Thoughts on Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Billy Wilder’s film about an aging forgotten silent film actress and a young, undiscovered screenwriter is one of my all time favorites. Sunset Boulevard plays on Norma’s delusions even as it cuts through them. It has a satirical edge yet never delves into full- on parody. It is so many things, yet narratively, it is fairly small scale.
A large part of what makes the movie so fascinating is how boldly self-reflexive it is in its casting (similarly to In A Lonely Place). Gloria Swanson really was a silent film star, and Eric von Stroheim, who plays Max—Norma’s first director and husband—was a (now-celebrated) popular director of the silent era, and he directed Swanson in the 1928 silent film Queen Kelly. In this sense, the film is reflecting on the experiences of real stars of Hollywood’s past and shedding new light on the ramifications of stardom and artistic success in show business. However, all of this is grounded in a fictionalized, somewhat farcical and doomed love story between Joe Gillis and Norma. It is doomed not because they don’t love each other (although they don’t), but because Norma is incapable of loving or valuing anything other than an image of herself as the star she once was--an image she has hung onto through her gradual decline into obsolescence.
Granted, their relationship being doomed is obvious, and Wilder does not waste any time gradually revealing the outcome of Joe’s relationship with her: the film opens with the discovery and coverage of Joe’s murder, demonstrating the inevitability of his demise once he got involved with her. However, Von Stroheim’s Max grants the film’s narrative a greater depth, revealing how it is not only Joe who is doomed, but all men involved with Norma, the crazed narcissist whose relationship with Hollywood enslaved her the same way she enslaves all men willing to validate her inescapable vanity.
A large part of what makes the movie so fascinating is how boldly self-reflexive it is in its casting (similarly to In A Lonely Place). Gloria Swanson really was a silent film star, and Eric von Stroheim, who plays Max—Norma’s first director and husband—was a (now-celebrated) popular director of the silent era, and he directed Swanson in the 1928 silent film Queen Kelly. In this sense, the film is reflecting on the experiences of real stars of Hollywood’s past and shedding new light on the ramifications of stardom and artistic success in show business. However, all of this is grounded in a fictionalized, somewhat farcical and doomed love story between Joe Gillis and Norma. It is doomed not because they don’t love each other (although they don’t), but because Norma is incapable of loving or valuing anything other than an image of herself as the star she once was--an image she has hung onto through her gradual decline into obsolescence.
Granted, their relationship being doomed is obvious, and Wilder does not waste any time gradually revealing the outcome of Joe’s relationship with her: the film opens with the discovery and coverage of Joe’s murder, demonstrating the inevitability of his demise once he got involved with her. However, Von Stroheim’s Max grants the film’s narrative a greater depth, revealing how it is not only Joe who is doomed, but all men involved with Norma, the crazed narcissist whose relationship with Hollywood enslaved her the same way she enslaves all men willing to validate her inescapable vanity.