Fedora

A thematic sequel to Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder's penultimate film is perhaps best remembered for a line of dialogue in which an emerging generation of filmmaking talent is dismissed wholesale as “kids with beards.” Though William Holden delivers these words in character as a washed up Hollywood producer, there's much in Fedora to suggest Wilder spent the 70s harbouring some measure of resentment toward the Scorseses and Coppolas then racking up critical plaudits. Hollywood had grown ugly following the collapse of the studio system and the acidic innuendo in which the veteran director specialised had no place alongside the vivid fever dreams of Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now.

Given the choice of reflecting the times or sticking to his guns, Wilder opted to do both. Brief glimpses of nudity and uncharacteristically salty language sit uncomfortably here, while the era to which Fedora pays tribute produced work of greater emotional intelligence than this film can muster. The once sure-footed director seems riddled with doubt, uncertain of how to push the boundaries of taste and morality, where once his iconoclasm came so readily.

This is no straightforward folly, however, but a compelling portrait of an exhausted, impotent master fighting a losing battle. The sight of Holden traipsing around Corfu in an obsessive reverie as he attempts to rekindle his personal and professional relationship with a reclusive, ageing starlet is intensely moving. Had Marlene Dietrich accepted the role of the titular diva as hoped, Fedora would have likely made a fitting epitaph for the director's career. With the unremarkable Marthe Keller at the centre of attention, it falls somewhere between an anguished howl and a senile whimper.

Extra

The brilliant Masters of Cinema have brought us a long overdue clean transfer of this curio, and also somehow sourced deleted scenes which offer insight into the notoriously particular director's working process. [Lewis Porteous]