NFR Project: 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Sunset Boulevard”

Dir: Billy Wilder

Scr: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshan Jr.

Pho: John F. Seitz

Ed: Doane Harrison, Arthur Schmidt

Premiere: August 10, 1950

110 min.

It’s a monumental story; it’s no surprise it inspired a lavish Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. It’s operatic. It’s a noir. It’s a black comedy. It’s a character study.

That a film can do so many things at once is a tribute to its director, Billy Wilder. His ability to distill the exact amount of footage to tell a story richly, serious or comic, is legendary, and he is rightly featured many times in the National Film Registry.

Sunset Boulevard is a masterpiece. Richard Corliss called it a horror story; David Thomson notes its irony in that the guy who wanted a Hollywood swimming pool ends up face-down dead in his. There are a host of interpretations of the meanings to be found in Wilder’s film – so much the better for Wilder. The movie welcomes a multiplicity of thoughts, as a great film does.

It’s yet another “movie about the movies” story, about how Hollywood is all fakery and ego. Yet at its heart is a titanically tragic figure, an insane former silent screen goddess whose predatory claws turn everything around into death and waste. Norma Desmond is played by Gloria Swanson, who herself was a “forgotten” actress from the Silent Era, a great star who made millions and ruled as royalty in Tinsel Town.

Swanson here plays the role of her career. Norma is a monster of self-regard, insulated by wealth from reality, living cocooned in her past greatness. She lives in the decayed grandeur of her Hollywood mansion. Her narcissism consumes everyone around her, and into her orbit drifts lackluster young screenwriter Joe Gillis, played by William Holden in the first of his trademark “lovable heel” roles. Joe is a hack; he hasn’t sold a screenplay in years, he is behind on his rent, and he refuses to quit the movie business and go back to life as a copy editor in Dayton, Ohio.

Holden narrates the flashback from the afterlife, as his dead body is floating in Norma Desmond’s pool. It seems that Joe pulled in to Norma’s demesne one day, fleeing from men looking to repossess his car. She mistakes him for a funeral director; she is burying her pet monkey. Joe agrees to look over a script she contemplates as being for her big comeback (it is wretchedly awful). Norma is rich; she finds out he’s broke, pays off the landlord, and brings all his stuff to her house. She needs a new pet.

Slowly, Norma starts grooming him, taking him out with her, and eventually – yes, we are given to believe – sleeping with him. Swanson as Desmond is a grotesque caricature of a woman, but there are moments when you can see a ruined beauty in her tortured gaze. It is conceivable that Joe whores himself out, given his cynicism and self-contempt.

Norma is served only by her butler, Max, played by Eric von Stroheim (“the Hun you love to hate!”). Stroheim was a key director of the Silent Era; his comedown to playing a butler was not lost on studio viewers. Max writes fan mail to Norma on the sly, to keep her illusion alive. It later turns out that Max was a great director – and Norma’s first husband. (We watch Norma watching Swanson in Queen Kelly [1929] . . . which was directed by Stroheim! in her private theater.)

Joe’s lifeline to sanity is Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson), fellow screenwriter and fiancée of Joe’s best friend. She reviews (and pans) his latest work . . . but then declares she sees some good in it, and proposes that they work on it together. Gradually, they fall in love.

Meanwhile, Norma thinks she is wanted to star in a new film for director Cecil B. DeMille; actually, his production sstaff wants to use her vintage automobile. Self-deluded, she begins planning her big comeback.

Joe starts sneaking out at night to work on the screenplay. Norma finds out and calls Betty. Joe reveals that he is a gigolo, and claims to prefer it. In short, he drives Betty away. He angrily tells Norma the truth – she is a has-been. He then goes to pack and head back to Dayton – and Norma drills him three times with an automatic.

The coda to the film is the most memorable closing scene of all. Norma, now completely insane and surrounded by police, is coaxed down from her bedroom by newsreel cameras she mistakes for DeMille’s crew. Down the stairs she floats like a ghost, with a leering rictus of a face. “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up,” she says. And walks straight into the camera as the vision of her face diffuses.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Winchester ‘73.