We’ve watched and liked so many of Billy Wilder’s films that I’m always game for another one, especially one that was made in Europe and so might feel less American. Unfortunately with William Holden as the lead and the very Hollywood plot, this one still feels very American. The story relies on a huge twist that is revealed not at the end of the film but somewhere in the final third or so and so everything that is truly important all happened in the past. As the second last of Wilder’s feature films, it wasn’t rated very highly when it was released and although opinions of it have improved since then, I think this isn’t anything close to Wilder’s best work.
Barry Detweiler, now a Hollywood producer, arrives at Corfu in search of the reclusive Fedora. She was a superstar who retired at the height of her fame and yet somehow managed to retain her looks despite her great age. He has a brief fling with her decades ago when he was an assistant on set and wants her to star in his film. Fedora now lives on a private island of her own and her minders including her servant Miss Balfour, her famous cosmetic surgeon Dr. Vando, and an elderly countess, turn away all visitors. Eventually Detweiler runs into Fedora into town as she has escaped her minders to buy what is eventually revealed to be drugs from a shop. However she doesn’t seem to recognize him at all. She later shows up in his hotel room to claim that she is being held captive by her minders. She seems to be enthusiastic about his film project but mysteriously insists that he cast Michael York as the male lead. Then she is forcefully recaptured by her minders again. An attempt to break into their villa ends with Detweiler being knocked unconscious and when he comes to, he learns that Fedora is dead, having thrown herself in front of a train.
The premise about a film superstar of yesteryear being impossibly youthful is intriguing, though it does veer a little close to the far superior Sunset Boulevard. Unfortunately I believe that this film is fatally flawed starting from its script. Detweiler is not an interesting point of view character to explore the mystery behind Fedora and he is mostly a bystander with not much agency. He tries to gain access to Fedora in a variety of ways and none of them ultimately matters. The twist isn’t hard to guess and the reveal is followed by a lengthy exposition of many events that had already happened and we can mostly guess at anyway. The result is a film that doesn’t have much dramatic tension nor even any characters to really root for. A shorter film that skips silly parts such as Detweiler being knocked unconscious by the villa’s chauffeur for a week, an implausibly long period of time, would have been so much better.
Thematically the film is all over the place as well: the yearning for youth and immortality by a film star, the obsession with Michael York, Detweiler’s struggle over whether Fedora’s minders are helping or victimizing her, but the film is badly placed to explore them as Fedora is not the point of view character. It’s also pretty evident at the end that they are all guilty of wrongdoing but it seems the sacrifice of one woman is deemed insignificant next to the importance of preserving the legacy of a legendary star as the film doesn’t seriously question that at all.
It’s not a bad film and it is watchable, but it’s nothing special either. I’ve written often about films that feel far ahead of their time but this one is the opposite: it’s too old-fashioned for its era and teases a European identity that in the end amounts to nothing much.