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.