‘They do not make movies like this any longer’ could very well be a motto or maybe even an alternative title for ‘Fedora‘, the penultimate film directed by Billy Wilder in 1978. At first glance it could be a resumption of the theme of return on the screen of a famous movie star that had brought Wilder the fame in ‘Sunset Blvd.‘, perhaps the best film of his career. The screenplay written by Wilder along with I.A.L. Diamond (the Romania-born screenwriter) talks to viewers about the aging of the ‘stars’ and their role in Hollywood, on the background of a changing film industry. Explicit messages are subtly amplified by the very way the film is made. At the end of the 70s, the decade when the new generation of American directors took control of the big studios,Billy Wilder no longer finds his place or financing in the US, and leaves for Europe to make a film that, although its story takes place in France and Corfu talks about Hollywood. Moreover, he does it in the style of ‘the movies they don’t make like this any longer’. Immediate success avoided him. But I think posterity is more lenient with this film, which is an interesting piece of cinema in many ways.
The film opens with a suicide scene filmed in the style of ‘film noir’, which may be reminiscent of Anna Karenina’s suicide at the end of Tolstoy’s novel and of the films it inspired. The woman who committed suicide is Fedora, a former great Hollywood star of Polish origin, mysteriously retired at the peak of her career. Barry Detweiler (William Holden), a producer whose days of glory are behind him, is attending her funeral in Paris. A series of feedbacks reconstitute his attempt to bring Fedora back to the screen and the trip to the island of Corfu, where she lived far from the world. Armed with the memories of their youth and with a script that is nothing more than a new version of ‘Ana Karenina’, the producer had tried unsuccessfully to bring back to the world of film the star, who lives, perhaps against her will, in a decadent villa in the company of mysterious characters. Fedora’s secret will be revealed gradually, and viewers will have time to think about her fate (inspired by Greta Garbo’s biography) and the difference between the Hollywood of the glory years and the ‘new Hollywood’ that is the ’70s dominated by ‘bearded young directors’.
If Billy Wilder had managed to cast Marlene Dietrich and Faye Dunaway in the lead female roles, as he had originally planned, we might have been talking about ‘Fedora‘ today as a second peak of his career. However, it seems that here we are dealing with another similarity between the story in the film and the history of its production. Same as the hero of the film, director Billy Wilder, exiled from Hollywood, found a more modest funding in Europe, but the actresses who ended up playing the female roles perform below expectations. Too bad, indeed, especially since William Holden is excellent in the role of producer, achieving a creation in the good classic style, just as the director intended. Henry Fonda and Michael York also appear in the cast, acting in their own roles in a film in which the distances between the art of cinema and the lives of those who make films are blurred in many moments. Even if it is not the masterpiece that it could have been, and even if it failed to become a comeback to glory for Billy Wilder, ‘Fedora‘ is a film impregnated with love and nostalgia for a certain style of cinema, a film on which fans of Wilder and of the glory days of Hollywood, but not only them, will surely appreciate.