only "client". But when "Lord X" (Jack Lemmon) appears to have become the victim of foul play...further comedic complications ensue!

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When a beautiful woman claims that her dear husband has disappeared, the investigation takes Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) to Scotland, where - to their surprise - they uncover a plot involving a clandestine society, Her Majesty's Secret Service...

and the Loch Ness Monster! But before he can deduce matters to the elementary. Holmes makes an error that may jeopardise the national safety of Britain...and ruin his reputation!

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James Cagney is C.R. "Mac" MacNamara, a top soft drinks executive shipped off to (then West) Berlin and told to keep an eye on his boss' 17-year-old Atlanta socialite daughter Scarlett (Pamela Tiffin) while she visits Germany.

Scarlett's tour seems endless, and Mac discovers she's fallen for a (then East) Berlin communist agitator and the young couple are bound for Moscow! Mac has to bust up the burgeoning romance before his boss learns the truth, all the while dealing with his wife Phyllis (Arlene Francis) and her own impatience with German living.

During the filming of The Seven Year Itch, while Hollywood censors kept a careful eye on the notoriously racy production, Marilyn was pure perfection as a sexy, yet innocent, starlet living upstairs from a married man who had just sent his wife and son away for the summer.

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When Hildy Johnson (Jack Lemmon), the top reporter of a Chicago newspaper, announces that he is quitting to get married, his editor, Walter Burns (Walter Matthau), desperately tries to change his mind. When denial, cursing, and luring don't work, Walter resorts to tricks.

It's the day before a supposed communist is to be hanged, and all Chicago waits with bated breath. Meanwhile, each of the city's papers has a man on the story trying to get a scoop or angle for themselves. With a train to catch at midnight to join his fiancé, Hildy is at first not interested, but events and his own habits work against him as the day unfolds, and he can't help but get roped in, especially when the man to be executed escapes and then almost literally falls into his lap.

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Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, an ageing silent film queen, and William Holden as the struggling writer who is held in thrall by her madness, created two of the screen's most memorable characters in Sunset Boulevard.

Winner of three Academy Awards, director Billy Wilder's orchestration of the bizarre tale is a true cinematic classic. From the unforgettable opening sequence through the inevitable unfolding of tragic destiny, the film is the definitive statement on the dark and desperate side of Hollywood. Erich von Stroheim as Desmond's discoverer, ex-husband and butler, and Nancy Olson as the bright spot in unrelenting ominousness, are equally celebrated for their masterful performances.

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Dean Martin is full of charm, wit and snappy one-liners in this sly, irreverent, brash and daring comedy from the legendary team of Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond .

When world-renowned singer "Dino" (Martin in a hilarious self-parody) passes through Climax, Nevada, he doesn't count on meeting two would-be songwriters with a plan to trap him there and serenade him with their songs. But then again, they weren't counting on Dino's insatiable appetite...for wine and women! And when one of the men learns that his own wife was once president of Dino's fan club, he hires a replacement wife (Kim Novak) to help lure the carousing star into a song-buying mood!

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In one of the most powerhouse performances in American screen-acting, the great Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a newspaper reporter who stumbles upon a potentially career-making story in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

When Tatum begins to influence the story's outcome, a descent begins that finds more than one man caught between a rock and a hard place. An electric narrative that stands as one of Wilder's tautest and most (melo)dramatic plots (penned with Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman), 'Ace in the Hole' plays today as both a prescient examination of the modern media landscape, and the public appetite for the disastrous news-story that leads to toxic wish-fulfillment.

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Harry Hinkle (Jack Lemmon) is one lucky guy! When he's accidentally clobbered by a 220-pound halfback, all Harry suffers is a slight concussion.

All, that is, until Whiplash Willie (Walter Matthau) — a legal scoundrel of the first order — arrives on the scene! For if Harry follows shyster Willie's advice and feigns a crippling injury, the two charlatans can split a cool million in phoney insurance claims. But can Willie's world-class finagling dispel those ominous words that lie within the fortune cookie on Harry's hospital plate: You can't fool all of the people all of the time?

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The Best Picture of 1945 has lost none of its bite or power in this uncompromising look at the devastating effects of alcoholism.

Ironically, this brilliant Billy Wilder film was almost never released because of poor reaction by preview audiences unaccustomed to such stark realism from Hollywood, but the film has since gone on to be regarded as one of the all-time great dramas in movie history. Ray Milland's haunting portrayal of would-be writer's dissatisfaction with his life leads him on a self-destructive three-day binge.