“Sunset Boulevard” (1950) is an immersive, delightful dive that makes us understand the price of celebrity culture while also glorying in Hollywood history. Gloria Swanson (as Norma Desmond, a silent-film star aged out of the industry) and Erich von Stroheim (as her butler Max, whose brief shot at directing stardom fizzled out) had both been out of the limelight for a while.
An original film about unoriginality
Director/co-writer Billy Wilder not only brings them back for fresh roles, but – as it turns out – for the roles they are most remembered for. This movie that comments on many tropes of movie storytelling rightly won the original screenplay Oscar.
Coming at the midcentury mark, it was a perfect time to comment on a new phenomenon. Norma was plucked for stardom at age 16, and got mentally locked into her celebrity identity. At first, I thought Swanson’s choice of over-the-top acting is jarring, but I eventually realized it’s exactly right. Living as a celebrity – and then being cast aside for the next big things – is Norma’s entire life; she only knows how to act in big, facial-expression-centered roles.
“Sunset Boulevard” (1950)
Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshman Jr.
Stars: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim
She doesn’t know how to simply live a life. Since most old films followed a “please the censors” plot wherein a young person achieves the “successful” normalcy of love and marriage, that’s what Norma wants when struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) shows up at her sagging mansion’s doorstep.
“Sunset Boulevard” may transcend familiar stories in the end, but boy does it know how to tell a familiar story. Wilder and co-writers Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr. give us a gender-flipped “Rebecca.” Although Joe is much more assertive than the woman in that 1940 Hitchcock classic, he finds himself caught up in Norma’s world of fading riches. Due to his financial struggles, he accedes to move in with Norma and her butler.
Even as Wilder makes a sharp statement about how Hollywood’s rewards – money, flattery and thousands of fan letters – can shatter a person’s mental health, he tells a helluva good traditional yarn. Holden’s voiceover narration, and the fact that we begin with a body floating in a pool (before flashing back to the story’s start), paint “Sunset Boulevard” as classic noir.
An ageless film about aging
Wilder has a winking sense of humor, though, as he uses generic styles and pokes fun at the very idea of making stuff up. Norma’s mansion, like the one in “Rebecca,” is of the gothic tradition. When Norma shows Joe the grand living room, we hear deep organ music. Presumably, this would be score music (from Fran Waxman, who scored “Rebecca”), but it’s literally from a draft blowing through the organ in the room. Mel Brooks could’ve been taking notes.
“Sunset Boulevard” is a treatise on the phenomenon of “aging out” of roles, but that raw fact isn’t the reason it’s great. After all, “Inside Amy Schumer” had a skit called “Last F***able Day,” about how actresses’ roles change at age 40. It’s a good skit, but blunt.
Wilder is more subtle as he uses the established language of film to criticize that very industry. Rarely does “Sunset Boulevard” – despite boasting crackling dialog – have an on-the-nose line relating to its theme. The closest might be when Joe, in his 30s, acknowledges Norma’s career struggles but is baffled by her obsession with making a “return” (don’t call it a “comeback”): “Norma, you’re a woman of 50, now grow up. There’s nothing tragic about being 50, not unless you try to be 25.”
It’s not to be for Norma, but it is to be for Swanson. “Sunset Boulevard’s” success shows Norma another path: There are roles for women over 50, but those roles involve playing women over 50. And there are stories that don’t fit the Hollywood storytelling mold, but they are stories about the Hollywood storytelling mold.
Not only has it all been done before, but it had all been done before in the first half-century of movies. “Sunset Boulevard” was duly acknowledged by the Oscars, and then we embarked on 75 more years of insane celebrity worship and child stars mentally damaged even worse than Norma.
IMDb Top 250 trivia
- “Sunset Boulevard” ranks at No. 62 on the list with an 8.4 rating, making it the highest-ranked Wilder film.
- Although “All About Eve” had the bigger Oscar night, it hasn’t fared as well over time, ranking at No. 139 (8.2).
- It’s one of three movies on the list with a street name in the title. The others are “The Wolf of Wall Street” (No. 129, 8.2) and “Mad Max: Fury Road” (No. 182, 8.1).
Wilder Wednesdays looks at the films of legendary writer-director Billy Wilder.