Sunset Boulevard [1950 film]
by Billy Wilder (Director / Screenwriter), Charles Brackett (Screenwriter), D. M. Marshman, Jr (Screenwriter)
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Description
Pursued by creditors, Joe swerves into a driveway of a seemingly abandoned Sunset Boulevard mansion. He finds Norma, an ex-screen queen dreaming of a dramatic comeback and her husband/servant living there. She takes a fancy to Joe and, learning that he is a scriptwriter, persuades him to help her with her comeback screenplay. Being broke he accepts. He falls in love with a young script reader, but Norma breaks up their romance. Thinking she is mad, he tries to leave, but Norma kills him in a show more scene which she believes is the highlight of her comeback movie. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
An aged star of silent films moves a younger man into her isolated mansion.
I expected a lot more, given its reputation. Everything's good, but Stroheim's character is the only aspect that really lives up to the movie's legendary status.
Concept: C
Story: B
Characters: A
Dialog: A
Pacing: B
Cinematography: A
Special effects/design: B
Acting: B
Music: B
Enjoyment: B
GPA: 3.2/4
I expected a lot more, given its reputation. Everything's good, but Stroheim's character is the only aspect that really lives up to the movie's legendary status.
Concept: C
Story: B
Characters: A
Dialog: A
Pacing: B
Cinematography: A
Special effects/design: B
Acting: B
Music: B
Enjoyment: B
GPA: 3.2/4
2024 movie #199. 1950. Out of work and money, a screenwriter (Holden) takes employment with a faded movie star (Swanson) looking for a comeback and a friend. Great story and a great movie. Won an Oscar for Best Screenwriting.
The casting of Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim who both had careers in silent movies, invests the events depicted with a great deal of realism as do the cameos in which Cecil B DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton and others are featured. Shots of Paramount studios and Schwab's Drugstore and the inclusion of an excerpt from "Queen Kelly" (1929) in which Swanson starred and von Stroheim directed also blur the lines between fiction and reality and add greater authenticity to the whole production.
Mar 15, 2024Portuguese (Brazil)
110 minutos
Feb 18, 2012Portuguese (Brazil)
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ThingScore 75
Although Mr. Wilder is considered a very cynical fellow in Hollywood, he seems to me not cynical enough; he uses bitter chocolate for his icing, but underneath is the stale old cake. Love Conquers All, ultimately...
A genuinely cynical director like Lubitsch would have had Holden stay on with Swanson because he has come to prefer loveless luxury to impoverished love. A real sentimentalist, on show more the other hand, would have him marry the girl and begin a new, clean life. Mr. Wilder’s ending tries to have it both ways, something as impossible in art as in life, though a feat achieved hourly in Hollywood, whose relation to either is distant. show less
A genuinely cynical director like Lubitsch would have had Holden stay on with Swanson because he has come to prefer loveless luxury to impoverished love. A real sentimentalist, on show more the other hand, would have him marry the girl and begin a new, clean life. Mr. Wilder’s ending tries to have it both ways, something as impossible in art as in life, though a feat achieved hourly in Hollywood, whose relation to either is distant. show less
added by SnootyBaronet
Much of the detail is marvellously effective and clever; Miss Swanson watching her young face in an old movie and standing up into the murderous glare of the projector to cry: “They don’t make faces like that any more!” (they certainly don’t and it is our loss)....
The lost people are given splendor, recklessness, an aura of awe; the contemporaries by comparison, are small, smart, show more safe-playing, incapable of any kind of grandeur, good or bad; and those who think they can improve or redeem the movies are largely just a bunch of what Producer Fred Clark aptly calls Message Kids, and compares with the New York critics. This is certainly a harsh picture of Hollywood; too harsh, considering some of the people who work there. By still quieter inference, of course, Hollywood is still essentially all right because it can produce such a picture as Sunset Boulevard; and with that, the considerable distance it goes, one is bound to agree. show less
The lost people are given splendor, recklessness, an aura of awe; the contemporaries by comparison, are small, smart, show more safe-playing, incapable of any kind of grandeur, good or bad; and those who think they can improve or redeem the movies are largely just a bunch of what Producer Fred Clark aptly calls Message Kids, and compares with the New York critics. This is certainly a harsh picture of Hollywood; too harsh, considering some of the people who work there. By still quieter inference, of course, Hollywood is still essentially all right because it can produce such a picture as Sunset Boulevard; and with that, the considerable distance it goes, one is bound to agree. show less
added by SnootyBaronet
A young scriptwriter (William Holden), speeding away from the finance-company men who have come to repossess his car (it is Los Angeles, where a man can get along without his honor, but not without his car), turns into a driveway on Sunset Boulevard and finds himself at the decaying mansion of the once great silent star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson)... Glint-eyed Swanson clutches at her show more comeback role almost as if it were Salome, yet the acting honors belong to Holden. When he makes love to the crazy, demanding old woman, his face shows a mixture of pity and guilt and nausea. This brittle satiric tribute to Hollywood’s leopard-skin past—it’s narrated by a corpse—is almost too clever, yet it’s at its best in this cleverness, and is slightly banal in the sequences dealing with a normal girl (Nancy Olson) and modern Hollywood. show less
added by SnootyBaronet
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Sunset Boulevard [1950 film]
- Original title
- Sunset Blvd.; Sunset Boulevard
- Original publication date
- 1950-08-10; 1950
- People/Characters
- Norma Desmond; Joe Gillis
- Related movies
- Sunset Blvd. (1950 | IMDb)
- Quotations
- The poor dope - he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.
Salesman: [whispering in Joe's ear] As long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna? - Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 791.4372
- Canonical LCC
- PN1997.A23
- Disambiguation notice
- film
ISBN 0520218558 is for the screenplay (book)
Classifications
- DDC/MDS
- 791.4372 — Arts & recreation Recreation, sports, and performing arts Public performances Motion pictures, radio, television, podcasting Motion pictures Films; screenplays Single films
- LCC
- PN1997 .A23 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Drama Motion pictures Plays, scenarios, etc.
Statistics
- Members
- 356
- Popularity
- 88,808
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (4.51)
- Languages
- 9 — Chinese, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Korean, Farsi/Persian, Spanish, Turkish
- ISBNs
- 14
- UPCs
- 11
- ASINs
- 33
