Review: Sunset Blvd. (1950)

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Sunset Blvd.

Rating

Director

Billy Wilder

Screenplay

Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Mrashman Jr.

Length

1h 50m

Starring

William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, Jack Webb, Franklyn Farnum, Larry Blake, Charles Dayton, Cecil B. DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B. Warner, Ray Evans, Jay Livingston

MPAA Rating

Passed (National Board of Review)

Review

Being a star is the one thing that every child hopes to be someday. It’s only when you reach that status and then fall does it become plain that stardom isn’t all it appears to be.

Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) is an aging Hollywood starlet who fell years before and has been a recluse ever since. She desperately wants a “return,” but doesn’t quite know how to go about it.

Joe Gillis (William Holden) is a Hollywood scriptwriter that is finding success quite elusive. His scripts don’t seem to capture much attention. His biggest concern is getting some money to keep his car from being repossessed. While being chased by the repossessors, he ducks into a driveway where they pass him by and he decides to hide out.

He finds a large mansion that seems to have been abandoned for years. He decides to go inside and take shelter for a few days. Little does he know that inside lives one of the greatest actresses of the silver screen that very few outside of Hollywood even remember.

Norma agrees to let him stay, but falls in love (or lust) and wants him to stay forever. She has been writing a script for years, “Salome,” which will hail her “return” to the big screen. She wants Joe to look at it, but he finds it dull, self-important and doesn’t think it will succeed. Norma then offers him a place to stay and other luxuries if he will ghost write the movie by adapting what she’s written.

At first, Joe thinks this will be a good idea, but after awhile, he realizes that the other thing she wants is him. She tries very hard; including hosting a “party” that includes a band, food and punch, yet Joe is the only guest.

Norma’s butler, Max Von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim), has been keeping her deluded all these years by making it seem that she’s still a star and refuses to ever let her know. So when Joe falls in love with another woman, Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson), and starts moonlighting with her, writing a script, Max tries everything to try and keep Joe with Norma as well as keep Norma happy.

“Sunset Blvd.” is a major classic. Not only is the film extremely well made, but also delivers one of the screen’s most famous and well acted characters in history. Swanson is stellar. She gives one of the finest performances on celluloid. Von Stroheim is also terrific, but Holden doesn’t seem to do much more than react, but it’s hardly noticeable against Swanson, which fits beautifully with the film’s theme.

“Sunset” also provided one of cinema’s most quoted lines. At the end of the film, Norma descends her grand staircase made up for her film “return.” She walks menacingly towards the camera and say “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” In another scene, the comment is made that she used to be big, her response is “I AM big, it’s the pictures that got small.”

This is one of those films that every film historian must see. It shows life in Hollywood after the lights have been turned off. It shows what can happen when a star falls from the heavens and lands in a field of delusion. “Sunset Blvd.” is a great motion picture that surmounts most contemporary films with an ease that Norma Desmond could be proud of.