Fedora is a 1978 German-French drama film directed by Billy Wilder and starring William Holden and Marthe Keller.

The reclusive foreign-born Fedora is one of the great film stars of the century, and known for retaining her youthful beauty over the course of a career spanning decades.

Dutch recalls visiting Fedora two weeks before her death at her villa near Corfu in order to convince her to come out of retirement for a new screen adaptation of Anna Karenina.

Horrified by the revelation, Dutch considers revealing the sordid story to the press, but he realizes he still has feelings toward Fedora and decides she has been punished enough by the loss of her career and her guilt over her daughter.

Instead, they paid Wilder and Diamond to write the screenplay, with the understanding that the studio had forty-five days after the submission to decide if it wanted to proceed with the project.

Sydney Pollack invited Wilder to a pre-release screening of Bobby Deerfield, in which former fashion model Marthe Keller had a featured role.

Allied Artists dropped its deal to distribute the film after it was screened at a Myasthenia Gravis Foundation benefit in New York City and the audience response was unenthusiastic.

Fedora was a re-teaming of Wilder with Holden, who had collaborated on Sunset Boulevard, and similar to the earlier film, it harshly criticized Hollywood's often shabby treatment of its most prominent talent.

In her review in The New York Times, critic Janet Maslin called it "old-fashioned with a vengeance, a proud, passionate remembrance of the way movies used to be, and a bitter smile at what they have become.

That, too, seems a part of Mr. Wilder's design...The compactness and symmetry evident in Fedora aren't easily achieved these days without a good deal of self-consciousness.

"[11] TV Guide described it as "defiantly and proudly old-fashioned both in style and content, weaving an (intentionally) campy melodrama about the mysterious suicide of a faded movie queen into a spellbinding meditation on cinema and the price of manufactured illusions...Fedora is a marvelous lesson in classical storytelling and the pleasures to be had from an absorbing narrative.

It's almost as if Wilder is bidding adieu to the Golden Age of Hollywood, utilizing opulent sets, elegant crane shots, ultra-slow dissolves, and a flourish of voice-overs and flashbacks-within-flashbacks in a final demonstration of virtuoso scenario construction, only to tear it down at the end and show it was all a lie...The film is not perfect, and would have undoubtedly been better still had Wilder been able to persuade Marlene Dietrich to play the Countess, but it's still a worthy late addition to the work of a master.

"[12] Time Out London called it "a shamefully underrated film...and one of the most sublime achievements of the '70s...it has a narrative assurance beyond the grasp of most directors nowadays: finely acted, mysterious, witty, moving and magnificent.

"[14] The reviewer for Variety commented: "Wilder's directorial flair, the fine production dress, Holden's solid presence and Michael York...and Henry Fonda...add some flavor to this bittersweet bow to the old star system,"[15] and added, "Missing are needed hints at Fedora's true star quality, which are not...inherent in Keller's performance or that of Knef...and which mar pic with disbelief.