William Wyler, un Alsacien à Hollywood

In Mulhouse, there's a William Wyler Street; and that's not all : to celebrate their native son,the Mulhouse region equipment company (SERM) created a promenade park in 1995 ;in 2024 the Wyler family announced a Wyler scholarship .

Proof positive they did not a bear a grudge against a country which at a time was under the dictatorship of the Nouvelle Vague critics and the absurd "author theory", despised one of the greatest American directors.

The tables had started to turn at the beginning of the century, when the re-issue of "the children's hour" was hailed by a new generation of critics .

It was about time!!!

This doc is absorbing ,mainly if ,like me,you 've seen almost all his filmography .""the letter" opening sequence,had it been signed Welles or Hitchcock ,would be studied today "I hope it is anyway ; too bad that the doc overlooked the third Davis / Wyler masterpiece "little foxes ".

The director was remarkable ,but such was the man :after directing "Mrs Minniver " the final scene of which was a call to fight for the democracy ,he joined the army where,like his good friend Huston ,he filmed the fighter pilots under the fire and lost part of his hearing ; the doc focuses on "the best years of our lives" ,probably his most personal film and shows how the three main characters represent himself ;during the witch hunt,his attitude was always admirable .

"Ben Hur" ,the unheard success of which went against him in his native France (then Germany before WW1) Suffice to say ,it's better than the flat Wallace novel (which was inspired by Dumas' "le comte de Monte Cristo "), and better than the silent version,the MTV effort and the dreaded 2017 remake ;it stands as one of the greatest epics of all time.

The end of the doc is less interesting :it passes over in silence "the children's hour " and "the collector" and too much time is given over to "funny girl" instead ;but it inspires ,as Quentin Tarentino points out ,Wyler's eclecticism he admires .His swansong effort " the liberation of LB Jones "bears this out ;from a musical to an antiracism plea ,it was a bold move ;this final effort contains the most horrible scene he ever filmed -not included in the doc-but few have seen it.

It 's about time to reevaluate WW!