A Hollywood movie purportedly about Hollywood. It's reputation is in the stars but a sense of place seems absent. Oh, sure, the scene with Cecil B. DeMille is shot on the actual set of Samson and Delilah, the movie he was actually at the time making. That, however, is just a fun fact and a trick. A better trick would have been to join film noir with the prevailing pleasant weather of southern California to create for the screen a bright, sunlit hell. Despite all the movie talk, the silent film star's dilapidated mansion could have been in Faulkner's county instead of on Sunset Boulevard.
Everyone knows that Billy Wilder directed William Holden and Gloria Swanson. But is that Jack Webb, of Dragnet fame, as the young love interest of the wholesome studio reader who pans the script the Holden character is hawking?
Comments