Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 noir movie directed by Billy Wilder and starring William Holden and Gloria Swanson; while understandably today’s generation would not necessarily recognize the actress’s name, her presence and importance in the cinematic history is undisputed (google it just out of curiosity).
The movie starts in medias res, with the body of a man floating in a swimming pool while an ominous music is playing in the background; this creates just the right amount of suspense. A soothing yet malicious voice gently explains the whole plot: the body of the man belongs to the narrator, a screenwriter, in whose murder “an old time star, one of the biggest” was involved.
Step by step the viewer retraces the last part of the life of Joe Gills, a broke Hollywood screen-writer who; to escape two repo-men that were after his car he hides in a mansion he assumes was abandoned. It was not – in reality it was owned by Norma Desmond, an eccentric washed-up star that had made her success with silent movies. Her immense pride radiates from the very first moments within merely two lines of dialogue:
-You used to be in the silent pictures. You used to be big.
-I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
Her conviction of self-importance will drive Norma to hire Joe Gills; her plan is for him to live at her mansion and correct her manuscript of Salome, a script that will be then filmed with Norma as a protagonist – this will mark her comeback. For the rest of the movie she will cling to this hope of a triumphant return, seeing her former-self in her future performance of Salome.
In a way, the movie may very well portray the dangers of letting someone wallow in their own madness. On the other hand, Norma Desmond does succeed in constructing a personal dimension where she tries to feel safe: she creates her own reality because she is subconsciously afraid of a world that has evolved beyond her comprehension. While it may be very well a sign of delusion, it is hard not to feel some degree of empathy for her; when one’s personal world crumbles, acceptance is never easy (accordingly, the “old time star” will not be able to see her own demise).
The fact that the ending is spoiled in the very first minutes of the movie, does not hinder the effect of anticipation the story creates; the omniscient narrator returns from time to time to further explain plot nodes and personal points of view. This creates a different viewing experience: it is the combination between motion pictures and the narrative dimension of a good book. For example, to further depict the mansion where Joe Gills will spend some time, except the shades of black and white used and the music, the narrator comments on how it was affected by a sort of creeping paralysis, out of beat with the rest of the world – crumbling apart in slow motion. Similar to what was happening to Nora Desmond.
I would give this a 7 out of 10 “old-time-stars”.