Sunset Blvd. (1950)

Directed by: Billy Wilder
Written by: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshman Jr.
Starring: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson
Rated: Approved

Let us first strike a key note before playing the chord and talk about the life of Gloria Swanson, star of "Sunset Blvd.". Biology gave her the face of the 1920's, fate gave her the fame. At the height of her silent film career Swanson was the highest paid actress in Hollywood and she certainly lived the life to prove it, spending outrageous sums of money, marrying seven times and living the quintessential life of the glamour girl starlet. In 1927 the talkies were born and Swanson, that undying celebrity, held on fast. Then quite suddenly, in 1934 she all but disappeared, making only one film throughout the next 15 years. In 1950 Billy Wilder dragged Swanson out of the depths of obscurity to make our picture here, and she tore into it like a bat out of Hell. The parallels between her own life and that of the protagonist are undeniable, and makes "Sunset Blvd." one of the most fascinating and entertaining films ever to come out of Hollywood.

Running from repo men out to take back his car Joe Gillis (William Holden), a hack screen writer in a dry spell, evades them by turning into the lot of massive, rundown mansion off Sunset Blvd. We know Joe will die--an opening shot shows his body floating in a swimming pool, but what brought him to such a fate? That is our story. It is story of love and redemption, of betrayal and mysteries and lies, and the cold world of mean, mean Hollywood.

The owner of the mansion is Norma Desmond (Swanson), a has-been star of the silent era, whose sad life and insane ego has lead her into the life of a recluse. In the dark halls and gaudy rooms of her film set palace, Norma is swallowed up in her fantasies that the public never left her. "I am big. It's the pictures that got small!" she exclaims to Joe in their opening moments together. Joe, needing a place to stay and some easy money to get his creditors off his back, strikes up an unusual relationship with the deranged  movie star from yesteryear, agreeing to edit a terrible, mammoth screenplay that she has written for herself to be her comeback.

The tale is one of gothic romance. Set against a backdrop of wheezing pipe organs, dead chimpanzees in child-sized coffins, a creepy old butler (Erich von Stroheim), and cobwebbed pictures of young Norma which fill every empty space of the house, we watch as Joe is sucked into an existence cut off from the outside world and more generally cut off from reality as a whole. Norma goes about in ridiculous outfits from her old films, signing fake fan letters, smoking and drinking and buying useless articles to stuff into her claustrophobic, decrepit manor. She slinks about with wild eyes, watching her old movies and wrapping herself in a cloud of self-delusion.

The fiercely confident script smells of dust and formaldehyde. It's a tragic anti-love story of a desperate, skeletal woman whose claws latch into a man with nowhere else to go. He fuels her fantasies out of financial need, but that only scratches the surface. It's a complex, macabre friendship that they build together inside those crumbling walls, and one that is full of Hollywood drama at its very best. There simply aren't movies made like this anymore.

Of course Norma falls in love in Joe, that's an inevitability from the start. She dotes on him and buys him expensive clothes. Joe couldn't possibly return the affection, but in an odd way we find that he must care about her at least a little bit. He is a young, virile man with hopes and dreams and aspirations that Norma had decades ago, however, and that can't be contained forever by Norma's wealth and strangely endearing eccentricities. Nancy Olson plays Betty, a fresh young script reader that steals Joe's heart.

Holden's level acting anchors this wildly outlandish story and brings a sense of gravity to a piece that Swanson boldly tries to take to melodrama. It's a fabulous pairing which blends the sense of urgency of noir and the grandness of the Silent Era. Billy Wilder is a daring director who was not afraid to tackle the fickleness of the movie industry and in a way, although Norma is a huge, outrageous character, Wilder makes us feel for her. His piece is a testament to the forgotten actors and actresses who were once so proud and so loved.

The costumes, the sets, the art direction, cinematography, interesting story line and amazing characters all combine to form an engrossing and ultimately heartbreaking movie that has withstood the test of time. It was the imagination and gumption of all involved that have really made this film something of a marvel. Twists and turns and huge themes never take away that sense of pathos that keeps the audience engaged. Of course not many of us can say that we've held private funerals from dead chimp pets, nor that we hold weekly bridge games for our fellow faded silent film stars, but we can connect with that sense of loneliness. Norma is a woman who had it all and lost it all. She was abandoned and hurt and wants nothing more than to have that last glimpse of the spotlight. She wants to be loved. That is drama, that is beautiful, and this is perfect.

4/4