William Holden makes cynicism sound like ordinary conversation, with little effort spent asking us to like the speaker. We rate him most highly when that dry delivery lets us recognise the decency, or the self-disgust, underneath.
Fi1m perspective
In Sunset Boulevard (1950), William Holden's Joe Gillis talks as though conversation need not become a performance. Beside Gloria Swanson's theatrical manner, his everyday delivery makes a difference to the whole film: she can grow expansive without everyone having to follow. We felt grateful for Holden's calm, because it let us stay with Swanson's distress without feeling shouted at by the whole cast. His restraint gives us a way into Billy Wilder's film without making Gillis reassuring company.
He had begun with a leading role in Golden Boy (1939), then spent much of the 1940s in lighter, boy-next-door parts. Sunset Boulevard revived his career and gave that agreeable leading-man appearance a less comfortable use. The good looks could now belong to somebody cynical, opportunistic and conscious of his own failings. Wilder found an actor who could deliver hard-edged dialogue without announcing how hard it was.
There is a limit to what he can correct. The screenplay sometimes enjoys humiliating Swanson's faded star more than it should, and Holden's steadiness does not make that less uncomfortable. Yet the contrast between them keeps her expansive acting from exhausting the film. Erich von Stroheim makes quiet attentiveness feel troubling, so Holden is not simply the quiet member of the cast. His particular usefulness is that we recognise the way he talks.
In Wilder's Stalag 17 (1953), the opportunistic prisoner J.J. Sefton gives his cynicism room to coexist with decency. David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) uses him as the pragmatic, anti-heroic Shears. Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) takes the leading man towards the grizzled nihilism of Pike Bishop. By Network (1976), his weariness suits the character work of a principled television executive.
The later choices were uneven, so we would not recommend following the filmography indiscriminately. Start with Sunset Boulevard, where he has Swanson and Wilder to bring his restraint into focus. Then try Stalag 17 for the decency he is so reluctant to advertise.
Biography
William Holden, born William Franklin Beedle Jr., was an American actor. He played Joe Gillis in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950).
Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Stalag 17 (1953) and a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Lead Actor in a Limited Series in 1974. He was one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s and appeared in films including Sabrina (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Wild Bunch (1969), The Towering Inferno (1974) and Network (1976).
