Sunset Boulevard

Released: August 4, 1950

Studio: Paramount

Genre: drama/film noir

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 0.30 Worldwide: ?

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: 39.60 Worldwide: ?

Directing: Billy Wilder

Screenwriting: Charles Brackett; Billy Wilder; D. M. Marshman, Jr.

Starring: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Jack Webb

Review:

“All About Eve might be Hollywood’s greatest look at Broadway, but Sunset Blvd. remains Tinseltown’s best gaze into its own fun-house reflection.” ^TV This “witty black comedy” ^FS is “one of Wilder’s finest, and certainly the blackest of all Hollywood’s scab-scratching accounts of itself.” ^T95

The movie “opens with a shocking flashback narrated in voice-over by a dead corpse – a victim floating face-down in a Sunset Boulevard mansion’s swimming pool.” ^FS “In the first version, the opening and closing scenes were at the L.A. County Morgue. Preview audiences found the scenes hilarious, much to the chagrin of Wilder, who was not going for that reaction.” ^MSN From that moment “through Norma’s deranged final close-up, the stunning Sunset is the standard against which all movies about movies must be viewed.” ^TV “The performances are suitably sordid, the direction precise, the camerawork appropriately noir, and the memorably sour script” ^T95 is “all deliriously dark and nightmarish.” ^T95

“Gloria Swanson is smashing” ^TV as Norma Desmond, “a reclusive, former silent screen actress” ^A98 “who refuses to accept the end of her stardom” ^FS (“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”) “and heading for outright insanity.” ^T95 Von Stroheim is “superb as Swanson’s devotedly watchful butler Max.” ^T95 “William Holden makes for a terrific pre-Richard Gere gigolo” ^TV as Joe Gillis, an “aspiring, debt-ridden screenwriter” ^FS who “sees a lucrative break for himself when she wants to make a return to the screen.” ^A07 While writing a script for her impending comeback, “he takes advantage, encouraging her false hopes” ^FS so he can move in her mansion and hide out for creditors. However, “his exploitative dependence upon the film star with romantic attention toward young script-reader Betty Schaefer (Olson), [ends up] creating a lethal situation.” ^FS

“The perverse, cynical film references Swanson’s actual career, with excerpts from one of her unfinished films (Queen Kelly, directed by von Stroheim) and cameos by other forgotten silent film stars,” ^FS “[Buster] Keaton, H.B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson appearing in a brief card-game scene).” ^T95

Sources:

^A98 American Film Institute (1998). “AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Movies”
^A07 American Film Institute (2007). “AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies – 10th Anniversary Edition”
^FS Filmsite.org “100 Greatest Films”
^MSN MSN Entertainment (7/19/2018). “100 Best Movies” by Shahnaz Mahmud
^T95 Time Out (1995). “Centenary Top One Hundred Films”
^TV TV Guide (August 8-14, 1998 issue). “50 Greatest Movies on TV and Video”

Awards/Honors/Lists:

Dave’s Movie Database Lists:

Dave’s Movie Database Genre Lists:

Awards:

Oscars:

Wins: 3 – Best Story and Screenplay, Best Art Direction/Interior Direction (black and white), Best Original Music Score

Nominations: 11, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Holden), Best Actress (Swanson), Best Supporting Actor (von Stroheim), Best Supporting Actress (Olson)