New Retrospective Celebrates Billy Wilder's Journey From Emigre to Hollywood Titan

A new retrospective, titled Almost Perfect, is set to celebrate the career of director Billy Wilder, one of the most influential filmmakers of the twentieth century, running at BFI Southbank in London from 19 October until the end of the year.

Wilder was born at the start of the twentieth century in Austria-Hungary and died at the start of the twenty-first century in California, a span that encompassed his emigration from Europe and his rise to become one of Hollywood's most celebrated writer-directors. His gravestone carries an inscription drawn from his most famous line of dialogue, 'I'm a writer but then nobody's perfect,' the closing line of his 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot.

A filmography spanning genres

Over the course of his career, Wilder wrote and directed a string of films now considered classics, including Double Indemnity, a foundational work of film noir; Some Like It Hot, one of the most acclaimed comedies in American cinema; and The Apartment, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. His body of work spanned noir, comedy, and drama, and helped define much of mid-century Hollywood filmmaking.

Wilder was known for cultivating a public persona and a story of his own origins well before the era of social media made self-mythologising commonplace for public figures. Accounts of his early years describe him recounting stories from his time in Berlin during his fledgling years in show business, including anecdotes such as being kept awake by a malfunctioning toilet in his lodgings, details that became part of the lore surrounding his rise from a European emigre to a major Hollywood figure.

The Almost Perfect retrospective is billed as a comprehensive look at Wilder's career, offering audiences the chance to revisit his most celebrated films alongside lesser-known works. The season situates Wilder within the broader history of emigre filmmakers who left Europe in the early to mid-twentieth century and went on to shape American cinema, a group whose influence on Hollywood's golden age remains a significant subject of film history and scholarship.

The retrospective runs at BFI Southbank from 19 October through the end of the year, giving audiences an extended window to engage with Wilder's work across formats and genres.