let it be
by Douglas Messerli
Marc Heustis (director) Miracle on Sunset
Boulevard / 1977
Marc Heustis’s seven-minute film Miracle on
Sunset Boulevard advertises itself as a sped-up version of Sunset
Boulevard, but in fact has almost nothing to do with Billy Wilder’s film
except that it features an aging actress shopping in Beverly Hills on Wilshire
Blvd. where unexpectedly she is greeted by a fan wanting her autograph. So
horrified is she in being reminded of her long ago career that she lets the
wind whip the piece of paper which she attempting to sign out of her hand as
she goes on the run.
Late at night, a bit like Norma Desmond, she watches her old movies, but
once again grows terrified by the process of re-living passionate love scenes
from decades earlier and cries out several times (silently of course) “STOP!”
Utterly
devastated to be so continually reminded of her age, she is suddenly visited by
the vision of a lovely woman who, a bit like a cartoon vision of a figure just
escaped from a Maxfield Parrish painting shows up and evidently serves as a
sort of mother-confident, campily reintroducing our troubled movie star to the
four elements of earth, air, wind, and fire. Suddenly our washed-up hero materializes
a young female child which the actress takes into her arms. Either the
mysterious seer is pimping as a provider to agèd pedophiles or reintroducing our
elderly wunderkind to her younger self, but either way, the result is a true
miracle as the actress seems suddenly entirely content as she walks off into
the woods with her new child.
Starring Gregory Cruickshank, Viva DeLuxe and Marzipan with a background
mix of music by Mahler and Prokofiev, Heustis’ film is simply silly, its
redeeming quality providing seconds of bearable camp. We are told it captures
the spirit of the early films, of which Heustis was a founder, of the San
Francisco Frameline Festival.
Los Angeles, August 28, 2021
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August
2021).
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