Live Poll : Wilder or Wyler

Please correct:

Here are two great Hollywood directors with who both immigrated to America,

Wyler first came to America in 1920 to work for Carl Laemmle (also Jewish and an immigrant from Germany)

He grew up in the film industry and won the Best Director award three times and was nominated for it 9 more times.

Billy Wilder had first started first started in the German film industry as a screenwriter and is considered as one of the greatest screenwriters of all time before becoming a 2 time Oscar winning director (nominated six more times as Best Director) (and the rest of his six Oscars were for writing).

He spoke no English when he got to Hollywood and roomed with fellow German immigrant, Peter Lorre.

Instead of asking who do you like more, we’re going to use their best films to decide who people think was better.

@dgranger, Sabrina get my vote. IMHO, I agree Wilder has the more top heavy portfolio of films, while Wyler was more prolific, creating nearly as good films, but a lot more of them.

I would suggest bolding the question, it really gets lost in this poll suggestion.

FYC,

Instead of asking who do you like more, we’re going to use their best films as to who people think was better. So, from the list below, vote for your favorite film. The director, whose films get the most votes, wins!

Wyler, no doubt about that. This is a director who didn't have trademarks of his own and had a rather classical approach to classic material but I can't think of a film he made that wasn't enjoyable and easy to follow from beginning to end. You'd think it's easy to make a film like [i]Mrs. Miniver[/i], go watch its American counterpart [i]Since You Get Away[/i] and you can see that Wyler didn't bother with overused sentimentality and knew how to get great performances from average-to-good actors. He's not only one of the best but he's the most under-appreciated.  Seriously, I can't think of a disappointing film from his body of work.

Billy Wilder is another story, he made certainly four or five of the all-time greatest American classics, but with the exception of [i]Double Indemnity[/i], you can see that he owned the 50s and his last masterpiece was [i]The Apartment[/i], after that, it all goes downhill and [i]Kiss Me, Stupid[/i] is so bad you wouldn't believe it was made by Wilder, even his later Lemmon-Matthau movies (or Lemmon alone) aren't exactly comedic masterpieces. Somehow he lost his touch in the 60s and never recovered.

Not to say that Wyler is superior but he is the most consistent.

Interesting poll suggestion. My vote is going to be for Ben-Hur

Live Poll 

https://www.imdb.com/poll/2Xi1BN9dT0c/

Difficult.

My favorite film on the list is Sunset Blvd. So my vote goes to Wilder.

Mid-day return:

Wilder 47

Wyler  28

We should do poll in that fashion more frequently.

Note: I sort of want to know how the results would compare if we did a traditional Face-Off poll.

@dgranger ,

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Okey, I forgot that one. It will get done now. 
can you get in contact with nastasia ? I have been trying to rise up her discussion page for her

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls070936267/?ref_=m_ur but the program or the IMDb app on iPhone is sending me everywhere but her discussion page. I got suggestions to fill up her list and more. Why? Because of buying paperbacks, and I got a allot of  books from Reader’s Digest special offer where they sold classic books in special hard back leather binding unedited and illustrated form, I got a ton of suggestions that were not used for her lists. https://m.imdb.com/list/ls000381556/?ref_=m_url

https://m.imdb.com/list/ls070906743/?ref_=m_url

https://m.imdb.com/list/ls070936267/?ref_=m_url

like: John ford’s adaptions of “The Grapes of Wrath” and “How Green Was My Valley”

“True Grit” by Charles Portis 

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” by Victor Hugo 

“Dracula” by Brom Stoker

H.G. Well’s “The War of the Worlds”, “The invisible Man”, and “The Time Machine”

”A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens (I like the version staring Ronald Colman the best through the bbc did probably the definitive version)

”Anne of Green Gables”

”A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by (I think) Mary Smith

”The Little Princess” , “The Secret Garden”, and “Little Lord Fauntleroy” by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

So many of Mark Twain’s work: “The Prince and the pauper”, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, but best try one of the many film adaptations of “The adventures of Tom Sawyer”, and “The adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.

The musical “South Pacific” was based on James Michener’s collection of stories the when taken all together forms, a novel “Tales of the South Pacific” much like Ray Bradbury did in “The Martian Chronicles”. It is an excellent read because it includes stories not included in the play and from the Japanese side to (like how the Americans captured the island so quickly - that involved a Japanese soldier who studied in L.A. - there is a story there).

“The Caine Mutiny” by Herman Wouk 

I gave a lot of it but there is a handful more that includes Jack London stories and a classic western tv series and film based on “The Virginian”

I would have to go with Billy Wilder, since, while Wyler directed more films that were nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, there are several of Wilder's films that are among my favorites, such as Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, and One Two Three.