Gloria Swanson’s Portrayal Of A Washed-Up Hollywood Star Is Simply As Tragic & Disturbing 75 Years Later

After Billy Wilder set the gold commonplace for movie noir along with his 1944 masterpiece Double Indemnity, he wasted no time deconstructing the style. Simply six years later, he subverted the system he helped to create. With 1950’s Sundown Boulevard, Wilder introduced the noir to Tinseltown, injected it with a healthy dose of pitch-black comedy, swapped out a brooding detective for a brooding screenwriter, and used shadowy, expressionistic imagery to bid a bitter farewell to the silent period.

Whereas hiding from his collectors at a seemingly deserted mansion, down-on-his-luck B-picture scribe Joe Gillis (William Holden) is shocked to seek out the derelict previous home is occupied by none aside from washed-up silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Norma is planning an enormous Hollywood comeback, and since Gillis is strapped for money, he agrees to assist her with the script. Nonetheless, as she slips deeper into her unrealistic fantasies and turns into dangerously obsessive about him, he comes to appreciate he may be in over his head.

Sundown Boulevard was manner forward of the curve in critiquing Hollywood’s misogynistic tendency to discard girls of a sure age. The identical subject material was tackled by All About Eve in the identical 12 months, however Sundown Boulevard approaches that topic with a delightfully darkish humorousness. Just like The Substance, it makes use of a twisted psychological horror to seize the ruthlessness of Hollywood’s rejection.

Gloria Swanson Anchors Sundown Boulevard With A Actually Iconic Efficiency

William Holden Gives A Nice Foil, Too

Holden nails the snappy dialogue, the hard-boiled voiceovers, and the grizzled gravitas of a self-mythologizing has-been author, and Erich von Stroheim provides an important supporting flip as Norma’s unfailingly loyal butler, Max. However Swanson is the plain star of the film, delivering a very iconic efficiency as Norma. Her biting wit, disturbing delusions, and underlying tragedy make her an endlessly fascinating character. She’s unsettling, however she’s additionally oddly lovable, and Swanson manages that steadiness completely.

For a film that brazenly rails towards dialogue and argues that it’s not mandatory to inform a narrative onscreen, Sundown Boulevard’s script — co-written by Wilder, frequent collaborator Charles Brackett, and D.M. Marshman, Jr. — is stuffed with unbelievable traces. Norma will get all the very best traces, and Swanson nails the supply of each single one: “I’m huge; it’s the images that received small.” Satirically, the road that criticizes dialogue is, itself, an important line that makes a case for dialogue’s essential perform: “We didn’t want dialogue; we had faces!”

Sundown Boulevard Is Bookended By An Iconic Opening & An Equally Iconic Finale

Beginnings & Endings Are The Hardest Components Of A Film To Get Proper

Half the problem of creating an important film is developing with an important opening and an important ending, and Sundown Boulevard has each one of the vital iconic openings in movie historical past and one of the vital iconic endings. It opens with a physique floating in a pool, and a voiceover narration from the useless man telling the story of how he received there. This opening picture hooks you immediately. It leaves you with a ton of unanswered questions, units up an inevitable tragedy, and creates an air of secrecy across the story that follows.

Sundown Boulevard’s remaining scene is simply as iconic; it’s an unforgettable second, and a pitch-perfect fruits of the narrative journey Norma has taken us on. The movie’s closing moments play into Norma’s deranged fantasy world to catch her out — even the police play alongside. “All proper, Mr. DeMille, I’m prepared for my closeup,” is among the most memorable remaining traces ever written. It exhibits simply how far gone Norma is. She’s absolutely indifferent from actuality; she’s absolutely embraced her delusions. As she’s being arrested, she genuinely believes she’s capturing a movie. It’s a chilling notice to finish on.

Most films concerning the movie trade, from Ed Wooden to Bowfinger to As soon as Upon a Time in Hollywood, are an affectionate love letter to the glitz and glamor of the silver display. However what makes Sundown Boulevard the quintessential film about Hollywood is that it’s extra of a slam piece. Like Barton Fink and The Participant, Sundown Boulevard emphasizes the horrors of Hollywood. It doesn’t romanticize the cutthroat film enterprise; it laments the best way film stars get chewed up and spit out by a corrupt system that commodifies human beings.

Sundown Boulevard

10/10

Launch Date

August 10, 1950

Runtime

110 Minutes

Director

Billy Wilder

Writers

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

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  William Holden

  Joe Gillis

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  Gloria Swanson

  Norma Desmond

Execs & Cons

• Billy Wilder shakes up the traditional movie noir system with a Hollywood setting and a pitch-black humorousness
• Gloria Swanson provides a deeply unnerving, but surprisingly lovable efficiency as washed-up starlet Norma Desmond
• Sundown Boulevard is an incisive critique of the cutthroat film enterprise