Billy Wilder’s The Front Page. The nostalgia of the journalists in exile

Abstract

At the end of his career, Billy Wilder filmed the third film adaptation of Ben Hecht’s and Charles MacArthur’s classic play The Front Page. In this work, along with his customary causticity, he also brought his own experience as a reporter in Vienna and Berlin in the 20s. The Front Page has built an influential portrait of the press as a ruthless profession with no scruples, whose redemption is only possible as a watchdog of an even more corrupt political power. Ten yearst after the death of the viennese director, his Front page lives in our memory as one of the most emblematic portraits of journalists in the cinema.