A sense of cohesion in Wyler's films is not immediately apparent. Filmmakers like Frank Capra, Preston Sturges, and Alfred Hitchcock were closely associated with specific genres. This in turn allows critics to easily study these filmmakers simply by disregarding the narrative wrapping. Thus, a critic can focus on a given filmmaker's preoccupations, by cataloguing recurrent narrative tropes and themes. Wyler, on the other hand, switches from one genre to another with ease; his diversity of subjects complicates critical analysis and the narrative cannot simply be dismissed. One cannot study Wyler for variations in a single story. To capture the binding thread of his oeuvre, one studies instead how he tells each story. Critics often explore his use of deep focus, but Wyler has a particular method of manipulating space in his films that is not limited to a single technique. How characters interact with one another, how they inhabit the space of the film, even how they are framed tell us more of the story and the characters than the specifics of dialogue and action.

Wyler learned his craft by shooting a string of two-reel Westerns, which taught him how to show his stories rather than tell them. How many different ways can a man get on a horse? Once he graduated to longer formats, to avoid being typecast as a “Western director,” he kept his distance from the genre, shooting only three Westerns between 1930 and his retirement in 1970. Be it a Western (Hell's Heroes 1929), a comedy (The Good Fairy 1935), a domestic drama (Mrs. Miniver 1942), a film noir (Detective Story 1951), a spectacle (Ben-Hur 1959), or a musical (Funny Girl 1968), the stories themselves are told so originally that they are difficult to define by traditional genre categories. Is Roman Holiday (1953), for example, a comedy or a drama? When watching his films, one discovers that Wyler uses aspects of personal, social, and at times meta-filmic history to convey a sense of inescapability. The past clearly plays a significant role in his films.

Many of Wyler's films are based on novels (Wuthering Heights 1939, Dodsworth 1936) or plays (Dead End 1937, The Children's Hour 1961). One would expect such literate source material to be dominated by literate aspects of storytelling, such as dialogue and dramaturgy, but Wyler is noted for his ability to make adaptations that are visual and cinematic.