Doubtless upsetting for the industry back in 1950, this entertaining tale of a failing script-writer (William Holden) teaming up with a fading screen goddess (Gloria Swanson) to revive her career with a story about Salome no longer seems as scabrous as claimed, nor, consequently, as great.
There's much to admire, not least the performers, production design and music, but where critics see a generally acerbic portrait of the worst of Hollywood, I see a narrow fantasy about a small set of failed artists, the further end of a spectrum of success and failure, though by no means an isolated example. A BBC review said, "[this] gothic melodrama remains the bitterest attack ever launched on Hollywood"
Really?
There's humour and camp horror, and a nice symmetry as Holden's writer fashions a script for an older woman while doing the same with a younger (Nancy Olson), though neither likely to result in an actual movie. But if there's a bitter attack, it seems more to do with old age than on the disposable nature of stardom and fame.
