Sunset Boulevard

A struggling writer (William Holden) on the run from creditors turns into the driveway of faded silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). She hires him to live with her and write her next screenplay but her disconnect with reality quickly becomes apparent.

The popularity of silent films is often forgotten with time, but it’s key to remember that at the turn of the 20th century the stars of cinema were the most famous people walking the earth. They accrued power & wealth to an extent that is unmatched today in the entertainment business, despite the celebrity-focused culture we live in.

It’s equally important then to think of the impact audio had on the industry. We may see it as something that changed the medium but it was more than that; it split the art form cleanly in two. It’s like comparing a book to a painting - they both might involve forms on a page, but otherwise they are worlds apart.

The result of course was a subset of society that remained richer than almost anyone else yet in the public eye had fallen completely off the face of the earth. The extremes of fame and obscurity provide fascinating material for Wilder to dig into, and make a commentary about the industry that remains relevant to this day.

Gloria Swanson’s story in real life matches that of her character. She was a huge silent film star, whose career almost ended with the advent of dialogue. It is not easy to say how much her situation influenced her performance, but there’s no doubt that in Sunset Boulevard she creates one of the most memorable characters ever put to film.

Wilder constantly cuts to shots of the door handles in her house - all missing on advice from her doctor to ease her psychological woes. This makes the house a slightly surreal place to be - it’s grand and it’s lavish but it’s just a little off.

Swanson manages to mirror this in Norma Desmond. She still has her charm and beauty but she yearns to be young and relevant to the point of madness.

She’s a force to be reckoned with in this film, but she also gives off a subtle understanding of the reality of her situation. It’s an extra dimension to the character that makes her more interesting, and ultimately more harrowing because she appears to have made a concious decision to choose this lifestyle.

Holden fades a little but serves as a shoe-in the door for the audience. It can’t be easy to come up against someone like Swanson, who is clearly the centre of attention. He does succeed in making a good down-on-his-luck noir character and gives us a well grounded point of view.

One other stand-out performance is Erich von Stroheim who plays Max, Norma’s ageing butler. He’s stern, mysterious and fiercely defensive of the film star. There’s an odd relationship at play there and sure enough as the film goes on we find out that he was an old director on a few of her films. Not only that, but he was her first husband, and has been writing fake fan mail for her to read every day.

Again this is an auto-biographical character - von Stroheim was once a great director in the days of silent cinema.

The house serves almost as a character in itself. Holden’s character likens it to Mrs. Haversham, grand, old, classy, but stuck in the past and in need of care. Wilder cleverly points to this in subtle ways. We see damp in the background, cracked walls, torn curtains; anything that is not in use looks worn out. It’s yet another reflection of Norma Desmond’s state of mind.

Sunset Boulevard is a masterpiece of satire with an unforgettable central performance, held together by a director absolutely at the top of his game.

http://benoliver999.com/film/2015/07/31/sunsetboulevard/

For me, this is a perfect movie. It will stand out in my mind as a triumph of production design--Norma's decaying, decrepit mansion mirrors the decline of a career (and a life) in a way that obviously borrows from Dickens but which benefits from the addition of the meta-casting of Swanson and von Stroheim. I would love to know more about how they came to the film and how they felt about it after--their respective performances are both unhinged but also self-aware. I always love Billy Wilder's writing, and it's especially fun here to watch the inside jokes of the time about the Hollywood process and the culture of production. Brilliant all around.

"Sunset Boulevard" has a special place in my heart as one of the first classics that interested me in cinema. It still works great after 70 years as it's a simple, straightforward, but focused film that manages to deal with timeless themes with sarcasm and intelligence without having no arthouse pretentiousness or making no life-changing statements. Video quality aside, there is nothing I would change about it.

The characters are iconic thanks to the fact that they are played by actors that actually experienced the dawn of the silent era and the struggles to survive in the ever-changing Hollywood industry. Forgotten silent era diva Norma Desmond is played by Gloria Swanson, who was herself a faded star who lost her job due to the advent of sound films. Her butler and former director Max is played by Erich von Stroheim, who happens to have directed some of Gloria Swanson's classics (one of them gets even projected in Norma's living room). Director Cecil DeMille plays himself, and other silent era actors and old Hollywood personalities like Buster Keaton also have cameos.

I also loved how, in the end, none of the characters is really positive. Norma and Max are self-delusional and unable to accept that the world around them has changed, they would do anything to prevent their dream from falling apart. Joe and Betty represent the "young" Hollywood, but they are blinded by their ambition and egoism to the point they both chose to embark on a clandestine affair, even though they owe everything to their partners.

First-person narration by the already dead protagonist Joe Gillis makes the film even more fascinating. Gillis is a talentless but arrogant screenwriter who succumbed to Hollywood's trap of fame, and it feels almost ironic that "Sunset Boulevard" could have been the first successful screenplay in his career.

The dialogues tend to be over the top at times, but they perfectly suit Norma's character and lifestyle. Gillis' cynical tone in the narration, combined with the awareness of his tragic fate, also manages to make us understand that we are not dealing with the usual melodramatic sentimentality of Hollywood.

The movie is pretty much a satire about Hollywood world but is also about the rise and fall of a star. Times change, so movies change too. And the ones that in one day are the better the prettiest and the most famous in the other day could be forgotten.
The screenplay is very well written and the acting by everyone was very good. But Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond steals the show! She portrays the forgotten star from silent films, all she wants is to be famous again and that desire drove her to madness. We can really believe in her madness and she is pretty scary! A great performance from her.
Great classics like this will never get old. Need to see more from Billy Wilder.

Gloria Swanson is a treat to watch in Sunset Blvd. In any other film she would have come off as overly dramatic, but as a washed-up silent era diva she is absolutely perfect with all of the accompanying hand-wringing, dramatic head angles, and intense eye glares. It's old school acting, where theatre was more of an influence than realism.

William Holden's Joe is a typical macho hero of the Golden age: sounding grumpy and slightly shouty, but simultaneously emotionally blank. He typically calls his much younger love interest "kid", grabs her by the shoulders and smashes his mouth into hers as his interpretation of a passionate scene. I sort of dislike him. He takes advantage of Norma's wealth, but then acts like it's a burden, age shaming her to no tomorrow.

At the same time, the movie is a wonderful satire of the realities of Hollywood. How sad that a woman past her early thirties is considered a has-been with no prospects? While not as bad nowadays, the practice seems to persist, with most movie moms with teen children being played by 30-year-olds.

The structure is also neat, being told from the point of view of a murdered man. In the end, this film has an unmistakable tinge of gothic fiction - a tale of a haunted house, where the haunting is the apparition of regret, old glamour gone shabby, and madness. The monologue and snappy lines also put it squarely into a film noir territory - the quality kind, not overdone to death. Billie Wilder was a visionary filmmaker.

Ace! 'Sunset Boulevard' is a splendid flick from 1950.

I will note that I found the middle to be ever so slightly less interesting than the beginning and ending, though even so overall I most definitely enjoyed watching it. Love the dialogue, the score is excellent too. William Holden and Gloria Swanson are tremendous together onscreen, in what is a supremely well told story.

This is the film George Lucas desperately needed to watch when he was making the prequels.

Nice subject-guess people like Mary pickford and mack sennet could be somewhat be classed here

This was so fun to watch, the story is so meta and some of the dialogues are just delicious. It doesn't hold up as well as some other classics I've watched, but it is still a great movie.

Delusional Old Lady: The Movie

But seriously, Gloria Swanson was fantastic. Her performance is something special. The dialogue was snappy and quick. A classic for a reason.