“On the one hand, he was staking his directing career on a commercially viable project, but, on the other, it was a story about a girl pretending to be twelve who develops a romance with a man in his thirties, someone who obviously toes the line between interest and merely innocent affection. The possibilities for failure were tremendous. Just one little inappropriate sidestep could have resulted in unforgivable awkwardness.” (The Major and the Minor)

“…Sunset Blvd. essentially stands for the idea that, one way or another, Hollywood will kill you. It’ll devour your pride and leave you to fend for yourself among the other miscreants whose future, regardless of the applause in the interim, is as bleak as your own. The city of industry can’t be bothered to worry about its victims.” (Sunset Blvd.)

“It’s easy to see how audiences and critics could have avoided, even downright loathed Ace in the Hole. Wilder rarely, if ever, lets you know he’s in on the joke. Unlike many other films where the audience is immunized from the onscreen ridicule, Wilder’s movie never gives viewers the satisfaction of thinking they’re above all the madness.” (Ace in the Hole)

“Every Wilder drama has moments of humor and every Wilder comedy has an undercurrent of seriousness, but none of his other films dared to repeatedly show the lighter side of a subject as seemingly grave as a Nazi-run American prisoner-of-war camp. A generation before Robert Altman made M*A*S*H, Wilder unapologetically mixed laughter with war.” (Stalag 17)

“There’s not a whole lot of humour here either, leading again to the idea that the film accomplishes much of its charm via intangible qualities that cannot be sufficiently explored by the written word. Wilder’s pacing, Hepburn’s screen presence and the star qualities of Holden and Bogart despite their characters’ shortcomings all combine to lift the film up when it could have easily failed had any of these ingredients been missing.” (Sabrina)

“Wilder oscillates with quiet ease between the witty and the wistful, back and forth from cynical humour to a warm cinematic embrace of the viewer and the protagonist. There are countless other films that succeed in combining pathos and unironic laughs, but few, if any, do it better.” (The Apartment)

“In essence, this is Wilder’s most daring film since Ace in the Hole, and it appeals to generally no one outside the director’s most devoted followers. He was able to completely demystify a legendary character with a huge following, using a fully sincere approach, while also putting together a deceptive genre story that proves quite entertaining.” (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes)

(Billy Wilder Speaks)