Sunset Boulevard (Special Collector's Edition) | William Holden, Gloria Swanson

Sunset Boulevard (Special Collector's Edition) | William Holden, Gloria Swanson | Presages Mulholland Dr

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Sunset Boulevard (...

	Sunset Boulevard (Special Collector's Edition) William Holden, Gloria Swanson Paramount, 2002 average customer review:based on 248 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Ready as Ever...

Directed by the incomparable Billy Wilder, this is iconic Gloria Swanson in the comeback-of-all-comeback films (even though as Norma Desmond she protests that she hates that word, it's "Return!"). From the crumbling Spanish Revival (J. P. Getty-owned) mansion to the leopard-upholstered Isotta-Fraschini (once owned by Peggy Hopkins Joyce, the inspiration for Lorelei Lee in "Gentlemen Prefer Blonds"), this is a tour-de-force of behind-the-scenes Hollywood atmosphere, the dark flipside of the other great send up of when Talkies came to Tinsletown, "Singin' in the Rain."

But first of all, dismiss the myth that this movie was a biopic of Gloria's life. Not in the least. True, Gloria had been a huge success in silents (at age 25, the first actress with a million dollar contract) but she made the transition to sound just fine, even singing in early 1930s films like "The Trespasser" ("Love Your Magic Spell is Everywhere") and "Music in the Air" (which Billy Wilder also worked on). If anything, it was her exotic look, not her voice, that made her seem passé in the darkening days of the Depression.

To create Miss Desmond, screenwriters Charles Brackett (who also scripted "Ninotchka"), D. M. Marshman Jr. and Billy Wilder threw in all of the faded film star lore they could, combining the May-December marriage and mostly pickled later life of America's Sweetheart Mary Pickford (who was offered and turned down the part) and the quick fadeout to black of the other Norma (Talmadge). Throw in the other two Talmadge sisters, Clara Bow, Mable Normand, et al; the stories you hear are true, but a compilation and the names have been changed, sort of.

Then, once she agreed to the starring role, as an additional benefit, Gloria graciously allowed all of her personal mementos, from the unreleased and von Strohiem directed "Queen Kelly" to the plethora of 8 x 10 genuine publicity stills, to give the set verisimilitude. Her Chaplin-taught imitation of himself, her collaboration with De Mille (right down to his pet name for her "Young Fella"), the quip about Valentino and the tile floor, and more, were bonuses that make the film more than just another pastiche of a long-gone era.

Swanson and Holden do yeoman's work as the ill-fated couple in a nightmarish liaison that can only end badly. The lush Franz Waxman score augments a script replete with quotable quotes about the perils of a star's decline. There are layers and layers of Hollywood goodies, like the storyline that Holden and Nancy Olson spoof about, concerning a guy and a gal who rent the same flat, one sleeping in the daytime and the other at night, sharing the apartment on a shift basis, never seeing each other; it is a real 1933 film, called "Rafter Romance" starring Ginger Rogers and Laura Hope Crewes.

The staircase finale has become a thing of legend--deftly spoofed by Carol Burnett. Gloria enjoyed Carol's sketch so much, she made a guest appearance on the Carol Burnett Show, as a result. Even so, the film's ending line is surely one of the five greatest in all Hollywood history, the others being, "Casablanca", "The Wizard of Oz", "Some Like It Hot" and "Now, Voyager".

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Presages Mulholland Dr

A crazed aged actress played with moxie by Gloria Swanson entices a struggling scriptwriter to live in her insane mansion in a film that combines satire and horror. The writer, played by a disaffected, cynical William Holden, enters the belly of the beast and makes what becomes a deal with the devil. Part Blanche Dubois, Swanson plays a faded actress, a "sleepwalker," who lives in the past. The cynical tone of the film amazingly reminds me of the dead narrator who speaks in Desperate Housewives, a technique used in the film's voice-over. It's weird seeing the same Los Angeles roads and buildings from 60 years ago, virtually unchanged today. In fact, the film is not at all dated.

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If you only see one noir in your life...

Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950)

Sunset Boulevard is noir at its best, a simple story of obsessive love gone wrong, but the characters. Oh, the characters. Gloria Swanson plays Norma Desmond, a silent film queen who's been abandoned by the studios as talkies have become all the rage. (Swanson-- and her circle of card-playing friends in the movie-- were, in fact, silent film stars who had been abandoned by the studios after talkies became all the rage. Among the card players is Buster Keaton.) By coincidence, a young screenwriter, Joe Gillis (William Holden, in the first of his collaborations with Billy Wilder), pulls into her garage while fleeing repo men, thinking the place is abandoned. The two meet, and Desmond convinces Gillis to do some editing on a script she's been working on. Erich von Stroheim has a star turn as Desmond's butler, a silent film director also left in the lurch. (von Stroheim was, of course, a silent film director, whose Greed is widely considered one of the best films ever made.)

With all the similarities to real life going on in this movie, it's hard to examine it without a lengthy diversion into the movie being a savage satire on Hollywood itself, but that's not what most struck me about this movie. It's Joe Gillis, possibly the least effective manipulator ever captured on a screen, a man who desperately needs to become hard-hearted to gain his independence from an ugly, overbearing relationship. It's Norma Desmond, already half-mad at the beginning of the movie, rolling the rest of the way off the cliff as she tries, just as desperately to hold on to Gillis. It's Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson), torn between her growing love for Gillis and her engagement to his best friend, Artie Green (Jack Webb), coming under the withering gaze of Desmond's scorn. It's Max the Butler, so proud and so pathetic, who understands exactly where Gillis' road is headed, but is powerless to do anything about it. It's Cecil B. DeMille, who didn't have to do anything other than play himself. Satire can't work unless you've got the fundamentals in place. And in this case, the fundamentals are the characters and how they interact. And they're fabulous. Sure, Wilder and collaborator Charles Brackett wrote a great script, and Wilder, as was his wont, filmed the whole thing with precision and flair, and it wouldn't be as good a movie without those qualities. But you could put these characters, with these actors playing them, on a bare stage with a single lightbulb, and let them improvise till the cows came home, and I believe the audience would have still been deathly quiet and stock still. This is genius, pure and simple. *****

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I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille

You'd have to commend silent-film legend Gloria Swanson for an outstanding performance as aging, washed-up starlet Norma Desmond, who's decades out of the limelight, if it wasn't for one fact: I don't think Swanson can get credit for acting in this thinly disguised autobiographical role. Kind of like Vivien Leigh in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Toss in a stuffed chimp, Eric von Stroheim in an equally mirrorlike role as a shot director-turned-houseboy, Jack "Dragnet" Webb in a minor performance before his "da-da-da-da" days, and silent-film fossil Buster Keaton in his last paying job before stooping to Annette-and-Frankie beach movies, and this one classifies as a gem. Of course, Bill Holden still can't act, but that's part of his charm. Remember: This one's still big; it's today's movies that got small.

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Legendary film still holds up

This expozay of a decadent Hollywood would have packed a real punch in the 1950's. Compared to the excesses of our current breed of stars, however, Norma Desmond looks positively restrained.

Still it has some nice comments to make about the movie business and features some entertaining performances - von Stroheim (a hoot) as the butler, De Mille as a great film director. and of course Gloria Swanson as the faded star.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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