Word: wilderness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
While there is enough good acting in "Sunset Boulevard" to put it on the "must see" list, the film suffers from several unfortunate features. The most glaring of these is an overstuffed, unbalanced script. Billy Wilder and Charlie Brackett have just laid it on too thick, a fact which becomes more and more apparent as the film draws to its climax. The outcome is never in doubt since the picture is nearly all one big flashback, narrated by the hero who is floating in a swimming pool with three bullets in his back...
Sunset Boulevard (Paramount) is a story of Hollywood, mostly at its worst, brilliantly told by Hollywood at its best. A daring film by ordinary movie standards, it is the last collaborative fling by Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder* at a specialty they have made their own: playing hob with convention and getting away with it. It also brings Actress Gloria Swanson back to the screen, after a nine-year absence, in a performance that puts her right up in the running for the first Oscar of her 37-year career...
...shock effect of Sunset Boulevard is at least as high as that of such earlier Brackett & Wilder productions as the alcoholic Lost Weekend. The "hero" is a kept man, the leading lady a suicidal neurotic in her 50s, and their morbid liaison leads grimly on to madness and death. Manipulated less cleverly, the effect of these characters and their story would be oppressively decadent, not to say censorable. Indeed, for all the film's finesse, it may leave some moviegoers with a bad taste in their mouths. Yet, without sentimentalizing the characters or condoning their transgressions, the movie makes...
...Skin of Our Teeth," by Thornton Wilder will be the Dramatic Club's major production next fall. Wilder, who will be here as a visiting lecturer next year, will help the H.D.C. under the title of "general production supervisor...
Adams, bow; Nulson, 2; Hanemann, 3; Harvey, 4; Herman, 5; Clark, 6; Asb, 7; Smith, stroke; Wilder, coxswain...