Sober-Friend
This is not a sequel to "Sunset Blvd" however "Fedora" reunits the director of "Sunset Blvd" (Billy Wilder) and star William Holden. A Hollywood legend is being seeked out by a down and out film producer who needs "Fedora" in order to get his film made. However "Fedora" is now reclusive. She walked off of her last film. She is now a shadow of her former self however a producer is bound and detrimen to get her back in front of the cameras. When in pursuit of "Fedora" he stumbles upon one thing after another. This film is well worth watching! Seek it out!
JohnHowardReid
Movies with a film-making background inevitably gain full attention from me, no matter how woeful their plots, lacking in skill their artistic pretensions, or miserable their production values. It's therefore most pleasing to find such a movie that is absolutely out-of-the-box in all aspects. Fedora ranks as one of the best movies-about-movies ever made. True, the mystery side of the plot is not exactly its strongest point. Although few members of a sophisticated audience would fail to grasp the obvious solution, the writers have neatly anticipated this problem by making the hero so desperate that he literally cannot see the wood for the trees. It's essential that we always remain sympathetic towards the hero, no matter how crass his actions, and this we certainly are as Holden brilliantly takes us through a replay of his role in Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. In what turns out to be the Swanson role, Hildegard Knef is also most compelling, and although Wilder was not happy with her performance, I thought Marthe Keller handled the title part with exactly the right edge of neurotic tension. Ferrer and Sternhagen contribute memorably forceful characterizations. Wilder's skillful direction is abetted by striking color photography from Gerry Fisher and a stirringly atmospheric Miklos Rosza score.
writers_reign
For Wilder buffs - and what serious film fan isn't - his penultimate film is a referentialists dream. The setting, Corfu, is not a million miles from Ischia, the setting for Avanti and where Avanti boasted two stiffs Fedora boasts one in a literal sense and one in a symbolic sense. The casting of Bill Holden in the lead invites direct comparison with Sunset Boulevard where a young Holden (Joe Gillis) lucked into an ageing movie star by chance and exploited the situation to the full; here, an older Holden (Barry Detweiler) contrives to get next to an ageing movie star who, he hopes, can rescue his flagging career. Wilder manages some pertinent barbs at the 'new' schools and practitioners of film-making, makes some risible casting choices in minor roles - Ferdy Mayne, Michael York, Marte Keller - but generally pulls off another minor gem. Well worth a place in any Wilder DVD collection.
kennethwright2612
Billy Wilder revisits the territory of his Hollywood Babylon classic Sunset Boulevard, with the same male lead (William Holden) in an almost identical role as a washed-up screenwriter trying to get to a reclusive and mysteriously ageless one-time screen queen in order to pitch her a comeback script. Story elements include Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray and (off-screen) the many mad-doctor yarns of the 1930s and 1940s in which Boris Karloff messes about with Things We Were Never Meant To Know. Looks great in a brittle and glitzy 1970s way, as befits its scornfully depicted international-rich-white-trash milieu. Essentially it's a sombre but humanistic sermon on the hopeless worship of physical youth and beauty: as a medieval English writer put it, "who sows hope in the flesh reaps bones". A very relevant film for our narcissistic times, its only big flaw is that it's a mighty chilly piece of work, easier to admire than to love.
AD
