Theme: The mind of an actress - inside and out. From the fantasy worlds of childhood to the fantasy lives of the women who inhabit the entertainment milieu of Los Angeles. Actors spend much of their lives inhabiting fictional worlds of the characters they portray, sometimes preparing themselves for roles with such intensity that they could easily forget who they really are. Such dedication to the craft can lead to egomania, as the trappings of stardom and the adoration of their fans fuels their sense of self-importance. Billy Wilder certainly understood this, and his movie Sunset Boulevard is a darkly comic satirical swipe at the delusions of fame and the woefully misguided grandiosity of the performer. Gloria Swanson plays Norma Desmond, a star of the silent-era convinced that her comeback is imminent, who lavishes attention and gifts on out-of-work screenwriter Joe (played by William Holden) to convince him to work as a script doctor on her return to the silver screen. Despite the fact that he believes the script is truly awful he takes on the job, and it increasingly dawns on him how little she understands that she is a relic of the past, unaware that her fan mail is written by her butler Max (Erich von Stroheim, himself a star of the silent era). Just as Joe tries to extricate himself from Norma's life, both her fragility and detachment from reality increase, and the inevitable catastrophic ending looms, foreshadowed by the opening shot of the body in the swimming pool. Wilder's reputation as a director of biting commentary and film noir were fused to perfection in Sunset Boulevard - his decision to cast Swanson alongside von Stroheim - who had directed her in earlier silent productions - only added to the authenticity in his critique of Hollywood stardom, further enhanced by references to real movies and actors throughout. If the image of Gloria Swanson descending the staircase anticipating the adulation and worship for a comeback that wasn't to be is a classic moment of Hollywood history (which few would argue with) that offered an objective view of an actress as she tumbled into madness, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive takes us even deeper inside the fractured mind of an aspiring actress as she descends into madness; a more subjective journey which is as cryptic and often confusing as the psychosis it depicts. Lynch's movies often require more than a little brain-work to unravel - they usually make considerably more sense when viewed through the prism of psychoanalysis; a combination of Freudian wish-fulfilment and Jungian archetypal imagery, teasing out the meaning from the seemingly random imagery. Mulholland Drive is certainly no exception, with a dream logic running throughout suggested by the opening point of view shot of an out of focus pillow, as Betty (an exceptional early role for Naomi Watts) sobs as she drifts in and out of sleep. The first half of Mulholland Drive sees Betty as a vibrant young actress with huge potential; she is popular, beautiful and incredibly gifted. But this strand is frequently undermined by literally nightmarish sequences and a bizarre subplot involving the Mafia, plus the distinction between reality and subconscious-projection becomes increasingly blurred. When we meet the struggling, aspiring waitress Diane, Betty's apparently idyllic life begins to unravel, leaving the audience scratching their collective heads with puzzlement as they wonder what is real and what is fantasy. The Lynchian world of dopplegangers and dreams, illusions and distortions is upon us and it's up to the audience to piece the fragments together, or else sit in silent bafflement as the credits roll.
