Sunset Boulevard takes a cynical look at the film industry & is one of the masterworks of cinema. Co-written and directed by the great Billy Wilder, the movie is an unusual mix of black comedy and film noir. It is a accessible, well crafted Hollywood movie, but at the same time it has the density and originality one would expect from an art-house film.
The film opens with police vehicles driving down palm tree lined streets as a male narrator says in voice-over: "Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California… A murder has been reported from one of those great big houses in the ten thousand block." Soon the police arrive at a mansion, where floating in the swimming pool is a dead body. The audience is instantly drawn into the film.
The most cinematic scene appears early on in the film; the shot of the dead man floating in the pool surrounded my paparazzi is stunning to the eye and makes a blunt statement on the film as a whole.
The story flashes back to six months earlier, and we meet Joe Gillis (William Holden), a hopeless young screenwriter. While driving along Sunset Boulevard, Joe's tire goes flat so he pulls into the driveway of a run-down mansion. The mansion reminisces the one described in Dicken's classic novel, Great Expectations. At the house he encounters a woman he recognizes as Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a movie star of the silent era. When Joe remarks to Norma that she used to be big, she retorts, "I am big. It's the pictures that got small." - Classic.
Joe soon learns Norma has written a screenplay she expects to play the lead in the movie made from it. When Norma discovers Joe is a screenwriter, she hires him to edit her screenplay. Then the aging former actress gradually makes the handsome Joe her gigolo. Joe moves into Norma's gloomy mansion, where she is attended by her faithful servant Max (Erich von Stroheim). Two or three evenings a week Max runs the projector while Joe and Norma sit watching her old silent films.
Ironically the movie we see them watching is Queen Kelly (1929), which starred Gloria Swanson and was directed by Erich von Stroheim.
Norma becomes increasingly happy as she comes to believe she will soon be the leading lady in a movie. Meanwhile Joe grows restless and gets involved with a perky young, ambitious script reader (Nancy Olson), this results in tragic consequences. But the events are so traumatic for Norma that she loses touch with reality.
Under the delusion that shooting has begun on her comeback film, Norma utters one of the most memorable last lines in all of cinema: "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close up."
Sunset Boulevard will speak loud for film lovers everywhere. A Billy Wilder classic.
10/10
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