Released: August 4, 1950
Director: Billy Wilder
*****
In his introduction to this film on Turner Classic Movies, Robert Oborne says only Billy Wilder could have made this film about a reclusive, former star (Norma Desmond, played by a wonderfully theatrical Gloria Swanson) who falls into a mad delirium over washed up writer Joe Gillis (William Holden). Why could only Wilder, director of Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot and The Lost Weekend-among others-tackle this subject matter?
To put it succienctly, he has the only one in Hollywood with the courage to make this expose on the constant churning over of star and writer. A silent film star, Desmond found her career over when the pictures started to include sound. Sequestered in her mansion with manservant Max (Erich von Stroheim) as her only company, she takes Gillis (who himself is on the run from repo men) in, treating him as a "kept man." As he begins to feel claustrophobic in the house, her jealousy rises over a friendship with a reader at Paramount Pictures. Soon, they all spiral out of control, ultimately culminating in one of film's most recognized lines.
Sunset Boulevard isn't a love story or a tragedy; it's film noir, a genre largely forgotten about in this day and age. It usually includes a murder (not a shock, since the movie opens with the aftermath of gunshots and the action is told in flashback), a femme fatale (a seduction, yet conniving woman) and a mystery. The mystery at the center of the story is simple: who killed Joe Gillis and why?
This is a classic Hollywood film, complete with cameos by the names of the day. Cecil B. DeMille, Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, Hedda Hopper. To pick apart the plot or to ruin any of the surprises would be disastrous for anyone who hasn't had the chance to see this work of art. Yes, some parts of the story lag, such as the subplot between Betty (the reader) and Joe, mostly because Swanson isn't on the screen. Sunset Boulevard comes to wonderfully over the top life with Gloria Swanson sweeping across the mansion as if she were in a silent film: larger than life actions and big emotions. The times she doesn't command the screen, the action is still about Norma. And as each scene unfolds, we learn a bit more about her twisted life.
Ultimately we feel sorry for her and everyone caught up in her trap. In some ways, Joe gets off the easiest by being shot. There is no guilt on his part, no sadness. Just...the pool he always wanted.