Masks, Gender, and Genre: Inside Billy Wilder’s Cinema

#5 Masks, Gender, and Genre: Inside Billy Wilder’s Cinema in Sunset
Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, and One, Two, Three This episode takes
us from the shadows of Sunset Boulevard to the political turmoils
of Cold War Berlin—through the sharp, satirical, and entertaining
world of Billy Wilder. Born in Austria-Hungary and later forced
into exile by the Nazi regime, Wilder rose to become one of the
most iconic writer-directors of Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age.
But beneath the wit and glamour of his films lie biting critiques
of power, gender, and performance—on and off screen. We explore
three of Wilder’s most famous works: the noir comedy of Sunset
Boulevard (1950), the screwball cross-dressing comedy Some Like It
Hot (1959), and the hyperactive capitalist satire One, Two, Three
(1961). Wilder’s characters are often caught between self-invention
and social expectation—whether it's two musicians hiding in plain
sight in women's clothing, a fading diva clinging to a forgotten
image, or a Coca-Cola executive trying to control everything (and
everyone) around him. His films perform genre, but they also
perform ideology: letting us laugh, wince, and sometimes mourn at
the ways gender, class, and desire are negotiated in mid-century
cinema. Through a diverse-feminist lens, we ask: How does Wilder
use performance and disguise—especially in Some Like It Hot—to
explore the instability of gender roles and social norms? What do
Norma Desmond’s haunting monologues in Sunset Boulevard tell us
about ageism, stardom, and the gendered decay of Hollywood dreams?
And how does One, Two, Three deploy rapid-fire dialogue and farce
to reveal the absurdities of postwar capitalism and patriarchal
order? Key questions in this episode include: How does disguise
(voluntary or not) expose deeper truths about identity and social
gender performance? What does Wilder’s comedy make visible about
power and exclusion? And how do these films speak to the immigrant
experience of navigating and reshaping dominant narratives?