This story is much better than the script I wrote for you.
Who can play it?
Although this is said to be a "Sunset Boulevard" style story, but with the predecessors, this story is more tragic and more lamentable.
"Sunset Boulevard" is a black eerie satirical drama, this one is more like a suspense drama with tragic colors, this suspense is brought to the end, when the truth is revealed step by step, all that is left is helplessness and sadness. Black-and-white images and color images present a completely different style of picture.
Lady Robbery (Fedora)
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: William Holden / Martel Kler / Heidi Gard Nefo / Jose Feller / Francis Sternhagen / Henry Fonda
Written by: I· A· L. Diamond/Billy Wilder Tom Tellon
Release date: 1978-6-29
Duration: 116min
<h1>01 Narrative</h1>
The first half of the film uses flashbacks, opening with the funeral of the protagonist Fedora, which is slightly different from the story told by the dead protagonist in Sunset Boulevard.
But the way the flashbacks are told is more consistent with the sequence in which the mystery is solved again in the second half of the story.
It's just that the plot of solving the mystery in the second half of this "Beauty Robbery" is a bit lengthy, but there are also reversals in this lengthy process. For the countess of the real Fedora, the audience is indignant and hateful at her behavior at first, but although it flashes back to the narrative method, it gradually becomes a helplessness, and finally the suspense is all solved, and the character's situation is reversed.
<h1>02 Hint</h1>
William Holden is back in the Sunset Boulevard film more than two decades later. Only this time the character is completely different from the character in Sunset Boulevard.
Although his role as Deville has a little relationship with the real Fedora, his character is more like a spectator than the previous film, like an audience. Or rather, he represents the perspective of the audience, for the countess, for Antonia who replaced Fedora, and for those on the island, his perspective and change of mentality are the perspective of the audience, and they are a tool to solve the mystery of this story.
All the episodes in his episodes have a needle-and-needle effect.
When he came to Fedora with a script based on Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, it actually implied that the fake Fedora, Antonia's final ending, she ran to the end, exactly the same as Anna Karenina's final ending.
And because the screenplay of the film was based on Anna Karenina, the real Countess Fedora was extremely disapproving of Anna Karenina's suicide at the end of the novel, which she felt was undignified.
Therefore, antonia, who feels desperate and will never be free, chooses to commit suicide in the same way as Anna Karenina, which is also hatred and revenge for her mother.
<h1>03 Thriller plot</h1>
①
When Deville, played by William Holden, breaks into the villa on the island in hopes of freeing Fedora, he finds that the villa has been empty.
He opened the cupboard in Fedora's bedroom and found a drawer of neatly arranged white gloves.
It was fake Fedora, Antonia's white glove, and she had to wear such a white glove all day long to hide her true self, not so much for herself as just for her mother's fame and fortune, for the dignity of her mother, and in the eyes of the real Fedora, her mother, it was much more important for Fedora to live forever young in the eyes of people than the freedom and happiness of her daughter.
②
This episode appears in the memories of the real Countess Fedora explaining the whole story to Deville.
With her head wrapped in gauze and only two eyes exposed, Fedora lay trembling like a mummy on the hospital bed, desperate for her youth to stay forever.
She is also like a mummy, thinking of keeping a beautiful body and ignoring everything else.
This practice of drinking and quenching her thirst had disastrous consequences for her, and she failed, she frantically ripped open the gauze in front of the mirror, screamed hysterically, and the atmosphere of horror and fear filled the entire movie scene.
This kind of fear is not only brought to her by the atmosphere of the industry in which she is located, but also brought to herself by herself, she cannot retreat from the rapids, and she wants to seize her own most glorious moment, drag herself into a miserable situation, and also pull her daughter into the Jedi.
<h1>04 Characters</h1>
(1) Real Fedora (Countess)
Before the disfigurement, Fedora was an extremely narcissistic star, with 63 mirrors in her home, just like Norma's home in Sunset Boulevard, where she was obsessed with her beauty and even more obsessed with her youth. And the attention she paid to Dwyler, played by William Holden, in her youth was also because he did not give her the warm praise of her beauty and body as she thought.
Her narcissism and obsession eventually led her to take risks and challenge humanity's natural metabolism of life and death.
After being disfigured, she was forced to retire.
Henry Fonda plays himself, and as the president of the Academy Awards, he comes to the island to present the retired Fedora award, thus breaking the seemingly peaceful retirement life.
Fame and fortune are too tempting, and how can she be willing to let Fedora "die" at this point. So the daughter was not important at all.
At the funeral after her daughter's suicide, that is, Fedora's funeral, she was concerned about whether the funeral was decent, whether there would be any bad influence, and her narcissism and extreme perfectionism demanded that Fedora's funeral should also be perfect.
She didn't care about her daughter, her death was no longer important, more important was the funeral of "Fedora". She didn't even make any waves when she told Dwyler about it all. Lovers and daughters cannot match her glory as Fedora.
(2) Alternative fedora (Antonia)
The weird thing about this film than Sunset Boulevard is that there is an alternative mother's and unknown daughter's role, and it is this daughter's role that is the most tragic.
If the real Countess Fedora shows cold-bloodedness and cruelty, cruelty and obsession. Then this daughter Antonia shows the most tragic side of the industry.
You can't be your true self, you can't have a free body, you can't love the people you really love, and you don't even have the right and opportunity to let the other person know. If she initially replaced her mother with some excitement and glory, it was only when she met someone she truly loved and could not love that she found out how desperate and unable to get rid of being in it. She started taking drugs, she began to numb herself, and she was no longer the vivacious girl she had been before.
She fell into the despair and fear of being imprisoned, and finally chose to destroy herself, she ran to the railroad tracks to commit suicide, which was a revenge for her own liberation and her mother.
She and her mother are like two sides of the same body of this so-called "Fedora".
She was bent on breaking free, desperately trying to rebel against her mother, the Countess, who was the other side, wanting freedom, wanting true love. But she kept reminding herself of who she was playing, and the notebook full of "I am Fedora" was a testament to her paralysis.
<h1>05 Closure</h1>
Although the plot of the opening funeral is somewhat prematurely transferred to the beginning of the funeral in the second half of the film, this is after all Billy Wilder's work in his later years, and the ending is not as shocking as his earlier works, but it is still a classic that is similar to "Sunset Boulevard".
It is also very different from the ending in Sunset Boulevard, where Fedora ends with a perfect funeral and a nervous murderer unlike Norma.
Billy Wilder is good at telling stories with exaggerated and bizarre plots with his own experience, but this exaggeration is not distorted, but it makes people feel more real, but after many years, it will only become more and more real, and that scene is really staged, but the cruel place is too cruel on the screen.
If "Sunset Boulevard" is a true embodiment of the lost place of that silent film era, then this "Beauty Robbery" Billy Wilder brings himself, and the master era he is in will eventually pass, and he is also the epitome of an era that is about to pass.
He was always cynical.
In the film, he expresses his dissatisfaction with the film environment at that time through the mouth of Deweiler, played by William Holden.
"Now it's all mustache directors, give them a hand-held camera and they can make movies."
"Now the whole film industry is down, they don't need scripts, they just need handheld cameras with ZOOM."
But all this is unstoppable, leaving only a sigh.
As in that sentence, the pride is only a night photo.