:01:03
and just killing the intended mood,
:01:07
was two characters in the morgue
are talking to each other.
:01:12
It got worse.
:01:14
It was supposed to be kind of funny.
They thought it was hysterical.
:01:19
It's not like that when you read it.
But in visualising it, it does.
:01:25
So they said, "My God!" and
completely changed the opening.
:01:29
The beginning of the film, we see
police cars driving into a driveway,
:01:34
and, as if out of nowhere, we see a
corpse floating in the swimming pool.
:01:40
But we see it from a peculiar angle,
from down in the pool,
:01:45
looking up at the dead body with
blood trickling out of its chest.
:01:49
It was difficult to shoot and Wilder
is presenting the shot as an image.
:01:55
Difficult to film.
:01:57
They didn't know
how to film an underwater set-up,
:02:01
because they didn't have
the equipment.
:02:03
So they had to shoot it
from above, but how?
:02:07
He told the cameraman,
"I want it from a fish's viewpoint."
:02:12
So the guy built a tank and shot
experiments with dolls and mirrors.
:02:17
It turned out if the water was 40 degrees,
no higher as that caused distortion,
:02:23
they could film it from above,
:02:26
looking down at a mirror reflecting
the image of William Holden.
:02:31
What's great, too,
is that it's distorted enough
:02:34
that it doesn't give the film away.
:02:37
That opening would be enough to stamp
this as one of the great movies.
:02:43
It's one of the most striking, stirring
openings I've ever seen in a movie.
:02:48
The mansion was not in the 10000
block of Sunset Boulevard,
:02:52
as Joe Gillis says
in the film's beginning.
:02:55
It was on Wilshire
and has been destroyed.
:02:58
But it was a fabulous old,
if decrepit and unused, house,