Word: aldriches
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Elected as vice-presidents are Alexander Aldrich '50 and Samuel P. Goddard Jr, '41, also for one-year terms...
...vulgar purples and red-oranges. It is peopled with studio bosses, agents, wardrobe women, and sycophants. The action unfolds in Hollywood mansions, Sunset Strip restaurants, film studios and tacky hotels with flashing neon signs, concluding with a premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. To satisfy the Nathaniel West fans, Aldrich has also thrown in a perverse and crippled gossip columnist (Coral Browne), a lusty Mexican, and a heroin-addicted lesbian...
...point of view Aldrich brings to his material is decidedly modern. He constantly reminds us that we are, after all, only watching a movie. Zarkin's intimidating mansion, for instance, loses a little bit of its eeriness when it reappears as a set on the sound stage of the film he is making. When a couple starts to make love Aldrich uses the old convention of letting the camera move slowly up to the ceiling-but the camera moves a little shakily so that we won't lose sight of the contrivance of the device...
There are also references to Cahiers de Cinema, various aspects of the nitty-gritty of the film industry, and other movies (among them Sunset Boulevard ). The picture climaxes with an idiosyncratic image that resolves everything in the picture and could come only from Aldrich; it involves a somewhat disconcerting dog-food TV commercial. Aldrich also never loses sight of the fact that the legend he is simultaneously destroying and recreating in this work may not be long for this world. It is not surprising, then, that death is a central motif of Lylah Clare. Every character is self-destructive...
...Hollywood legend that drove Aldrich to finance this rather special film out of his own pocket-and which also served as a basis for its companion piece, Wilder's classic about a has-been movie star (Gloria Swanson) and her old director (Erich von Stroheim)-may indeed be made of tinsel. But, like the Mafia and major-league baseball, the movie industry undeniably has its own special fascination. Don't pass up Lylah Clare and Sunset Boulevard just because they give largely irrelevant views of the human condition; rather, see them because they come very close to making kitsch look...