The Sheila Variations

It’s his birthday today.

Years ago, I wrote a long essay about William Holden for Slant, which focused a lot on his physicality (he was so athletic and he had great control). I really like that piece.

I reiterated my thoughts on Holden – and his physicality – in one of the most popular columns I ever wrote for Film Comment, on the art of the death scene. Because William Holden’s death scene in Sunset Boulevard is my #1 favorite. I do go on and on about it – and I broke it down here once, moment by moment – mainly because I just want people to GET how amazing it is, what he does with his body there.

I recently did an audience QA following a screening of Network at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, NY. Last year, same venue, I did an audience QA following a screening of Sunset Boulevard. A little tour of William Holden’s filmography. I keep mentioning Stalag 17 at these events. It’s not nearly as well-known as it should be. I hope they screen it eventually.

In a career of famous roles in famous films, I think his best – and perhaps most characterstic and essence-driven – of his roles is Sgt. J.J. Sefton in Stalag 17. Sefton has not just a hardness to him, but a sharp edge, an essence many call cynical but I call realistic.

Director Billy Wilder said in his interview with Cameron Crowe that Sefton was the closest stand-in to himself in all of his films. Sefton, in essence, was Wilder saying: “This is who I am. This is how I see the world.”

Sefton’s parting shot before he disappears into the tunnel underneath the prison camp – “If I ever run into any of you bums on a street corner, just let’s pretend we’ve never met before” – sums it all up, sums up the movie’s unsentimental mood. Does Sefton mean it? Is he being ironic? I don’t think so. There is no romanticism in Sefton, and his memory of the prison camp – and what humanity becomes under such circumstances – will not be something he wishes to dwell on, and any later encounter will just be a reminder. No good-byes. No looking back. If I see you, I’ll pretend I never know you. And finally, to take the edge off, he pokes his head back up, and gives a little toss of the hand and a cocky grin. Aaaaand scene. What a movie star. What an actor.

Wilder:

“I liked having him around … The idea of making him a braggart … then we find out slowly that he is really a hero. As he pleads there with that lieutenant at the end, he tucks his head out again, from the hole they have there in the barracks, and says, ‘If I ever see any of you mugs again, let’s just pretend that we don’t know each other.’ And off he goes. And he only does it because the mother of the lieutenant who is captured is a rich woman, and he’s gonna get ten thousand dollars. He’s no hero, he’s a black-market dealer—-a good character, and wonderfully played by Holden.”

Playing Sefton required an almost stern resistance to expanding the role into the self-consciously heroic. One can see the traps for that kind of “commentary” all throughout the role. Holden resists. It’s a performance of great control. But within that control there is a jaundiced and knowing acceptance of the ugliness of human nature – the accusations tossed around and the willingness to throw people under the bus – Sefton is not at all surprised by these things. In a way, it’s a relief: civilization has broken down in the camp, and so now people can show themselves in their true form.

Obviously Stalag 17 is also a comedy, but it’s a black-hearted one, just like Wilder liked it.

Wilder worked with Holden numerous times. He loved him as a leading man. He loved Jack Lemmon too, for his “everyman” qualities, but Holden was not – was never – an “everyman”. He had stature and scope. Just watch Stalag 17. Sunset Boulevard may be more famous, more quotable – but Stalag 17 cuts to the heart of Holden’s essence. Because … Sefton is tough, does not suffer fools, but … my God, don’t you just ADORE him?

François Truffaut wrote about Sefton in The Films in My Life:

Sefton is intelligent; that’s why he acts as he does. For the first time in films the philosophy of the solitary man is elaborated; this film is an apologia for individualism. (Certainly, the solitary man has been a theme in films, as with Charlie Chaplin and many other comedians. But he has usually been an inept person whose only desire was to fit into society.) Sefton is alone because he wants to be alone. He has the qualities of leadership, and everything would tend to establish him as the barracks’ trusted leader. After the deception has been uncovered by Sefton himself, and the leader the man trusted has been unmasked and convicted, we may wonder if Sefton escapes in order to avoid being named to take his place, knowing his fellow prisoners would do exactly that, both to exonerate themselves and because they finally recognize him as their only possible leader.

What’s sure is that Sefton escapes to get away from the companions whom he despises rather than from a regime he has come to terms with and guards he’s been able to bend to his needs.

Sefton needs those whom he despises to despise him in turn. If he remains, he will be a hero – a role he rejects no matter what the cost. Having lost his moral solitude, he hastens to regain it by becoming an escapee, with all the risk that entails.

One final word about Sunset Boulevard: not too many actors would have submitted to the requirements of that role, to the mere suggestion of that role: to be a pretty-boy sex-toy. Paul Newman could – and would – do it. In Sweet Bird of Youth. Roles like that put the man in the stereotypically female position: of being owned, of being objectified, used for sex, trapped. It could be seen as emasculating. It IS emasculating, that’s the whole point.

Montgomery Clift was originally cast in the role Holden ended up playing, but Clift backed out (igniting Wilder’s wrath). Clift was, at that point, in a similar position in his real life, with a much older woman, AND he claimed he didn’t want to repeat himself, and the role was so close to the one he played in The Heiress. (Although … it wasn’t really that close. I mean, sort of, but not really.) Some friends of Clift’s wondered if Clift’s underlying torment about being gay, and being closeted had something to do with him backing out: to play an “emasculated” role might be too revealing. All of that being said: Holden, a golden boy (literally: he had played the role in the movie of the same name), an athlete, a stereotypical leading man – gorgeous, manly, strong – did not balk at taking on the role, at using his handsomeness in this subverted perverted way: that he could be “had”, he could be “bought.”

I am haunted by William Holden’s end.

I try to focus on his career, his work, how good he was, how controlled, how intelligent in his process and approach.