Noob Film Review - FEDORA by Billy Wilder (1978)
A tale about a Hollywood primadona, Fedora who is admired by many through her heavenly beauty and screen presence. Her face is in the mind of the millions watching her on films and at the same time the image of her forever embedded there.
She has then developed the fear of losing that stature and title. She got into this dark, frankenstein-ish reality complete with castle, an evil doctor and a test subject. All to retain the image in which she is famous and worshipped for.
The films that she starred in are in no match to the story that she is living, as it is a story on its own, and as Billy Wilder projected that into our minds. A stereotype of a life of a Hollywood primadona where their screen persona possesed them in real life to delved into the unnatural.
“You can't cheat nature without paying the price.” - Doctor Vando.
Yet millions will never get to know the real story. The image that films gives us is just a layer covering layers of untold and hidden stories underneath. The suffering and misery to produce images for the masses to believe in and copy or to worship. Even the death is an act of its own. Their life (the one that they let you know) is just another projection onto the minds of the people., also done through cameras and screens, just like in the opening scenes of the news broadcast. The game which the saying ‘seeing is believing’ is the number one rule.
The magic where only the magicians (the filmakers) knows the dark secrets and sworn not to leaked it or it will spoil the act. And also at the end of the film where Barry kissed the hand and swears to keep it secret.
This is a film released in 1978 where enough years in Hollywood film-making history for tales such as this to grow and create its own fairy tales of the life behind the screen.
And the changing of times in the filming industry where Barry Detweiler says;
“It's a whole different business now. The kids with beards have taken over. They don't need scripts, just give 'em a hand-held camera with a zoom lens.”
Akin to what we see now where everyone has a high-definition camera in their pockets yet very little knows how to use them.
FEDORA is also a great lamentation of what film has become from the glory days where it used to mean something, to today’s endless production line that most of them presses the importance of empty spectacle where the joy of it is merely skin-deep. Where ticket collections harvested from millions by giving them what they want to see, instead of what they should see. From the tools of education and propaganda to a mere rotten tomatoes the moment the audience fail to understand it hence now they make them to suit their level of intelligence.
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