CENTENNIAL COLLECTION
ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953)
Special Featurettes—Audrey Hepburn: The Paramount years; Remembering Audrey; Rome with a princess; Dalton Trumbo: From A-list to Blacklist; Restoring Roman Holiday; Behind the gates: Costumes; Paramount in the '50s - Retrospective Featurette

SABRINA (1954)
Special Features—Audrey Hepburn: Fashion Icon; Sabrina's World; Supporting Sabrina; William Holden: The Paramount Years; Audrey Hepburn: In Her Own Words; Behind the Gates: Camera; Paramount in the '50s - Retrospective Featurette

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)
Disc 1—Commentary by Ed Sikov (author of On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder). Disc 2—Sunset Boulevard: The Beginning; The Noir Side of Sunset Boulevard by Joseph Wambaugh; Sunset Boulevard Becomes a Classic; Two Sides of Ms. Swanson; Stories of Sunset Boulevard; Mad About The Boy: A Portrait of William Holden; Recording Sunset Boulevard; The City of Sunset Boulevard; Morgue Prologue Script Pages; The Score of Sunset Boulevard; Behind the Gates: The Lot; Hollywood Location Map; Edith Head: The Paramount Years; Paramount in the '50s: Retrospective Featurette; Original theatrical trailer

Kicking off a new series celebrating Paramount’s 1912 founding, all three films, previously available on DVD, return with plenty of new material. If Billy Wilder’s genre-busing Hollywood satire Sunset Boulevard is not yet part of your collection, the extras, exhaustively stuffed with trivia, offer nearly four hours of tidbits, some familiar, many not. (Did you know Billy Wilder played matchmaker for composer Franz Waxman and his wife? Or that Waxman was the arranger for The Blue Angel?).

Many of its featurettes, such as “Stories of Sunset Boulevard,” benefit hugely from the participation of co-star Nancy Olson. She confirms the oft-repeated tale of Wilder, as a prank, directing her and her onscreen love interest, William Holden, to remain in a long smooch (supposedly so that there would be enough footage for a dissolve). The long embrace was only broken up by Mrs. William Holden, watching on the sidelines, screaming “Cut!”

Perhaps the disc’s highlight is the original script of the film’s infamous opening, “Conversing Cadavers.” After its uproarious reception at a preview screening, the scene, where corpses in a morgue, including lead character Joe Gillis, commiserate on how they died, was cut. Only a few shots of the sequence exist. As a result of the audience’s laughter, Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett came up with one of the most memorable openings ever: Joe floating face down, dead, on the surface of a swimming pool, just one of the many noirish shots that belie the notion that Wilder was less interested in the visual than in the dialogue.

Actress Gloria Swanson deserves more recognition than she gets here in the “Two Sides of Ms. Swanson” extra, which barely focuses on her landmark film career before talkies. (Likewise, never is it noted that Billy Wilder’s first American screenplay was for one of her last star vehicles, 1934’s Music in the Air). Her granddaughter, Brooke Anderson, at least, offers personal reminisces on the star, who was into yoga and health food long before it became the fashion. But on the professional side, actress Linda Harrison (Planet of the Apes), admits she worked with Swanson for only 10 days on Airport 1975 (the movie is ridiculous, but how many actors from the silent era were working 50 years later?). Swanson had a long stage and radio career long after her film stardom ended and lived in New York for decades. It’s hard to believe that there was no one else (Liz Smith?) who could have offered more of an overview of the once highest paid actress in Hollywood.

When her character, demented movie queen Norma Desmond, grandly declares that without her there would have been no Paramount Pictures, the same could have been said for Swanson and the studio, where she worked from 1917 until the mid-1920s. Sorely lacking are clips from her heyday. Since Desmond behaves in her everyday life as though she’s in her own silent movie, with outsized gestures and expressions, more background about the era would have been revealing to many viewers, especially since silent movies are not exactly readily accessible, unless you’re a late Sunday night TCM junkie.

A standout extra from the Sabrina disc, “Supporting Sabrina” salutes the character actors who enliven that romantic, but lightweight comedy. (Humphrey Bogart, then in his mid-fifties, is too old and dour as the romantic lead opposite Hepburn, nearly 30 years younger.) More DVDs should have similar profiles. Surprisingly, Sunset Boulevard misses the opportunity to spotlight two former silent-film stars who make cameo appearances and who have pretty much been forgotten, Anna Q. Nilsson and Harry Warner.

Recently restored, the beautifully crisp images and crystal-clear sound are the main incentives for the new edition of Roman Holiday. Now, any fan of smartly written romantic comedies has no excuse for never seeing Hepburn’s American debut as a runaway princess on the loose in the Eternal City. (If only more filmmakers would remember that not all fairy-tale romances need to have a pat, happily-ever-after ending.)

Chances are that if you peruse its extras, you’re into fashion, but any film buff will get a kick out of the private tour within the company’s 6,000-pieced costume archive. The disc also includes a tribute to its blacklisted screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo. In its brief 12-minute running time, it is as succinct as this year’s documentary Trumbo. Incredibly, all three films, available separately, include the insights of Paramount executive and producer A. C. Lyles, who started out in the mid-1930s as an office boy for pioneering company founder Adolph Zukor. Kent Turner
November 21, 2008