Review of Sunset Boulevard (1950) by Catherine D — 14 Mar 2010

S is for Sunset Boulevard.

Joe Gillis (William Holden) is a down-on-his-luck Hollywood writer, three months behind on his rent and fresh out of original ideas to put down on paper. In trying to avoid the repo men who've come for his car, he ends up getting a flat tire and pulling into an old, run-down mansion on Sunset Boulevard. At first he thinks it's abandoned, until a mysterious woman tells him to enter; he's been mistaken for someone else. But once inside, he recognizes the woman as Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a faded former movie star. At first he's eager to get moving again, but when she mentions a script she's working on, he takes a look at the vast house filled with priceless treasures and decides he may as well take advantage of the situation. So he gives in when he's shown to a room and his things are brought over from his past-due apartment by Norma's servant Max (Erich von Stroheim). But like any great star past its prime, Norma is a veritable black hole, and Joe finds himself drawn in further and further, accepting room and board, then clothes and expensive gifts from Norma, until he is no longer able to escape. He tries, in little ways, sneaking out to a New Year's Eve party with his friend Artie Green (Jack Webb), only to hurry back to the mansion when he learns Norma has attempted suicide over his departure. He even begins to work on a script again, with the pretty, young, fresh Miss Betty Schafer (Nancy Olson). But 'tis not to be. There is no escaping from that lonely house on Sunset Boulevard.

Like any great film about the film business, "Sunset Boulevard" plays out in many layers of half-truths. Swanson actually was a great silent picture star, absent from Hollywood since talkies had taken off, and Cecil B. De Mille and Erich von Stroheim were her most frequent directors. She made roughly 60 films between 1915 and 1930, and yet today she's known only for this one. And her "wax-works" friends were all great stars in their own right. These quasi-real illusions add a creepy depth to the film, which already benefits from a superb script and directing. The psychological drama that develops as Joe evolves from a cynical writer to an unwilling kept man, and then tries to get free again, is as intense and compelling as they come.

Overall, an incredible film that defined a genre and a new style of writing, with a tight, intense plot, fantastic acting and directing, simply in a league of its own.