Sunset Blvd.

Sunset Blvd. (1950) is the ultimate Hollywood insider picture—and one that only Billy Wilder would have dared to make at the time. In fact, the film so angered MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer that he suggested Wilder be tarred, feathered and run out of town. Wilder came back with a two-syllable response that I’m not allowed to use in print. (Fortunately, Wilder was working for Paramount.) Then again, everything about the film is uniquely Wilder. Really, who else but Wilder would cast Erich von Stoheim (“the man you love to hate”) as ultimately the most sympathetic character in the film? It’s also the kind of film of which legends are made and a film that has become a legend itself—and deservedly so.

It seems unthinkable now that anyone other than Gloria Swanson should have played the role of delusional ex-movie star Norma Desmond, but that was not the original plan. The script was first given to Mae West, who at 56 thought herself far too young for the role. But the 50-year-old Swanson overcame any such reservations and created perhaps her most memorable screen character—though she was appalled when people thought it was in any way autobiographical. (What was probably to blame for this is the scene where she visits old mentor Cecil B. DeMille at Paramount and the fact that Queen Kelly (1928)—a film she made for Stroheim—is shown in Sunset Blvd..) But there was certainly no resemblance to Swanson’s personal life.

The film is what might be called “Hollywood Gothic,” focusing on this faded silent-movie star dwelling in a spooky old mansion with only her butler (Stroheim) for company—at least since her chimpanzee has died. Indeed, she mistakes down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) for some kind of simian mortician when he first arrives on the scene. Soon, however, she’s latched onto him to help on her unwieldly Salome screenplay—and as a kind of live-in gigolo. Things do not go well, but we know they won’t from the onset, since the film opens with Joe’s body floating in the swimming pool and then tells its story in flashback.

Sunset Blvd. is a film that lays bare the Hollywood myth—only to create another one and to become almost mythical in itself. Exchanges like Joe saying, “You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big,” only to be told, “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small!” are among the most famous in film history. And then there are the other indelible lines: “We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!” and, of course, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” What is sometimes forgotten, however, is how sad and yet how chilling Swanson’s performance is, and how quietly heartbreaking Stroheim’s is. Check the film out for yourself.