In 1945, Billy Wilder made a film called "Death Mills" about the Holocaust. In it he showed “an entire field, a whole landscape of corpses”. He went on to make "Sunset Boulevard", "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment".

"Mr Wilder & Me" is ostensibly a fiction about a young woman discovering her love of film, music and young men but it is also about the way that a generation of film-makers responded to the great cataclysm of the second world war and the seriousness with which they viewed entertainment, particularly comedy, as an escape from nightmarish reality.

The protagonist, Calista, is a film score composer and she tells the story of how she came to work for the legendary film director, Billy Wilder, whilst he was preparing to work on one of his last films, "Fedora".

Written by Jonathan Coe
Abridged by Florence Bedell

The reader is Jasmine Hyde

Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill Production for BBC Radio 4. Show less