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Sunset Boulevard (also known as Sunset Blvd.) is a 1950 American film noir containing elements of drama, horror, and black comedy. Directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, it was named for the famous boulevard of the same name that runs through Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. It stars William Holden as down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis, and Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a faded movie star who entraps the unsuspecting Gillis into her fantasy world in which she dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen. Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough and Jack Webb play supporting roles. Director Cecil B. DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper play themselves, and the film includes cameo appearances by leading silent film figures Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson. Praised by many critics when first released, Sunset Boulevard was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won three. It is widely accepted as a classic, often cited as one of the most noteworthy films of American cinema. Deemed "culturally significant" by the U.S. Library of Congress in 1989, Sunset Boulevard was included in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 1998 it was ranked number twelve on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 best American films of the 20th century.
Plot
Background The street after which the film is named has been associated with Hollywood film production since 1911 when the town's first film studio opened on Sunset Boulevard. The film workers lived modestly in the growing neighborhood, but during the 1920s profits and salaries rose to unprecedented levels. With the advent of the "star system", luxurious homes noted for their often incongruous grandeur were built in the area. The stars were the subject of public fascination throughout the world as magazines and newspapers reported the excesses of their lives. As a young man in Warsaw, Poland, Billy Wilder was interested in American culture, with much of his interest fueled by American films. In the late 1940s many of the grand Hollywood houses remained, and Wilder, now a Los Angeles resident, found they were part of his everyday world. Many former stars from the silent era still lived in them, although most were no longer involved in the film business. Wilder wondered how they spent their time now that "the parade had passed them by" and began imagining the story of a star who had lost her celebrity and box-office appeal. Casting
Writing Wilder and Brackett began working on a script in 1948 but the result did not completely satisfy them. In August 1948 D.M. Marshman Jr., formerly a writer for Life Magazine, was hired to help develop the storyline after Wilder and Brackett were impressed by a critique he provided of their film The Emperor Waltz (1948). In an effort to keep the full details of the story from Paramount Studios and avoid the restrictive censorship of the Breen Code they submitted the script on an almost page-by-page basis. The Breen Office insisted certain lines be rewritten, such as Gillis' "I'm up that creek and I need a job," which became "I'm over a barrel. I need a job." Paramount executives thought Wilder was adapting a story called A Can of Beans (which did not exist) and allowed him relative freedom to proceed as he saw fit. Only the first third of the script was written when filming began in early May 1949 and Wilder was unsure how the film would end. The script contains many references to Hollywood and screenwriters, with Joe Gillis making most of the cynical comments. He sums up his film writing career with the remark, "The last one I wrote was about Okies in the dust bowl. You'd never know because when it reached the screen, the whole thing played on a torpedo boat." In another exchange Betty comments to Gillis, "I'd always heard that you had some talent." He replies, "That was last year. This year I'm trying to make a living." Several of Swanson's lines, such as, "All right Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my close-up," and "I am big. It's the pictures that got small!" are widely remembered and quoted. Much of the film's wit is delivered through Norma Desmond's deadpan comments, which are often followed by sarcastic retorts from Gillis. Desmond appears to not hear some of these comments, as she is absorbed by her own thoughts, and so some of Gillis' lines are heard only by the audience, with Wilder blurring the line between the events and Gillis' narration. Gillis' response to Desmond's cry that "the pictures got small" is a muttered reply, "I knew there was something wrong with them." Wilder often varies the structure, with Desmond taking Gillis' comments seriously and replying in kind. An example is when the two discuss the overwrought script Desmond has been working on. "They'll love it in Pomona," observes Gillis. "They'll love it everyplace," replies Desmond firmly. In an essay about the screenplay, film writer Richard Corliss described Sunset Boulevard as "the definitive Hollywood horror movie," noting that almost everything in the script is "ghoulish." He remarked that the story is narrated by a dead man who Norma Desmond first mistakes for an undertaker, while most of the film takes place "in an old, dark house that only opens its doors to the living dead." He compared Von Stroheim's character Max with The Phantom of the Opera, and Norma Desmond with Dracula, noting that as she seduces Joe Gillis the camera tactfully withdraws with "the traditional directorial attitude taken towards Dracula's jugular seductions." He wrote that the narrative contains an excess of "cheap sarcasm" but ultimately congratulated the writers for attributing this dialogue to Joe Gillis, who was in any case presented as little more than a hack writer. Corliss, Richard Talking Pictures. Screenwriters in the American Cinema. Penguin Books, 1975. ISBN 0-87951-159-1 Wilder preferred to leave analysis of his screenplays and films to others. Asked if Sunset Boulevard was a black comedy he replied, "No, just a picture." London Review of Books, review ''Conversations with Wilder'' by Cameron Crowe. Michael Wood. March 2, 2000. Retrieved July 21, 2005. Key creative personnel
Touches of authenticity In dissecting Hollywood's "world of illusion" Wilder carefully placed the story within as authentic a setting as possible and made use of Hollywood history. Norma Desmond's name is believed to have been inspired by William Desmond Taylor, who had been murdered in 1922, and his close associate and friend Mabel Normand, whose career was ruined by scandals surrounding the murder. Swanson was considered a fitting representative of Hollywood's past, remembered nostalgically by older fans but unknown to many younger movie viewers. Her personal collection of photographs decorated the set of Norma Desmond's home, causing Desmond's fictional past to resemble Swanson's authentic career. The script refers to real films such as Gone with the Wind and real people such as Darryl F. Zanuck, D. W. Griffith, Tyrone Power, Alan Ladd, Adolphe Menjou, Rudolph Valentino, Rod La Rocque, Vilma Bánky, John Gilbert, Mabel Normand, Bebe Daniels, Marie Prevost, Betty Hutton and Barbara Stanwyck along with the Black Dahlia murder case. Norma Desmond declares admiration for Greta Garbo. Wilder extended his Hollywood references into some of his casting choices. Erich von Stroheim was a leading director of the silent era. In the role of Max he watches a film with Norma Desmond and the briefly shown scene is from Queen Kelly (1929), which von Stroheim himself directed with Swanson in the title role. Cecil B. De Mille (often credited as the person most responsible for making Swanson a star) plays himself, and was filmed on the set of his current film Samson and Delilah at Paramount Studios. He calls Norma "young fellow," the nickname he had called Swanson, a tiny detail of authenticity suggested by De Mille. Norma's friends who come to play bridge with her, though described only as "The Waxworks", are Swanson's contemporaries Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson and H. B. Warner, who, like De Mille, play themselves. (They are credited as doing so in the film's closing credits.) Hedda Hopper also plays herself reporting on Norma Desmond's downfall in the film's final scenes. In a comic scene Norma Desmond performs a pantomime for Joe Gillis as a Mack Sennett "Bathing Beauty", in homage to Swanson's earliest film roles. She also performs a Charles Chaplin impersonation identical to one she performed in the film Masquerade (1924). Wilder also made use of authentic locales. Joe Gillis's home in the Alto-Nido apartments was a real apartment block located near Paramount Studios and often populated by struggling writers. The scenes of Gillis and Betty Schaefer on Paramount's backlot were filmed on the actual backlot and the interior of Schwab's drugstore was carefully recreated for several scenes. The exterior scenes of the Desmond house were filmed near around an old home on Wilshire Blvd. built during the 1920s, which by 1949 was owned by the former wife of J. Paul Getty. The house is also featured in Rebel Without A Cause. It has now been demolished and an office building stands in its location. Reaction to the film
Awards Sunset Boulevard won Academy Awards in the categories of: It was also nominated in the categories of: In an interview years later Davis bluntly stated she and Swanson had "cancelled each other out" , though in 1982 she told Playboy Magazine of her admiration for Swanson's performance, saying, "If she'd won, I'd have shouted hooray. She was sensational, just fantastic". Sunset Boulevard also received Golden Globe awards for Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Motion Picture Actress (Swanson), Best Motion Picture Director and Best Motion Picture Score. Wilder and Brackett won a Writer's Guild of America Award for Best Written American Drama while the Director's Guild of America nominated Wilder for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures. The National Board of Review voted it Best Picture and Swanson received Best Actress. After Sunset Boulevard Sunset Boulevard was the last collaboration between Wilder and Brackett. Their relationship was reportedly damaged by disputes over filming the montage scenes of Norma preparing her return to the screen. The film marked an approximate midpoint of Wilder's most successful years. Charles Brackett's Hollywood career continued after his split with Wilder. He won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Titanic (1953), and wrote Niagara (1953), which was the breakthrough film for Marilyn Monroe as a dramatic actress. It was Wilder however, who realized Monroe's comedic abilities in The Seven Year Itch and Some Like it Hot. Brackett's career waned by the end of the decade. William Holden began receiving more important parts and his career rose. In 1953, he won the Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17 (also directed by Wilder) and by 1956 he was the number one box-office attraction in the United States. Nancy Olson's pairing with William Holden was considered a success, and she appeared opposite him in several films during the 1950s. However, none of them repeated their earlier success. Olson went on to star in The Absent-Minded Professor (1960) and Son of Flubber (1961), in which she was paired with Fred MacMurray, but despite the films' popularity with movie-goers, her career stalled. Similarly, Gloria Swanson was not able to leverage her own success in Sunset Boulevard. Although offered scripts, she felt that they all were poor imitations of Norma Desmond. Imagining a career that would eventually reduce her to playing "a parody of a parody," she virtually retired from films. In 1957 Swanson initiated discussions with Paramount Studios to adapt Sunset Boulevard into a musical called Boulevard! In her version the romance between Gillis and Shaefer was allowed to blossom and rather than shoot Gillis at the end, Norma gave the couple her blessing, sending them on their way to live "happily ever after." Swanson employed Dickson Hughes and Richard Stapley to compose the score, which was completed and recorded, later appearing on LP; Miss Swanson performed a fully-orchestrated selection on The Steve Allen Show. Paramount Studios, which owned the copyright, encouraged Swanson to continue but withdrew its consent in 1959, saying it would not permit an interpretation that would damage the existing and future reputation of the film. It allowed television productions for Lux Video Theatre with Miriam Hopkins, and Robert Montgomery Presents with Mary Astor and Darren McGavin, because the storyline remained faithful to the original script. Sunset Boulevard was shown in New York City in 1960 and drew such a positive response that Paramount arranged for a limited rerelease in theaters throughout the United States. It is arguably best known to modern audiences as a result of its television screenings since the 1960s. The films current stature In 1989 the film was among the first group of 25 deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Polls conducted by the American Film Institute have demonstrated the lasting appeal of Sunset Boulevard and the esteem in which it is held by the modern filmmakers who respond to these polls. In 1998 it was ranked number twelve on a list of "100 Greatest Films". In 2004 two quotes from Sunset Boulevard were included in their poll of "Greatest Movie Quotes": All right, Mr. De Mille. I'm ready for my close-up ( Roger Ebert has praised the acting of Holden and von Stroheim and has described Swanson's as "one of the all time greatest performances." He says Sunset Boulevard "remains the best drama ever made about the movies because it sees through the illusions." Pauline Kael described the film as "almost too clever, but at its best in its cleverness," and also wrote it was common to "hear Billy Wilder called the world's greatest director." When Wilder died, many obituaries singled out Sunset Boulevard for comment, describing it as one of his most significant works along with Double Indemnity (1944) and Some Like it Hot (1959). By the late 1990s, most Sunset Boulevard prints were in poor condition, and since the film was one of the last to be filmed on cellulose nitrate filmstock, much of the original negative had perished. Paramount Studios, believing the film merited the effort of a complete restoration, mounted an expensive project to have the film digitally restored. The restored version was released on DVD in 2002. A 2003 BBC review of the restored film described it as "the finest movie ever made about the narcissistic hellhole that is Hollywood." Other films about Hollywood While Hollywood had been making films about itself since the 1920s many of them, such as It's a Great Feeling (1949), were good-natured and fun. Others, such as What Price Hollywood? (1932) and A Star Is Born (1937), hinted at the darker side of Hollywood without explicitly showing it. Sunset Boulevard is considered to be the first to employ such extreme cynicism. It was soon followed by The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Singin' in the Rain (1952) and the musical remake of A Star Is Born (1954). Though none of them was as harshly self-critical, they each depicted the ease and cruelty with which Hollywood could discard a movie star past his or her prime. Sunset Boulevard was followed by other films which varied the story of an older actress desperately clinging to her past glory, such as Bette Davis in The Star (1952) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Joan Crawford in Torch Song (1953), Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), Susan Hayward in Valley of the Dolls (1967) and Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest (1981). The scenario of an older woman with a gigolo was also used as a storyline without the Hollywood setting in such films as The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) which starred Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty, while Katharine Hepburn's descent into madness in Suddenly Last Summer (1959) has been compared to Norma Desmond's final scene. The Day of the Locust (1975) and The Last Tycoon (1976) depict Hollywood in bitter terms and, like Sunset Boulevard, make use of real backstage settings. Among the more recent films to discuss Sunset Boulevard in their screenplays or imitate its scenes or dialogue are Soapdish (1991), The Player (1992), Gods and Monsters (1998), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Be Cool (2005). The ending of Cecil B. Demented (2000) is a parody of Sunset Boulevards famous final scene. On television, the film inspired an episode of The Twilight Zone, "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine", in which an aging movie queen relives her past glory through watching her movies and at the same time isolating herself from the real world. The musical version A musical version (also titled Sunset Boulevard) with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton opened in London, England in 1993. The film had been originally meant to be adapted by Stephen Sondheim but he gave it up after meeting Billy Wilder who proposed he write an opera instead of a musical. Then, John Kander and Fred Ebb were asked to do so. Finally Andrew Lloyd Webber took the opportunity to create a musical based on the film. The production closely followed the film story, retained much of the dialogue and attempted to present similar set designs. Billy Wilder commented, "I congratulate the writers on something very ingenious — they left the story alone. A woman comes forward and says, 'I am big, it's the pictures that got small.' I was very much astonished when I heard the words, many of them retained and some of them to music. I'm not an expert on music but it sounded good to me." The show opened on Broadway the following year. Among the actresses to play Norma Desmond were Patti Lupone, Elaine Paige, Betty Buckley and Petula Clark in London along with Glenn Close in Los Angeles and Betty Buckley in New York. In July 2005 Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group announced that a film version starring Glenn Close and Ewan McGregor was to be produced in association with Paramount and the Relevant Picture Company, with an expected release date of 2006, but the project has apparently been stalled or abandoned. ''The Telegraph'' announcement of 2006 musical film. July 10, 2005. Retrieved July 27, 2005. The name of the film Nearly all references give the name of the film as Sunset Boulevard. However, the opening sequence does not give a title. Instead, it has a shot of the road and zooms in on a street sign that says Sunset Blvd. Thus some authorities such as Leonard Maltin's Film Guide and the IMDb argue that it is the latter that is the true name of the film. However, "Sunset Boulevard" is the name given in the original theatrical trailer but the registration with the Library of Congress shows 'Sunset Blvd'. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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