DVD/150: SUNSET BOULEVARD (Billy Wilder, 1950)

On the date of Gloria Swanson's birth day and Billy Wilder's death, I watched his masterpiece SUNSET BOULEVARD.

As with other classic films it could have been so different - Wilder's first choice was Mae West and Marlon Brando!

Luckily they passed and Wilder cast the iconic trio of William Holden as penniless scriptwriter Joe Gillis, Gloria Swanson as the faded silent star Norma Desmond and Erich von Stroheim as her servant Max, who later reveals he was once Norma's director and first husband.

Wilder utilised both of their histories: when Joe and Norma watch one of her silent films it is 1929's QUEEN KELLY which starred - and was produced by - Swanson and directed by von Stroheim until she sacked him and stopped filming.

This scathing satire on life and death in Hollywood is ageless and Wilder's biting wit still cuts deep: by turns, it's funny, scary, perceptive, tragic and haunting.

Shelf or charity shop?  Eternal shelf life.  SUNSET BOULEVARD received 11 Academy Award nominations but only won three: screenplay (by Wilder, Charles Brackett and DM Marshman), art direction and Franz Waxman's lush score. Yes it was up against ALL ABOUT EVE but you suspect that made it easier to bypass such a bitter anti-Hollywood film. Wilder's direction wonderfully balances the operatic drama with cutting humour.  The smiles mostly come from William Holden's sardonic Joe - an opportunity he grabbed with both hands, after being type-cast in nice-guy roles,  But Wilder saw something deeper in him, his next film with Wilder, STALEG 17, won him his Best Actor Academy Award.  Gloria Swanson's screen career had dwindled in the 1930s but, unlike Norma, she had kept busy on stage and radio.  She totally inhabits Norma's deranged majesty however while shading it enough to bring moments like her delicious impersonation of Chaplin - who had directed her in 1915!  Her legendary final scene, as insane Norma descends her staircase, thinking she is playing Salome for DeMille, is still unforgettable.  Erich von Stroheim underplays rather than chewing the scenery, while Nancy Olson is delightful as Betty, the young writer who offers Joe a chance for escape.  Wilder cleverly cast former silent stars as Norma's bridge-playing friends: Buster Keaton is the only one known to viewers today, the others are Anna Q Nilsson - the first Swedish Hollywood star, before Garbo and Bergman - and HB Warner who played Jesus in KING OF KINGS, directed in 1927 by Cecil B DeMille who himself has a sizeable cameo as himself; also seen is real-life gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, phoning in her breaking news from Norma's bedroom at the film's climax.

DVD/150: HUMORESQUE (Jean Negulesco, 1946)

After her Oscar-winning triumph in MILDRED PEARCE, Joan Crawford then delivered another iconic performance in HUMORESQUE, easily holding her own opposite intense John Garfield.

Previously filmed by Frank Borzage in 1920, this time screenwriter Clifford Odets borrowed from the premise of his own play GOLDEN BOY.

Paul Boray, a New York grocer's son, is a talented classical violinist, although success eludes him, but he is pushed on by his devoted mother.

Paul and his pianist friend Sid attend a swanky party; he plays his violin but is antagonistic at the patronising attitude of the hostess Helen Wright, an arts patron who is bored with her retinue of adoring men and her loveless marriage.

Helen is attracted to Paul however and secures him a manager and finally, his success.  Of course they become lovers - much to his mother's displeasure.

But love doesn't bring them happiness, just a lonely Wagnerian ending...

Shelf or charity shop?  For God's sake... it's Joan in a sequinned Adrian gown getting drunk to the Liebestod!  I have always had issues with HUMORESQUE however, Jean Negulseco's direction plods along, taking it's sudsy time to bring Crawford into the film while over-indulging the boorish performance from Oscar Levant as the pianist friend. The amount of screentime afforded Ruth Nelson's sanctimonious and provincial mother is irkesome too - the idea is problematic that the hero should not stray from hearth and home, his emotionally-dead mother and dreary childhood sweetheart; the final image of Paul walking back to the family store one presumes is meant to be heartwarming but it strikes me as singularly awful.  John Garfield gives a steely performance as Paul but needless to say the film comes alive with the arrival of Joan Crawford as the glacial Helen, and she, cinematographer Ernest Haller and composer Franz Waxman deliver two glorious scenes without dialogue - Helen drifting into an ecstatic reverie in the concert hall at Paul's violin playing, totally unaware of the cold stares from his family, and the famous scene as Crawford, alone and intoxicated, becomes one with Wagner, the wind and the sea...

DVD/150: JU DOU (Zhang Yimou / Yang Fengliang, 1990)

Three years after the acclaim for his debut RED SORGHUM, Zhang Yimou struck gold again with JU DOU, the first Chinese film nominated for the Best Foreign Language Academy Award.

The film glows with the performances from Yimou's muse Gong Li as Ju Dou and Li Baotian as Tianqing.

In 1920s rural China, Tianqing discovers his cruel adoptive uncle Jinshan, owner of a silk dyeing shop, has bought a new young wife Ju Dou, who he abuses.

Tianqing lusts over Ju Dou but when he realizes the extent of her bruises, his lust turns to protective love.

Their love results in a baby boy.  Jinshan suffers a stroke, leaving him paralyzed, and Ju Dou joyfully tells him that Tianqing is the father.  

Jinshan attempts to drown toddler Tianbai but is exultant when the boy calls him 'father'. Jinshan's later drowns in a dye vat.

Tianbai grows up hating his parents...

 

 

Shelf or charity shop?  Living in my dvd plastic storage box, Zhang Yimou's Chinese film noir-like tale of love and death is a keeper.  Zhang's previous career as a cinematographer makes the film look glorious - Ju Dou and Tianqing's love grows between the towering drying rolls of coloured silks hanging over the courtyard which contrasts with the gloomy darkness of the interiors. Li Wei is an excellent villain as Jinshan and there is an arresting performance by Zheng Ji'an as the sullen, vengeful Tianbai but the film belongs to Li Baotian as Tianqing and the glorious Gong Li - it is remarkable that this was only three years after her first film as she is wonderfully charismatic as the bruised, loving, haunted Je Dou.  Despite it's international success, JU DOU was banned in China for a while.

DVD/150: FEDORA (Billy Wilder, 1978)

Wilder's neglected FEDORA sees him revisiting the themes - and lead actor - of his classic SUNSET BOULEVARD.

William Holden is wonderful as Barry Detweiler, a film producer out-of-step with 1970s Hollywood - his cynical rants echo Wilder's difficulty in getting FEDORA made by Universal: it was eventually a French / German co-production.

Screen icon Fedora is killed by a train outside Paris; her lying-in-state is attended by Detweiler, an MGM co-worker who had a one-night stand with her.  Two weeks before, he had travelled to Corfu hoping to meet her.

Detweiler hopes to lure Fedora out of seclusion for his remake of ANNA KARENINA but she is guarded by her doctor Vando and the Polish Countess Sobryanski.

Barry's persistant attempts result in Fedora being moved to Paris. Guilty he may have contributed to her suicide, he confronts Fedora's guardians but learns the truth behind the artifice...

Shelf or charity shop?  So much of a keeper I have ordered a new dvd to replace the Spanish version I have with it's Castilian subtitles! Wilder's adaptation of former actor Tom Tryon's novella is a cynical but loving tribute to Hollywood myth-making and the pressure on an icon to maintain the illusion of beauty. Wilder wanted Faye Dunaway and Marlene Dietrich to star but the combination of Marlene's loathing of the novella and Universal's rejection of it led Wilder to think again.  He cast Swiss actress Marthe Keller as Fedora and veteran German actress Hildegarde Knef as The Countess but their clashing accents led Wilder to hire a German actress Inge Bunsch to dub both of them which results in the film's only flaw, the dubbing is too distracting to allow any investment in Keller's performance. Oddly Knef would go on to dub both roles for the German release and Keller dubbed both roles for the the French release. FEDORA's bad luck continued when bad test screenings led to the original distributor dropping out and a second distributor insisting on 12 minutes of cuts much to Wilder's despair.  But FEDORA lives on as his last great film; there are fine contributions from Jose Ferrer as Vando, Frances Sternhagen as Fedora's companion, Mario Adorf as the manager of Holden's Corfu hotel and Miklos Rózsa's lush 'old Hollywood' score. I was delighted to realise that the palatial exterior location of Fedora's lying-in-state is the Musée Jacquemart-Andre in Paris.