Sabrina

Audrey Hepburn’s fame is so divorced from the actual movies she made that it’s likely many people who think they adore her haven’t even taken the time to watch Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Funny Face, or Breakfast at Tiffany’s, to see for themselves just how boring they all are. Of those four, the one I can tolerate is Sabrina, but after re-watching it this weekend, I felt strongly that the nearly two-hour film was twenty minutes too long. Sabrina showcases Hepburn’s natural charm and her unusual, captivating screen presence, as well as her striking fashion choices, via French fashion designer Givenchy. But the movie lumbers along at a much too contented pace as Sabrina woos—and is wooed by—two brothers, played by Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. (Bogart was thirty years her senior, while Holden was just eleven years older.) Sabrina is the daughter of their chauffeur, so the movie gets to “examine” the class structure. (It’s not all that convincing.) By the time Sabrina made up her mind, I was frankly bored and not too thrilled with her choice. But the first half of the film has a lot of lovely moments. The director, Billy Wilder, knows how to create a mood. Sabrina is lit beautifully, capturing the enchanting quality of studio films of the 1950s. It’s also kind of a somber reflection on unrequited love up to a point, a sort of 1950s take on what it was like to be Juliet, only Sabrina doesn’t commit suicide (she tries), and she eventually does get what she wants. She’s so obsessed with William Holden’s character that when she returns from a two-year stay in Paris (for culinary school) all dolled up and all grown up, she wants to recreate his romances with other girls, the ones she would spy on from a tree-top when she was a girl. Maybe there’s a little of Fatal Attraction in there, somewhere. There’s also a distressing kind of cultural and economic prophesying in this movie: The corporation the two brothers work for (which is owned by their father) is developing all kinds of plastics, which are indestructible even to fire, and Bogart mutters with a perverse sense of pleasure that some day soon they’ll probably be able to eat the plastic. How naïve we were then to think we weren’t hurting ourselves—and our planet—with our inventions of convenience. Come to think of it, many romantic comedies of the 1950s were about mildly-career-driven women (like Doris Day) dating men who worked for big corporations making strange new inventions that are strangely normal to us now.

Sunset Boulevard

In 1950, there were two films about aging actresses played by aging actresses. There was All About Eve, the deliciously funny picture about Broadway star Margo Channing (Bette Davis), whose career is threatened by a malicious young fan. And then there was Sunset Boulevard, about a star of the silent age named Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), now living in seclusion in her crumbling mansion on the titular street.

The story is narrated by William Holden, who plays Joe, a struggling writer who turns into Norma's long, secluded drive one afternoon when he's trying to evade the men who are about to repossess his car. He parks in the large, multi-car garage--thinking the house to be abandoned--and then walks around. Soon he's pulled into Norma's bizarre and lonely world. She has one man, Max (Erich von Stroheim), who takes care of her as if she were his daughter. She lives enshrined in the past, before sound ruined her career. There are photographs of her cluttering every room, and she has her own movie screen and projector so she can sit back and relive the past.

Sunset Boulevard is a sharp dark comedy: it's a dead-on look at the rotting capabilities of fame and the delusions of people who try to prolong their youth and popularity. The film is a bit poky in the middle, but it certainly retains its morbid fascination, even sixty-some years later. It's like staring at tabloids in the supermarket: you can't look away.

Directed by Billy Wilder. With Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, and Jack Webb. Several well-known Hollywood personalities appear as themselves, including Cecil B. DeMille and Hedda Hopper. Written by the director, Charles Brackett, and D. M. Marshman, Jr. Cinematography by John F. Seitz. Music by Franz Waxman. 110 min. ★★★½

The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch (1969) may be responsible for giving the Western film some new breath. Its director, Sam Peckinpah, was known for his use of brutality, and in The Wild Bunch he gives the violent seems some kind of poetic elegance. (They have a kick to them that you don't exactly enjoy, but it's exciting nonetheless.) There are a number of striking sequences which make The Wild Bunch a memorable Western even 43 years later. The three that stand out the most are one at the beginning, where the band of outlaws robs a bank; one in the middle, where they blow up a bridge; and the final showdown between the main characters and an army of Mexicans, where the machine gun they've just handed over to the Mexicans is then used in a show of mutual annihilation.

The problem with The Wild Bunch is its length. At two hours and twenty-three minutes, it goes on and on and on, and the exciting moments aren't enough to make up for the long, poky stretches. It reminded me of that incredibly drawn-out wedding sequence in The Deer Hunter. There's a point where a director's attempt to contrast violence with more jovial, laid-back sequences becomes overstated, and Peckinpah is guilty of this in The Wild Bunch just as Michael Cimino was in The Deer Hunter.

The cast is noteworthy: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sanchez, Ben Johnson, and Strother Martin. The performances are as brutally real as the surroundings. This is certainly the anti-Butch Cassidy (a light-hearted version of the same idea, also released in 1969. You can't fault Peckinpah for wanting to make Westerns tough and unashamedly gritty again). And there are some funny throwaway lines. Martin calls someone a "two-bit, redneck peckerwood." (He was also the one who uttered the most famous line in Cool Hand Luke. He has a way with dialogue that is all his own.)

William Holden really carries this movie. Between Holden's performance and Peckinpah's vision, the two of them endow The Wild Bunch with a sense of the beauty of hopelessness. The tragic ending that's destined for these criminals is right because it's inevitable, and it's not delivered with any kind of moralistic hubris. Rather, Peckinpah is pointing out the futility of things. Perhaps that's the appeal of this kind of movie, and the ultimate appeal of the Western genre. And Peckinpah's influence is still felt in movies. His shoot-out sequences have been plagiarized over and over again. Despite all this, I found myself looking forward to the final credits. It's the kind of movie I can appreciate more than I can truly enjoy.