Sunset Boulevard

• Directed by Billy Wilder
• August 10, 1950

A struggling screenwriter meets a former silent film star who draws him into her deranged fantasy world.

I have seen in places the classic Sunset Boulevard described as a dark comedy. Not sure about that. It can be strange, surreal, and even menacing with a fatalistic undercurrent as we get a look into the mind of a delusional former star who does not understand her time has passed and a struggling screenwriter who cannot bring himself to give up his dream and go home. I found it unsettling or sad but never some kind of mockery or humorous.

William Holden as Joe Gillis is a man at the end of his line and on some level he knows it. He could go back to the life he left behind to pursue his dream, but he just can’t bring himself to do that and eventually becomes trapped with a former star when he hides from some creditors. During the film he has a chance at love and a new beginning but continues a path that will not end well. It goes to his cynical and sardonic personality.

Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson) is Joe’s chance at something better. Not only a new career path based on her appreciation of something he wrote but of love as she finds something worthwhile in Joe. During the story Joe can be seen pushing her away.

Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond was fantastic and unsettlingly delusional from the start. When we first meet her it’s clear she has a few screws loose. Her ego is so vast and grand that she has not quite seen she is not the big deal she once was. Desperately clinging to her past when she was young and beautiful and famous, reality has left her behind.

Norma manipulates and dominates Joe in every way she can. In general she pulls people into orbit and though they do care about her they enable her rather than get her the help she may need or give her an honest assessment of what’s going on. This mixes with her emotional manipulation weaved with taking over Joe’s life by imposing her will.

One of the stranger and more shocking developments was those involving Norma’s butler Max von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim). Erich von Stroheim made Max like a servant in a horror movie though. He is almost her muscle though without her knowledge. He may be brusque but there is an intense loyalty that seems to be built around love and maybe being still a bit starstruck.

With the use of shadow and light and the strange world of Norma Desmond, this gets very close very quickly to being a horror movie in atmosphere and tone and dialogue. You watch as a desperate man comes across a seemingly abandoned home before manipulation and circumstance traps him there as he works to fix an amateurish script by Desmond.

Billy Wilder blurs the line between reality and fantasy here. The legendary director Cecil B. DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper appear as themselves and Sunset Boulevard includes a scene with cameo appearances by silent film stars Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson. I was more surprised at some casting not meant to blur things. It was that of pre-Dragnet Jack Webb being very animated (in contrast to his more familiar deadpan style) as Artie Green. He’s very all “Shucks!” and “Gee whiz!” rather than the dry delivery he’s best known for.

What we get is not a story to tell a story but a commentary on the Hollywood machine and how it destroys people. Norma was chewed up and destroyed by the studios though it never uses that to excuse her behavior. Just to explain it. The abuse of the studios and fickle nature of the public is pointed out. One the one hand she is a has-been ignored by the public but on the other when recognized on the Paramount lot she is flocked by an adoring public excited to see her. A bit of real-life we can see today with the advent of the nostalgia circuit where stars participate in conventions rather than performing in front of the camera.

Outside of Norma Desmond’s home the film is rather plainly photographed. Nothing too striking or shocking, but once we get inside of her home which is detached from the real world much like Norma, stark shadows and unique angles highlight the otherworldly nature of the house and the darkness of her mind. Garish interiors packed with memories of the past create an alien world and look at her mentality.

This is a film I know more from references in pop culture than I know from having seen it. Classic cartoons have referenced it. TV shows both, live action and even animated, have done an homage or something inspired by it. My point is that it is an impactful movie. It’s an indictment on celebrity and the fickleness of the public and the Hollywood machine. It pulls no punches on how the entertainment industry can chew someone up and spit them out leaving a broken individual.

Sunset Boulevard is a striking and fantastic film. It’s a bleak story that borders on horror and is something all aficionados a film should watch.