Ranking All Of Director Billy Wilder’s Movies
“What are Billy Wilder’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Wilder’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!
We took all of the movies directed by Billy Wilder and looked at his Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 6 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.
The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.
Happy Viewing!
The Top Film’s Of Billy Wilder
27 ) Bad Seed
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 25
- IMDB User Review Score: 26
- Letterboxd User Score: 25
A young man-about-Paris, cut off from his father’s money, falls in with a picaresque gang of car thieves.
Purchase / Learn More
 |
 |
26 ) Buddy Buddy
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 24
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 24
- IMDB User Review Score: 25
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
Buddy Buddy is a 1981 American comedy film directed by Billy Wilder that stars Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Paula Prentiss and Klaus Kinski. The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on the 1973 French language film L’Emmerdeur, which screenwriter Francis Veber had adapted from his play Le contrat. The film proved to be the last directed by Wilder.
Purchase / Learn More
|
25 ) The Emperor Waltz
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 23
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 23
- IMDB User Review Score: 26
- Letterboxd User Score: 26
At the turn of the 20th century, travelling salesman Virgil Smith journeys to Vienna in the hope he can sell a gramophone to Emperor Franz Joseph, whose purchase of the recent American invention could spur its popularity in Austria.
Purchase / Learn More
|
24 ) Fedora
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 22
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 22
- IMDB User Review Score: 24
- Letterboxd User Score: 23
An ambitious Hollywood hustler becomes involved with a reclusive female star whom he tries to lure out of retirement.
Purchase / Learn More
|
23 ) Kiss Me, Stupid
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 20
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 21
- IMDB User Review Score: 23
- Letterboxd User Score: 19
A jealous piano teacher Orville Spooner sends his beautiful wife, Zelda, away for the night while he tries to sell a song to a famous nightclub singer Dino, who is stranded in town
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
22 ) Die Todesmühlen
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 25
- IMDB User Review Score: 11
- Letterboxd User Score: 19
Originally made with a German soundtrack for screening in occupied Germany and Austria, this film was the first documentary to show what the Allies found when they liberated the Nazi extermination camps: the survivors, the conditions, and the evidence of mass murder. The film includes accounts of the economic aspects of the camps’ operation, the interrogation of captured camp personnel, and the enforced visits of the inhabitants of neighboring towns, who, along with the rest of their compatriots, are blamed for complicity in the Nazi crimes – one of the few such condemnations in the Allied war records.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
21 ) The Spirit of St. Louis
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 19
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 18
- IMDB User Review Score: 19
- Letterboxd User Score: 23
Charles ‘Slim’ Lindbergh struggles to finance and design an airplane that will make his New York to Paris flight the first solo transatlantic crossing.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
20 ) The Seven Year Itch
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 16
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 16
- IMDB User Review Score: 19
- Letterboxd User Score: 19
With his family away for their annual summer holiday, Richard Sherman decides he has the opportunity to live a bachelor’s life. The beautiful but ditzy blonde from the apartment above catches his eye and they soon start spending time together – maybe a little too much time!
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
18 ) Love in the Afternoon
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 15
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 12
- IMDB User Review Score: 18
- Letterboxd User Score: 19
Lovestruck conservatory student Ariane pretends to be just as much a cosmopolitan lover as the worldly mature Frank Flannagan hoping that l’amour will take hold.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
18 ) The Front Page
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 20
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 19
- IMDB User Review Score: 13
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
A journalist suffering from burn-out wants to finally say goodbye to his office – but his boss doesn’t like the idea one bit.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
17 ) Avanti!
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 16
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 16
- IMDB User Review Score: 19
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
A successful businessman goes to Italy to arrange for the return of his tycoon-father’s body only to discover dad died with his mistress of long standing.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
16 ) The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 12
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 19
- IMDB User Review Score: 19
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
Director Billy Wilder adds a new and intriguing twist to the personality of intrepid detective Sherlock Holmes. One thing hasn’t changed however: Holmes’ crime-solving talents. Holmes and Dr. Watson take on the case of a beautiful woman whose husband has vanished. The investigation proves strange indeed, involving six missing midgets, villainous monks, a Scottish castle, the Loch Ness monster, and covert naval experiments. Can the sleuths make sense of all this and solve the mystery
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
15 ) Some Like It Hot
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 25
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 25
- IMDB User Review Score: 3
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
Two musicians witness a mob hit and struggle to find a way out of the city before they are found by the gangsters. Their only opportunity is to join an all-girl band as they leave on a tour. To make their getaway they must first disguise themselves as women, then keep their identities secret and deal with the problems this brings – such as an attractive bandmate and a very determined suitor.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
14 ) Irma la Douce
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 18
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 14
- IMDB User Review Score: 13
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
Nester Patou, a naive police officer, is transferred to the red light district in Paris and organizes a raid on a dodgy hotel running as a brothel – inadvertently disrupting the corrupt system of the police and the pimps union, and netting his station superior. Fired from his job, Nester goes to the local bar for a drink and befriends a pretty young lady named Irma la Douce. Upon realizing she is a prostitute, Nester invents a crazy scheme to keep her from seeing other men.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
13 ) The Fortune Cookie
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 9
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
- IMDB User Review Score: 13
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
A cameraman is knocked over during a football game. His brother in law as the king of the ambulance chasing lawyers starts a suit while he’s still knocked out. The cameraman is against it until he hears that his ex-wife will be coming to see him. He pretends to be injured to get her back, but also sees what the strain is doing to the football player who injured him.
Purchase / Learn More
|
11 ) Sabrina
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 13
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 8
- IMDB User Review Score: 10
- Letterboxd User Score: 10
Linus and David Larrabee are the two sons of a very wealthy family. Linus is all work — busily running the family corporate empire, he has no time for a wife and family. David is all play — technically he is employed by the family business, but never shows up for work, spends all his time entertaining, and has been married and divorced three times. Meanwhile, Sabrina Fairchild is the young, shy, and awkward daughter of the household chauffeur, who has been infatuated with David all her life, but David hardly notices her — “doesn’t even know I exist” — until she goes away to Paris for two years, and returns an elegant, sophisticated, beautiful woman. Suddenly, she finds that she has captured David’s attention, but just as she does so, she finds herself falling in love with Linus, and she finds that Linus is also falling in love with her.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
11 ) A Foreign Affair
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 15
- IMDB User Review Score: 13
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
In occupied Berlin, an army captain is torn between an ex-Nazi cafe singer and the U.S. congresswoman investigating her.
Purchase / Learn More
|
10 ) Five Graves to Cairo
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 12
- IMDB User Review Score: 13
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
The British Army, retreating ahead of victorious Rommel, leaves a lone survivor on the Egyptian border who finds refuge at a remote desert hotel. He is helped by the hotel’s owner, despite protest from the French chambermaid, afraid of the imminent arrival of Rommel and the Germans. John assumes the identity of the recently deceased waiter to survive.
Purchase / Learn More
|
9 ) The Major and the Minor
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
- IMDB User Review Score: 12
- Letterboxd User Score: 11
Susan Applegate, tired of New York after one year and 25 jobs, decides to return to her home town. Discovering she hasn’t enough money for the train fare, Susan disguises herself as a 12-year-old and travels for half the price. Caught out by the conductors, she hides in the compartment of Major Philip Kirby, a military school instructor who takes the “child” under his wing.
Purchase / Learn More
|
8 ) One, Two, Three
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 7
- Letterboxd User Score: 7
A Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin tries to keep the boss’s daughter from marrying a Communist.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
7 ) Ace in the Hole
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 14
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 4
A frustrated former big-city journalist now stuck working for an Albuquerque newspaper exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career, but the situation quickly escalates into an out-of-control media circus.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
6 ) Stalag 17
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 7
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 7
- Letterboxd User Score: 7
It’s a dreary Christmas 1944 for the American POWs in Stalag 17. For the men in Barracks 4, all sergeants, have to deal with a grave problem – there seems to be a security leak. The Germans always seem to be forewarned about escapes and in the most recent attempt the two men, Manfredi and Johnson, walked straight into a trap and were killed. For some in Barracks 4, especially the loud-mouthed Duke, the leaker is obvious: J.J. Sefton, a wheeler-dealer who doesn’t hesitate to trade with the guards and who has acquired goods and privileges that no other prisoner seems to have. Sefton denies giving the Germans any information and makes it quite clear that he has no intention of ever trying to escape. He plans to ride out the war in what little comfort he can arrange, but it doesn’t extend to spying for the Germans.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
5 ) The Lost Weekend
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
- IMDB User Review Score: 7
- Letterboxd User Score: 7
Don Birnam, a long-time alcoholic, has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst… but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last – one way or another.
Purchase / Learn More
|
4 ) The Apartment
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 11
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 4
- IMDB User Review Score: 3
- Letterboxd User Score: 2
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
3 ) Double Indemnity
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 8
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 3
- Letterboxd User Score: 3
A rich woman [Barbara Stanwyck] and a calculating insurance agent [Fred MacMurray] plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy. Against a backdrop of distinctly Californian settings, the partners in crime plan the perfect murder to collect the insurance, which pays double if the death is accidental. Directed by Billy Wilder from a screenplay he wrote with Raymond Chandler, and from the novel by James M. Cain.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
1 ) Witness for the Prosecution
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 2
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
When Leonard Vole is arrested for the sensational murder of a rich, middle-aged widow, the famous Sir Wilfrid Robarts agrees to appear on his behalf. Sir Wilfrid, recovering from a near-fatal heart attack, is supposed to be on a diet of bland, civil suits – but the lure of the criminal courts is too much for him, especially when the case is so difficult.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
1 ) Sunset Boulevard
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
Purchase / Learn More
|
|
Billy Wilder’s Best Movies
Billy Wilder Review Website Filmography Rankings
| Film | RT Critic | RT User | IMDB | Letterboxd | Overal Rank |
| Sunset Boulevard | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Witness for the Prosecution | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 1 |
| Double Indemnity | 8 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| The Apartment | 11 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 |
| The Lost Weekend | 1 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 5 |
| Stalag 17 | 7 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 6 |
| Ace in the Hole | 14 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 7 |
| One, Two, Three | 10 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 8 |
| The Major and the Minor | 1 | 10 | 12 | 11 | 9 |
| Five Graves to Cairo | 1 | 12 | 13 | 12 | 10 |
| Sabrina | 13 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 11 |
| A Foreign Affair | 1 | 15 | 13 | 12 | 11 |
| The Fortune Cookie | 9 | 11 | 13 | 12 | 13 |
| Irma la Douce | 18 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 14 |
| Some Like It Hot | 25 | 25 | 3 | 5 | 15 |
| The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes | 12 | 19 | 19 | 12 | 16 |
| Avanti! | 16 | 16 | 19 | 12 | 17 |
| The Front Page | 20 | 19 | 13 | 12 | 18 |
| Love in the Afternoon | 15 | 12 | 18 | 19 | 18 |
| The Seven Year Itch | 16 | 16 | 19 | 19 | 20 |
| The Spirit of St. Louis | 19 | 18 | 19 | 23 | 21 |
| Die Todesmühlen | 25 | 25 | 11 | 19 | 22 |
| Kiss Me, Stupid | 20 | 21 | 23 | 19 | 23 |
| Fedora | 22 | 22 | 24 | 23 | 24 |
| The Emperor Waltz | 23 | 23 | 26 | 26 | 25 |
| Buddy Buddy | 24 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 26 |
| Bad Seed | 25 | 25 | 26 | 25 | 27 |
