Billy Wilder's penultimate movie is an interesting bookend to Sunset Boulevard. It doesn't quite work - like later Hitchcock's it feels as though it needed to be shot on a proper soundstage in the 1950s but is done on a crappy soundstage with uninteresting 70s photography. William Holden is old and barks but at least is William Holden. Jose Ferrer adds some spice as a creepy plastic surgeon.
The film needed a movie star to play Fedora - Wilder wanted Dietrich but had to settle for Marthe Keller, originally meant to be in a double role then Hildergarde Knef stepped in.
Every scene with Keller feels wrong with overdubbed musci. Her flouncing around in the mansion talk tin Holden and Kneff, when the chauffeur puts her away.
Stephen Collins plays Holden in flashback. Keller plays Keller - she goes topless, and it's a shock to see that in a Wilder film, as it is too when she asks Collins/Holden if he's a f*g because he yawned... but at least it has energy and feels believable. A film about a bitchy producer trying to get a bitchy old star back on screen and bitching about Hollywood - that would've had some life, if mean spirited. This is just silly.
The mansion on Corfu should be creepy and atmospheric but it's shot blandly like a telemovie - this is a film lacking atmosphere (cf the mansion in Boulevard). Also the central conceit is just silly - sorry but it's not believable that Kneff would look gorgeous in the 40s and then as gorgeous in the 70s, that's just unrealistic, even Cary Grant aged. I think you can get away with this conceit in a novel or on stage, but film is so naturalistic. Maybe it could've worked in the 60s in baroque blavk and white.
Also the importance paid to Michael York in the film is just silly - why not have him play someone fictitious?
Why so much bad dubbing? I mean, the little kid....
I went with this for a bit but the second half was ridiculous.
No comments:
Post a Comment