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: 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.

DVD/150: NINOTCHKA (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)

The champagne fizz hasn't gone from Lubitsch's 1939 comedy NINOTCHKA; his effortless sophistication and the stinging satire of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's script still dazzles.

Despite it's success - and a fourth Best Actress nomination - this was Greta Garbo's penultimate film.  Her films were always profitable in Europe and with the outbreak of WWII she and MGM agreed to a hiatus. She never returned.

An emigré aristrocrat discovers that three Soviet emissaries are in Paris to sell her seized jewelry but her suave lover Count Leon gets the sale halted while introducing them to the city's delights.

The Kremlin send a hardline envoy to complete the sale; Nina Yakushova is a dour comrade and on her first night she asks a man for directions, it, of course, is Leon who is immediately snitten and turns on all his Parisian charm.

Slowly Ninotchka relents - but will she choose love or Lenin?

Shelf or charity shop?  Although a resident of my plastic DVD storage box, NINOTCHKA is a keeper.  Lubitsch's trademark souffle-like direction skips through the plot while the Wilder/Brackett script still delivers stinging, ageless lines - when asked by the emissaries how Russia is on her arrival in Paris, Ninotchka says "Very good; the last show trials were a great success.  There are going to be fewer but better Russians".  The cast all catch just the right tone: Ina Claire as the Grand Duchess is an elegant villain - what a strange set it must have been as she was the ex-wife of John Gilbert, Garbo's ex-lover!  Melvyn Douglas is perfect as Count Leon and there is excellent support from Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart and Alexander Granach as the three emissaries - and yes, that IS Bela Lugosi as the Kremlin's trade commissar. But it's Garbo you cannot take your eyes off of as she delivers a gravelly comic performance which is pure delight.  Watching her slowly melt from icy disdain to rapturous love is to see why she is still one of the most captivating screen actresses ever.

DVD/150: DOUBLE INDEMNITY (Billy Wilder, 1944)

DOUBLE INDEMNITY is a Film Noir classic with it's tangy dialogue, vivid characters and the darkness lurking behind it's California sunshine.

James M Cain's 1936 novella was considered unfilmable until Paramount chose it for Billy Wilder to direct as his third Hollywood film.

With Cain unavailable to co-write the script, Wilder chose Raymond Chandler whose hard-boiled dialogue worked wonders.

Insurance salesman Walter Neff meets Phyllis Dietrichson when he visits her house wanting her husband to renew his car insurance.  Instantly attracted to each other, Phyllis soon asks if Walter could arrange life insurance for her husband without him knowing. 

Walter gets Dietrichson to unknowingly sign the policy and soon the lovers plan the perfect murder to get the money...

But when Neff's friend, claims investigator Barton Keyes, suspects foul play and gets closer to the truth, Walter realizes he was a pawn in Phyllis' murderous game all along...

Shelf or charity shop? DOUBLE INDEMNITY lives in my DVD storage box but is definitely a keeper.  With it's shadowy photography and ominous score DOUBLE INDEMNITY is definitive Film Noir; Wilder and Chandler's crunchy dialogue crackles onscreen while Wilder's direction keeps the motor racing to the end.  Fred MacMurray, playing against type, is the perfect Noir anti-hero, the man who thinks he is running the game until he realises he's the one being played and he is ably partnered with Edward G Robinson as the fatherly Keyes.  As the deceiving Phyllis, Barbara Stanwyck gave the cinema one of it's great femme fatales.