Chapter 11 Elegy

After reading several Raymond Chandler detective novels, Billy Wilder became interested again. As a screenwriter, Raymond Chandler once had a relationship with Billy Wilder. Cooperation, their styles must overlap, if you like one, you will probably like that—the fields of reading, watching movies and even making friends are extended in this way, so I searched Wilder’s old movies one by one Come and see, "Double Insurance", "Sunset Boulevard"... But in the end, my favorite work is "Fedora", which was not so famous in his later years (1978). A Hollywood producer, old and wanting to make a last-ditch attempt, worked hard to adapt the script into a script, and traveled far and wide to find the retired female star Fedora to play the leading role-she created a "Fedora myth", Forty years of youthful appearance, and suddenly retired at the peak.He saw her on her secluded island, and found that she was still young, but was controlled by a gloomy and terrifying countess and housekeeper, with no freedom. He tried to help her escape, but failed, and then heard her last News: She ran to the speeding train in Anna Karenina fashion.But at the funeral, the truth he knew was even more shocking. The countess is the real Fedora. She failed in plastic surgery, so she called her illegitimate daughter to pretend to be herself, and continued to perform and receive Oscars. Unexpectedly, her daughter However, she fell in love with an actor who was a generation shorter than Fedora, and wanted to restore her true colors and identity, so Fedora imprisoned her daughter in order to continue her mythology.

It's the story of a stand-in looking for a lost identity, and how a woman fears the passing of her youth.Since aging is irreversible, it is good to find a young man to live for me with a young face. She lives, she lives, and her youth is her own youth, not to mention that person is her own daughter, with a natural talent. Convenience and ethics are taken for granted-how many people have children just to continue their DNA and to achieve everything they have not achieved.And the daughter eagerly took over the performance, initially out of love and pity for her mother. Although the price was to put her self-identity into a deep sleep, love came, like the kiss to Sleeping Beauty, which woke her up. Over time, she urgently needs to regain her original identity in order to continue to live and love.But in the end, she sadly found that there was only one way to return this deep-rooted identity, and that was to let the body that carried this mythical identity die.So the daughter died, and the mother died a week later—her mirror image and she had become one thing, you die, I die.

It is not the first time that Billy Wilder has become interested in such subjects. In "Sunset Boulevard", the aging actress is another Fedora. She may not really be greedy for the body of the down-and-out male screenwriter. She just wants to regain the illusion of youth and unchanging glory from him. "Fedora" made me ponder over and over again.Old-school screenwriters and directors and old-school best-selling novelists seem to have the ability to write stories in such a solid and detailed way that even the aftertaste left to the viewers is accurate. Sidney Sheldon, John Gleason Graham, Graham Green... The list can go on indefinitely. Of course, maybe time has sifted and left all the worthwhile ones for us to see.