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Customer Reviews
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A movie for lover of movies
"Life which can be so minuscule had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her."
Movie script writer Joe Gillis found him self in the sunset of his career. While escaping auto preprocessors, by accident or fait he turns into a driveway on Sunset Boulevard and begins a new chapter with a mysterious actress who is in the sunset of her career.
This play in three acts is packed with stars of the time. Many of the Stars and the writer reflect their real lives in the story. I am not going to bring up a list because they are fun to discover as they show up on the screen.
Even though the movie can hold its own and is worth re-watching, be sure to get a DVD with the audio commentary. The commentary helps you see what you are watching; it also covers the original beginning of the movie.
I have been tented before viewing this movie by watching then Carol Burnet version.
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Is Sunset Boulevard Film Noir?
Film Noir is juxtaposed against a post-war optimism (Film Noir 1994, Sklar 269-285). As if Hollywood and its audience were not convinced that everything was peaches and cream, Hollywood would revert to a darker mood culminating, for our discussion, in a form of self-reflexivity and foreboding about the coming of television and nostalgia for the golden age of silent movies in a film like Sunset Boulevard (1950). According to the writers of the documentary Film Noir (1994), movies such as Samuel Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and the musical Ziegfeld Follies (1946) where released alongside Film Noir seminal piece Detour (1945). Unlike the two big budget films, Film Noir offerings such as Detour were "B" movies made on the cheap allowing them break all the rules. Film Noir, it could be argued is an example of the Production Code forcing directors to be creative vis-à-vis sex, violence, and even subversive themes.
Film noir in general and Sunset Boulevard (1950) in particular inhabit that liminal time and space of a pre-television era (as we see with the final scene of Sunset Boulevard). Hollywood as self-reflective is evidence in the movie-within-a-movie scene where Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and Joe Gillis (William Holden) watch one of Swanson's old silent movies: Queen Kelly (1929) a movie directed by Erich Von Stroheim - who plays Max Von Mayerling. Details of this change in subjectivity, which outlines one of many moves that display Billy Wilder's range, complexity, and genius, will be discussed below.
According to Michael Walker, "Film noir is not simply a certain type of crime movie, but also a generic field: a set of elements and features which may be found in a range of different sorts of films. The generic labeling of films adopted by Hollywood studios for their own purposes (casting, production, marketing, etc.) does not do justice to the complex interaction of determinants - including generic elements - in any given film" (Cameron 8). Simply put, in the 40s/50s cycle - the films made a break with the 30s cycle that included various distinct elements (listed above in the "Summary"). Although tied in with gangster flicks film noir say in its use of a, "lone, often introverted hero" (Cameron 8). Walker adds that this hero is a, "victim of a hostile world" (Cameron 8) and the movies usually tackle a problem of a political nature set in a personal struggle. The mood set is often somber and cynical and the mode de emploi usually voice over. In Film Noir 1994, Film Noir is seen not as a genre but, "... a look, a tone, or a feel" (Film Noir 1994). Narrative style and character type/development - one of deep psychological angst - are two of the more distinctive elements spoken of above. More specifically, I will discuss the creative and varied uses of flashback and the notion of the femme fatale as destroyer (Cameron 12).
A film like Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Double Indemnity (1944) use flashback (Spicer 76). One cannot escape two of the more profound contributions of Billy Wilder to this genre Double Indemnity (1944) and Wilder's crowning achievement Ace in the Hole (1951) which marked the peak of noir era. According to Spicer, "Sunset Boulevard (1950) uses the flashback narrative of a man already dead. Although the protagonist appears to be in control of the retelling of the story, it is really the past events that are still controlling him, which he would love to alter if he could" (Spicer 76). Double Indemnity (1944) is the perfect segue to talk about the second element the femme fatale. Spicer writes "Thus Neff's flashbacks have a double purpose: to try to exorcise the malign influence of the femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), and to renew a bond of loyalty with Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) which offers some form of redemption" (Spicer 76). Both of these elements are used very skillfully by Jacques Tourneur in the Film Noir masterpiece Out of the Past (1947). Tourneur deftly uses flashback to bring back the main character Jeff Bailey's (Robert Mitchum) past. Bailey narrates his sordid past with Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) - the film's femme fatale - to his pastoral country girlfriend Ann Miller (Virginia Huston). Marie Windsor, in the documentary Film Noir (1994), argues that, "Classic femme fatales are the kind of woman who after gets the man into bed and then gets him into trouble" (Film Noir 1994). Intimating from her experience as the femme fatale in Forces of Evil (1948), Windsor further intimates that femme fatales like Barbara Stanwyck (Double Indemnity 1944) and Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard 1950) are the ones most often remembered (Film Noir 1994).
Silver et al. write that, "The fusion of writer-director Billy Wilder's biting humor and the classic elements of film noir make for a strange kind of comedy, as well as a strange kind of film noir. There are no belly laughs here, but there are certainly strangled giggles: at the pet chimp's funeral, at Joe's discomfited acquiescence to the role of gigolo; at Norma's Mack Sennett-style "entertainment" for her uneasy lover; at the ritualized solemnity of Norma's "waxworks" card parties, which feature such former luminaries as Buster Keaton as Norma's has been cronies" (Silver 276). Riffing along Silver et al it is clear that this is not your conventional film noir. Billy Wilder in Sunset Boulevard maintains the elements selected above - the femme fatale as destroyer and flashback narrative - but adds a strong dose of Hollywood self-reflexivity and calls to question its excesses, its corruption, its unreality, and its transition to television - all of which add to but also departs from the classic film noir.
Miguel Llora
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The Single Greatest Film About Hollywood
I watched it again today-for about the 50th time-and again it grabbed me and held me.
And again I was struck by the fact that of all the lines quoted from it the very best isn't quoted much and isn't delivered by Norma or Joe. It's delivered by C.B. de Mille when Norma visits him on the set of Sampson And Delilah, "A dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit."
It just gets more true every year.
Phil Brown
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"A Dead Man's Hand"
The eerie opening of the movie, sets the tone. William Holden is speaking, telling of his experince and you realize that he is the dead man floating in the pool and it is a post-mortem spiel. This is the one film that I remember Gloria Swanson for--her playing of the dusty movie relic who has an over-exaggerated sense of self-importance in Hollywood. In fact she is long forgotten. William Holden had the unfortunate luck to get mixed up with her, and as the authorities are coming to take her away, she delivers her classic line, "Mr. DeMille, I am ready for my close-up." Thinking that the members of the press are the production company of a new movie that she will star in. Dementia rears its ugly head. What a great classic movie. Swanson and Holden are fabulous.
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Another great film by Billy Wilder~~~
Billy Wilder gives us another great film, combining an interesting if not weird story. More great screenwritting, and brilliant acting. Guaranteed to keep to rivited to your seat..
