Fedora **** (1978, William Holden, Marthe Keller, Hildegarde Knef, José Ferrer) – Classic Movie Review 2661

Director Billy Wilder’s horribly undervalued final film from 1978 is fittingly a report on the movie business’s excesses and an attack on Hollywood’s youth-oriented culture, told in flashback.

Marthe Keller stars as a dotty, reclusive old star, Fedora, who seems to have kept her beauty, and is now trying to make a comeback in a new version of Anna Karenina.

Cynics dubbed Fedora ‘old hat’ because they thought Wilder was trying to recreate the magic of his 1950 classic Sunset Blvd. And it even casts its star William Holden as a struggling, down-on-his-luck Hollywood producer called Barry ‘Dutch’ Detweiler, who tracks the old star Fedora down in Corfu at her villa. There she lives with a nurse (Ellen Schwiers), an old noblewoman, Countess Sobryanski (Hildegarde Knef), and her plastic surgeon Dr Vando (José Ferrer).

Alas, the comparisons are odorous, and this film comes nowhere near Sunset Blvd’s achievement. But nevertheless it’s still a civilised, pleasantly rather arty entertainment, with amusing moments and key cameo appearances from Henry Fonda as the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which he was then in real life) who presents a lifetime achievement award to Fedora and Michael York as himself.

Wilder’s screenplay reunites him with his old writing buddy I A L Diamond, based on a novella by Tom Tryon included in his collection Crowned Heads, published in 1976. British cinematographer Gerry Fisher makes it look a treat and veteran composer Miklos Rozsa provides the vintage-style score. It’s a nice occasion.

Alas, it didn’t gain much of a release and went to art house cinemas. On May 30, 1978, the film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival as part of a retrospective of the director’s work. It was released in only a handful of select American and European markets with little fanfare, prompting an insulted Wilder to claim the studio spent about $625 on a marketing campaign. This is a sad story and its box-office failure helped spell the end of Wilder’s film-making days.

Also in the cast are Mario Adorf, Frances Sternhagen, Stephen Collins, Hans Jaray, Gottfried John, Arlene Francis, Jacques Maury and Christine Mueller. What a shame Wilder could not persuade Marlene Dietrich to play Fedora and Faye Dunaway her daughter Antonia, but Dietrich despised the original book and thought the screenplay was no improvement.

Wilder hired German actress Inga Bunsch to dub the dialogue of Marthe Keller and Hildegarde Knef for the film’s English-language release. Keller recorded the voices for both characters in the French version, and Knef did likewise for the German release.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2661

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