The Twilight Zone - The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine

* * ½ / * * * *

I just want to preface my lukewarm feelings for this Twilight Zone episode by saying that I have nothing against the work of Ida Lupino (as an “aging actress” who is presented as ridiculously “past her prime”, pining for the Hollywood of the 1930s during the time of her youth) or especially a very good Martin Balsalm (as her agent-of-sorts). Seeing two greats featured prominently on my favorite television show isn't a bad thing. I just don't quite connect emotionally with the character due to how preposterous I consider the declaration that Lupino's actress is too old for the movies anymore or that she'd be so exclusively tied to her past that no interest in the present is considered.

Lupino gives a fine melodramatic performance as this alcoholic with a movie projector room she remains holed up in, with shades drawn, boozing away her days because life no longer provides her the satisfying career once afforded to her 20-25 years prior. Balsalm tries to help her out by getting Lupino cast in a new picture…as a mother in a showcase bit part, but she rejects it outright, adversarial with the producer who never got along with her “prima donna” ways. Lupino just wastes away her “middle age” by reliving daily the work of yesteryear, having given over her heart completely to the fantasy of nostalgia, no longer at all interested in the present. Balsalm tries, bless his heart, but she just isn’t interested in the sunlight of a lovely Beverly Hills day. Balsalm even locates a former dashing co-star, but he’s now much older, no longer an actor, running supermarkets in the greater Chicago area. Much like the mother bit part offered her, her former co-star is rejected outright because he no longer favors the handsome leading actor she shared the screen with. To me it has such similarities/parallels to Sunset Boulevard, only with the TZ twist (other than the final minutes, this isn’t to me the traditional TZ style episode, more fitting for Alfred Hitchcock Presents) where the world she so desperately longs for allows her access to it, away from the miseries of the late 50s where everything about the film industry has changed much to her disapproval. While Lupino’s Barbie is kind of pitiable, perhaps even suggested as narcissistic, I just have a hard time looking at her as over the hill when she’s very much still quite beautiful. When opposite her former co-star who appears to have aged badly, the idea that Lupino’s Barbie was too old for any serious film roles left me a bit cold…and Serling’s narration at the beginning of the episode particularly felt harsh and unpleasant towards her. Was the industry this cruel? Perhaps it does sift its actresses like wheat, but Lupino was far from deserved of any disregard due to “fading looks or talent”. At any rate, the episode gets the point across that the industry eventually forgets its past stars while those left behind often find themselves looking back at those times when the limelight was on them. The Twilight Zone at the very least grants Barbie her wish…a free trip back in time to stay. Balsalm says goodbye even though it hurts because he clearly cares for her, acknowledging that at least on the movie screen with those stars of her youth, unchanged by time, remaining young on celluloid, she feels truly at home.