LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING
1955, 20th Century Fox, 102 min, USA, Dir: Henry King

Hollywood veteran Henry King directs this classic soap opera set in Hong Kong during the Korean War. William Holden is an American war correspondent; Jennifer Jones is the Eurasian doctor he falls for.


SUNSET BOULEVARD
1950, Paramount, 110 min, USA, Dir: Billy Wilder

"I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. De Mille!" Director Billy Wilder created one of his most enduring masterpieces in this dark, glittering poison pen letter to all things Hollywood, told in flashback by screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden), whose final job is playing paid-companion to egocentric, aging silent film goddess Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). With Erich von Stroheim. Academy Award Winner for Best Screenplay (Wilder, Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman, Jr.) and Score (Franz Waxman). The original Schwab’s drugstore figures prominently in the film, as does Paramount Studios and the still-standing Alto Nido apartments.


THE WILD BUNCH
1969, Warner Bros., 145 min, USA, Dir: Sam Peckinpah

Saddle up for director Sam Peckinpah’s magnificent, ultra-violent Western, starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates and Jaime Sanchez as a band of doomed outlaws trying to outrun history. A film that forever changed the way violence was depicted and perceived in the movies. Co-starring Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien, L.Q. Jones, Bo Hopkins and Strother Martin. “The movie was photographed by Lucien Ballard, in dusty reds and golds and browns and shadows. The editing, by Lou Lombardo, uses slow motion to draw the violent scenes out into meditations on themselves. Every actor was perfectly cast to play exactly what he could play; even the small roles need no explanation. Peckinpah possibly identified with the wild bunch. Like them, he was an obsolete, violent, hard-drinking misfit with his own code, and did not fit easily into the new world of automobiles, and Hollywood studios.” - Roger Ebert


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