I'm with you on Wilder's status as a writer / director.

Apologies if I've made this point before, but here goes:

Andrew Sarris (a major influence on my understanding of film) once categorized Billy Wilder's approach as "Less than meets the eye." Sarris later acknowledged that he had underestimated Wilder's talent. But in a way, his characterization is accurate. As your comments suggest, Wilder sought to efface his own status as a creator (a kind of antithesis of what an auteur does). For another artist, this might seem like an attempt to curry favor with a commercially minded audience, a sell-out. But in Wilder's films and scripts, it's just the opposite. He used conventions in order to reach a deeper level of emotion (and truth) that conventionality rarely plumbed. There's no one else like him.