Published via Ecency

(source:tmdb.org)

Billy Wilder earned the reputation of a great Hollywood film-maker by directing some of the most iconic Hollywood films of the 20th century. Among them was Sunset Boulevard, a 1950 drama that is widely regarded as the most iconic Hollywood film about Hollywood. More than a quarter of a century later, Wilder returned to the same subject in his penultimate film, the 1978 drama Fedora.

Just like in Sunset Boulevard, William Holden plays the protagonist and narrator, in this case an old and financially struggling producer, Barry “Dutch” Detweiler. The plot deals with his visit to a villa on the Greek island of Corfu, where the old but still glamorous Hollywood diva Fedora (played by Marthe Keller) spends her days in seclusion after inexplicably ending her successful career a few years earlier, following a film co-starring Michael York (who plays himself). Detweiler tries to talk Fedora into ending her retirement and starring as the title character in his production of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. During their meeting he is amazed that she still looks as young and beautiful as she did when he had met her as a young assistant director in Hollywood (played by Stephen Collins in flashbacks) three decades ago. He is, on the other hand, baffled by her erratic behaviour and apparent failure to remember that the two of them had a brief but passionate romance. Detweiler soon begins to think that Fedora is held prisoner by her overprotective servants and the mysterious Countess Sobryanski (played by Hildegard Knef), but the shocking truth about Fedora is revealed following a tragic event.

Some critics, while making unavoidable comparisons between Sunset Boulevard and Fedora, saw Fedora as a variant of Norma Desmond, the iconic character of a washed-up silent-era star unable to come to terms with age, fading glory and the world of the despised “talkies”. Wilder in his script actually makes an interesting twist by having Holden’s protagonist closer to Norma Desmond; he appears as a washed-up film-maker who is just as at odds with New Hollywood and its “kids with beards” making unglamorous films as Desmond was with the Boulevard-era Hollywood. Detweiler, on the other hand, is more firmly grounded and could be interpreted as Wilder’s alter ego, whose judgment on 1970s cinema is in tune with his own. Wilder makes his views clear by directing Fedora in a deliberately old-fashioned way, with each shot trying to resurrect the old splendour, and the script relishing old-style melodrama, further enhanced by a recognisably Classic Hollywood soundtrack by veteran composer Miklós Rózsa.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, this approach was rejected by 1970s Hollywood, forcing Wilder to make this film as a Franco-German co-production. Fedora was greeted as an anachronism by contemporary critics and failed at the box-office. This signalled the end of the Hollywood career for Swiss actress Marthe Keller, who, in fact, had done a very good job in the complex role of the mysterious Garbo-like diva. The reputation of Fedora, just like the fictitious career of its title character, nevertheless improved with age, and this tragically underrated film can be recommended to fans of Classic Hollywood and its masters.

RATING: 7/10 (++)