Directed by Billy Wilder • 1950 • United States
Starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim
Hollywood’s ultimate poison-pen letter to itself, Billy Wilder’s acerbic masterpiece casts real-life silent-screen icon Gloria Swanson as a faded movie star who draws a struggling screenwriter (William Holden) into her tragic delusions. The endlessly quotable dialogue, cameos from Tinseltown legends like Cecil B. DeMille and Buster Keaton, and Swanson’s ferocious, larger-than-life performance come together in a brilliantly biting vision of the dark side of the dream factory.
Up Next in Megan Abbott’s Adventures in Moviegoing
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Megan Abbott on IN A LONELY PLACE
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In a Lonely Place
Directed by Nicholas Ray • 1950 • United States
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Gloria GrahameWhen a gifted but washed-up screenwriter with a hair-trigger temper—Humphrey Bogart, in a revelatory, vulnerable performance—becomes the prime suspect in a brutal Tinseltown murder, the only person who ca...
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Megan Abbott on THE NAKED KISS