From the first strains of Miklos Rozsa's vintage '40s score [in Fedora] we are transported to a timeless realm in which nothing has really changed. The cold cruelty of the blue Mediterranean forms an aptly Wilderean backdrop for a crazy yarn about a star who has apparently defeated time….

Wilder may have outsmarted himself by his morbidly convoluted method of telling the story of Fedora by beginning after we have seen Marthe Keller run down by a train, thus setting into motion Detweiler's reminiscence about the "late" Fedora he had known. Long before the plot winds down, several of the characters find themselves wandering interminably around Fedora's coffin as they wait for the last of the needlessly explanatory flashbacks to run their course. Long before noir was a critical catch-word, Wilder's characters seemed to walk on the dark side of the street out of a natural predilection...