Sunset Boulevard (1950)

	Directed by: Billy Wilder	COUNTRY USA GENRE Film noir/Thriller NORWEGIAN TITLE Sunset Boulevard RUNNING TIME 110 minutes
	Produced by: Charles Brackett
	Written by: Charles Brackett Billy Wilder D. M. Marshman Jr.

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Joe Gillis	William Holden
Norma Desmond	Gloria Swanson	½
Max von Mayerling	Erich von Stroheim	½
Betty Schaefer	Nancy Olson	½
Sheldrake, film producer	Fred Clark	-
Morino, Joe's agent	Lloyd Gough	-
Artie Green	Jack Webb	½
New Year's Eve party guest	Jack Warden	-

Review

In what was one of Hollywood's first indictments of itself, faded silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) offers young, down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) the opportunity to stay with her in her lavish, antiquated mansion, where she lives in recluse, dreaming of her bygone days as one of the once budding industry's brightest stars – and hoping that her latest script will give her one last taste of the fame she's incurably addicted to. Billy Wilder illuminates the flip side of celebrity and movie stardom with shrewdness and doubtless first-hand knowledge. But after 70 years of aging, Sunset Boulevard only fully works on that allegorical level. The rest of the movie, with its looming tragedy and noirish shadows, is a little too plotted and melodramatic to really resonate, despite – or perhaps partly because – Swanson's outlandish performance as the ageing diva. She's a ghost of the expressionist traditions she was brought up in, and she's blind to the fact that she's become a parody of her own screen-persona. As the picture revels in this parody, with sprinkles of black comedy which alas are too slight and far between, it does still create its own atmospheric realm that partly explains Joe's lunacy. Thanks to Wilder's skill and an invested William Holden, Sunset Boulevard transports you back to 1950's Hollywood and gives you a fascinating glimpse into its world of theatricality, decline and debauchery.