... sharp and witty journalism ... The collection has been edited by the great film historian Noah Isenberg and translated by the brilliant Shelley Frisch ... Wilder’s profile of Whiteman gives us a glimpse into the future filmmaker’s eye for detail and his ability to channel humor through the seemingly mundane ... The selections in Billy Wilder on Assignment show Wilder carefully honing his skills at splashy prose and erudite analysis. Reading these essays gives us a better understanding of the filmmaker’s first profession, which served him so well in Hollywood ... full of glorious turns of phrase, entertaining narratives, and quirky characters. Shelley Frisch, this book’s superb translator, observes that 'Wilder’s prose is, well … wilder than I usually get to render in my translations' ... Thumbing through Wilder’s essays from the 1920s will make you feel as if you are enjoying yourself at a German coffeehouse, catching up on popular culture, and planning your next weekend adventure in the Weimar Republic. Isenberg and Frisch have done a great service for film historians and fans of classic Hollywood. There are very few filmmakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age whose formative years are worthy of such a deep exploration. With Billy Wilder on Assignment, we get to take a fascinating and entertaining journey with the best narrator of his day.

... a revelation, a trove of snappy pieces that give the reader tantalizing glimpses of the mature film satirist who would win six Oscars for his work ... has a bit of everything: punchy film reviews, profiles, set pieces on the rituals of the new nightlife ... Sharp observations like these show us glimpses of the acidulous social satirist of Hollywood’s Golden Age ... shows us exactly where he was coming from, and it’s great fun to find out.

... a richly enjoyable and atmospheric selection ... The journalistic work of Billy Wilder in Vienna and Berlin paints an amazing picture of improvisation and survival, excitement, cheek ... This thrilling and valuable book lets us see the European roots of a director who made so many classic American movies, and how they were shaped in the tumult and horror of the twentieth century ... He is jaunty and funny and cordially cynical with the rhythms of the born entertainer—something like a 1930s incarnation of Fran Lebowitz.

No doubt the lively cynicism of these pieces will be familiar if you know Wilder’s movies ... It’s funny—charming, even—to learn that such a worldly-wise observer of humanity started his journalism career on a naive note ... it’s delightful to watch him seek bigger tips, upgrading his beauty routine—he was like a shark in pomade—and deploying pretty lies ... Mr. Isenberg seems to recognize how good the series is. He gives it pride of place at the front of the volume ... in spite of running scarcely 200 pages, the book feels padded. A whole section is devoted to Wilder’s reviews, which offer surprisingly little insight into plays and movies. They aren’t even much fun to read ... The book’s limitations are really Wilder’s limitations, and those are understandable enough: If 21-year-olds had mature styles and polished critical lenses, what hope would there be for the rest of us? Besides, journalism had plenty of competition for his time and focus ... The brightest moments here let you watch a little more of the human comedy through Billy Wilder’s eyes. Few saw it as clearly he did or had more fun writing it down.

You can see the nascent screenwriter beginning to crystallise ... a delicious compilation of his greatest hits as a journalist, selected from 1925 to 1930, shows just what a precocious talent he was ... Several of the best pieces here contain the germs of Wilder’s future films ... What shines through most in this collection is the way that Wilder yearns for the US ... Every chance he gets in Berlin to study the American male he takes. No detail escapes him.

Despite the efforts of the collection’s editor, Noah Isenberg, On Assignment is not a cohesive volume. Attempts to draw connections between Wilder’s writing and his later filmmaking—through a series of brief film reviews and pieces from film sets—are not convincing. And his decision to cut pieces deemed 'inaccessible to an Anglo-American audience' reduces the book’s historical interest, leaving little detail about Weimar Germany or Austria a decade before the Anschluss. But in Wilder’s prose, Isenberg and translator Shelley Frisch have found some salvation. There’s a pitter-patter in Wilder’s writing, as if, in a fit of brilliant indolence, he hasn’t had time to transform his staccato notes into an actual story ... Wilder revels in turns of phrase, in bits of wit and irreverence. His passion for words compensates for the occasionally implausible narratives he concocts, the just-a-bit-too-perfect quotes from the important people he happens to meet ... There are three things On Assignment could have been: it might have been a work of primarily biographical interest ... a portrait of cities caught between two cataclysms ... And it might have been a study in journalism, a slice of that epoch of feature writing in which quotes were half-invented, and stories aimed for the feeling of accuracy rather than actual accuracy. This is where Isenberg has most succeeded as an editor, perhaps unintentionally. Wilder’s reporting raises questions of plausibility, and he usually appears woefully underprepared for his interviews.