![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishBilly Wilder (dir.), Sunset Boulevard
The noir film fest is back at the Cinematheque, my favourite of the two film-festival-type theatres in the area. Friday night I caught a couple of showings.
Force Of Evil had moments of gorgeous cinematography and good dialogue, wrapped around a plot that was by turns impenetrable and nonsense. I don't regret going to see it, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it again. It's sort of what I expect when I go to see movies at the noir festival. Sometimes things are forgotten because they just weren't that impressive to start with.
And then there was Sunset Boulevard.
I knew the director's name, Billy Wilder, as attached to some of the best-regarded comedies from classic Hollywood: Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, especially. But I didn't think I was personally familiar with his work at all. Turns out I've seen a couple of his pictures before: Sabrina, which I didn't much care for partly because I imprinted on the 1995 version with Harrison Ford; and Double Indemnity, which is one of my (everyone's) absolute favourite classic films noir, up there with The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep.
Sunset Boulevard is ... it's not not a noir, I guess. But it's not about someone getting drawn into a life of crime, or discovering the seedy underbelly of the city. If film noir didn't exist I'd call it a gothic. It's about a down-on-his-luck screenwriter who's taken in by an aging silent-movie star who didn't make the shift to talkies, and how she entraps him and he becomes a willing partner in his entrapment.
I enjoyed the movie for the first, oh, twenty minutes or so... and then Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond came on screen and I was entranced. "Hey, you're Norma Desmond! You used to be real big!" "I'm still big! It's the pictures that got small!" It would be so easy for that to tip over into ridiculous, but between the acting, the direction, and the set design, it works perfectly. Swanson is over-the-top enough to be believable, and grounded enough to be effective.
All the characters are, really. They're not-quite-grotesque not-quite-caricatures: the mouthy hack writer, the stuffy devoted manservant, the bubbly sharp-witted ingenue, the overly cheerful friend. In a less good screenplay they'd just be types, but here they've got depth and emotion.
And sure, the plot's got some twists and turns, but I wasn't watching for the plot. I was watching in fascinated horror as Joe the screenwriter dug himself deeper and deeper, occasionally trying halfheartedly to turn himself around. And when he does, at the end? Justice. The poetic kind, too.
"Mr DeMille? I'm ready for my close-up now." Chills.
Gonna have to dig up some more of Wilder's movies now.
The noir film fest is back at the Cinematheque, my favourite of the two film-festival-type theatres in the area. Friday night I caught a couple of showings.
Force Of Evil had moments of gorgeous cinematography and good dialogue, wrapped around a plot that was by turns impenetrable and nonsense. I don't regret going to see it, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it again. It's sort of what I expect when I go to see movies at the noir festival. Sometimes things are forgotten because they just weren't that impressive to start with.
And then there was Sunset Boulevard.
I knew the director's name, Billy Wilder, as attached to some of the best-regarded comedies from classic Hollywood: Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, especially. But I didn't think I was personally familiar with his work at all. Turns out I've seen a couple of his pictures before: Sabrina, which I didn't much care for partly because I imprinted on the 1995 version with Harrison Ford; and Double Indemnity, which is one of my (everyone's) absolute favourite classic films noir, up there with The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep.
Sunset Boulevard is ... it's not not a noir, I guess. But it's not about someone getting drawn into a life of crime, or discovering the seedy underbelly of the city. If film noir didn't exist I'd call it a gothic. It's about a down-on-his-luck screenwriter who's taken in by an aging silent-movie star who didn't make the shift to talkies, and how she entraps him and he becomes a willing partner in his entrapment.
I enjoyed the movie for the first, oh, twenty minutes or so... and then Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond came on screen and I was entranced. "Hey, you're Norma Desmond! You used to be real big!" "I'm still big! It's the pictures that got small!" It would be so easy for that to tip over into ridiculous, but between the acting, the direction, and the set design, it works perfectly. Swanson is over-the-top enough to be believable, and grounded enough to be effective.
All the characters are, really. They're not-quite-grotesque not-quite-caricatures: the mouthy hack writer, the stuffy devoted manservant, the bubbly sharp-witted ingenue, the overly cheerful friend. In a less good screenplay they'd just be types, but here they've got depth and emotion.
And sure, the plot's got some twists and turns, but I wasn't watching for the plot. I was watching in fascinated horror as Joe the screenwriter dug himself deeper and deeper, occasionally trying halfheartedly to turn himself around. And when he does, at the end? Justice. The poetic kind, too.
"Mr DeMille? I'm ready for my close-up now." Chills.
Gonna have to dig up some more of Wilder's movies now.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-11 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-12 05:17 pm (UTC)