Law & Honor

Guy Hamilton’s Man in the Middle

The great director Billy Wilder once said that he made movies because he wanted to tell stories. He did not say he made them because he wanted to change the world, or anything at all that would have reduced his work to political propaganda. And to tell compelling stories, rather than to engage in a Soviet-style march into the supposed world to come, you have to be interested in human beings such as they are, and not as your political vision would have them be. And you have to envision them in difficult situations, ones that will almost never admit of any political solution.

Hollywood, to be sure, had its leanings even during the golden age (1935–1965), but these were usually kept strictly subordinate to the telling of...