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Directed by Billy Wilder
Starring Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson
USA, 1950
Not Rated (some mature themes)
Recognized in my "The Century's Masterpieces" page.
GOTH WITHIN US ALL
Sunset Boulevard exudes a glowing, Gothic feel. Billy Wilder’s
most intriguing film is not one of his timeless romances but this
ultra-sinister Gloria Swanson classic. Swanson is eerie as Norma
Desmond, a silent film star who has faded into the background after
the coming of the microphone. She has a quality few actresses
have anymore: a powerful, blatant… dark, mysterious,
enigmatic quality about her that envelops her acting and
enhances and furthers its complexity and awe-inspiration. She
becomes Norma Desmond and, looking back at Swanson’s career, we
can see she had her share of hard times after the silent era
ended, just like her character in this Hollywood masterpiece.
The difference between the two women- the performer and the character- is that Gloria Swanson was given a chance after her silent film era stint and gave her best performance in a talking picture. There is no hope for the washed-up Norma Desmond. She is focused on making silent movies and has not moved with the times. She is obsessed with being the center of attention, of making her "return" (she hates the word "comeback"). She is the scariest has-been ever put on screen.
The film starts with a film-noir-cynical style monologue by William Holden’s character Joe Gillis. His career as a screenwriter is not going very well at all. His car is in jeopardy of being taken away- he has not made any payments for months. He is desperate- he has lost his agent, his latest script has been turned down, and he has been receiving harsh criticism. All he has are B-movies under his name. While being chased by two men who are after his car, he pulls into the driveway of a silent, old mansion on Sunset Boulevard. He parks his car in the garage to hide it. He enters the home to realize it is Norma Desmond’s.
"I know you. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big," he says to the dark, miserable old woman in sunglasses. "I am big," Desmond insists, her head up high, "It’s the pictures that got small!" She is a woman so full of her own faded majesty, she cannot face the facts.
She hires Joe Gillis to edit a screenplay she has been working on for years. The movie, Solome, will be her "return" and she has already set high expectations- "It is to be a big picture. I will have [Cecil B.] DeMille direct it." Gillis is full of skepticism and he moves in with her, to his reluctance, because her script is too important to leave the grounds.
The mansion creeps him out. It is gloomy and is a shrine to its owner. There are Norma Desmond photographs everywhere. The butler, Max, plays the ghostly organ every morning. All the locks and doorknobs have been cut out of the doors; it was suggested by Norma’s doctor after she attempted suicide. She had been married three times. Norma is very protective of her script, she refuses to take out excess from it because she believes that her billions of fans "who have never forgiven her for leaving the screen" will want to see more and more of her.
Through the weeks, the relationship between Gillis and Desmond becomes more than professional or platonic- it becomes a romance in which Desmond is at the steering wheel. Gillis has no feelings for this shriveled up woman, but he is a kept man. She buys him everything under the sun- fur coats, gold cigarette cases, watches. He has feelings for his friend’s fiancee, Betty and we, the audience, know that such a beautiful romance between Betty and Joe should be followed through. Betty feels the same way about him, but Joe’s devotion to his best friend and his demanding ultimatums at the Sunset Boulevard house get in the way.
Sunset Boulevard is one of several Hollywood films made in the 1950s to expose and ridicule the cold tactics of the film industry. The Bad and the Beautiful, made in 1952, comes to mind as another such film. Billy Wilder's classic is darker, gloomier, and better. It has become more than just a movie over the years, as people have learned more about what went behind the scenes of the film and how Sunset Boulevard's plot deelpy resembles the personal and professional lives of its stars.
Sunset Boulevard has a classic negativism on Hollywood and the fickleness of fans. The film is phenomenal and is the dramatic counterpart to Singin' in the Rain's hilarious ridicule of Hollywood's star-making and star-breaking system.
By Andrew Chan
Links to other sites on the Web
Sunset Boulevard site at The Internet Movie Database
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