Editing Billy Wilder (section)

=== Final films ===
He produced and directed the comedy film ''[[Avanti!]]'', again through Phalanx Productions, which follows a businessman (Lemmon) attempting to retrieve the body of his deceased father from Italy. Wilder received two [[Golden Globe Award]] nominations for [[Golden Globe Award for Best Director|Best Director]] and [[Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay|Best Screenplay]], and a [[Writers Guild of America Award]] nomination. Wilder directed ''[[The Front Page (1974 film)|The Front Page]]'' based on the [[The Front Page|Broadway play]] of the same name. It was a significant financial success with low budget. His final films, ''[[Fedora (1978 film)|Fedora]]'' and ''[[Buddy Buddy]]'', failed to impress critics or the public, although ''Fedora'' has since been re-evaluated and is now considered favorably.<ref>{{cite web |title=Fedora (1978) |url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1037238-fedora |website=Rotten Tomatoes |date=May 26, 2009 |access-date=November 21, 2020}}</ref> Wilder had hoped to make [[Thomas Keneally]]'s ''[[Schindler's Ark]]'' as his final film, saying "I wanted to do it as a kind of memorial to my mother and my grandmother and my stepfather," who had all been murdered in the [[Holocaust]].<ref name="Crowe1999">{{cite book|author=Cameron Crowe|title=Conversations with Wilder|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eYRZAAAAMAAJ&q=schindler|date= 2020|publisher=Knopf|isbn=978-0375406607|pages=21}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/spielbergs-list-20130402-2h455.html|title=Spielberg's List|first=Oscar|last=Hillestrom|date=April 2, 2013|website=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]}}</ref> He praised [[Steven Spielberg|Steven Spielberg's]] adaptation, ''[[Schindler's List]]''. To those who [[Holocaust denial|denied the Holocaust]], Wilder wrote in a German newspaper, "If the concentration camps and the gas chambers were all imaginary, then please tell me—where is my mother?"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lane |first=Anthony |title=Nobody's Perfect |year=2002 |pages=717}}</ref>