#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?