William Holden was 60 when he made this, and three years later he was dead. 30 years earlier he had played a similar lead in "Sunset Boulevard" dissecting the same theme, also directed by Billy Wilder. Although they treat the same subject, they are extremely different, and there are oceans of differences between them. Gloria Swanson was a movie star from the silents who had become mummified in her great past, while Fedora is something of the contrary: she was in her heyday as great a star as Garbo, Dietrich, Crawford, Bette Davis and others like that but like Garbo resigned from the screen into total isolation, in which producer William Holden wishes to dig her out for a new version of "Anna Karenina", as the reputation of Fedora is that she, like Garbo, stopped aging and just remained as beautiful as ever. That's a movie legend of the kind that Hollywood and the film industry live on and which just can't be shattered. Fedora is a realist and does what she can to prevent the legend from dying, and succeeds - beyond death. That is what this film is about - the necessity of eternity, when once it has been granted by a world audience, and Henry Fonda even delivers an Oscar to her in her isolation of old age. William Holden says in his departure that a film with her of the true story would have made a much better film than the "Anna Karenina" manuscript, well aware that such a good film never could be made, but Billy Wilder made it.
Fedora
(1978)
Billy Wilder's last masterpiece competes with his earlier masterpiece "Sunset Boulevard"
9 September 2020