Writer-director Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard used the conventions of film noir and mingled fact and fiction to create one of the Hollywood studio system’s darkest and most biting satires, a satire whose target was Hollywood itself. Wilder laid bare the opportunism, the ruined lives, and the obsession with success hiding beneath the public image of Hollywood as a “dream factory.”
Writer-director Billy Wilder knew that Sunset Boulevard (1950) would prove controversial, even though Paramount Pictures allowed directors unusual freedom in selecting and shaping their material. Writers Wilder, his longtime collaborator Charles Brackett, and journalist and film critic D. M. Marshman
Principal photography for the film was completed in spring, 1949. The film was then screened, not at a traditional Hollywood premier, but in private viewings for select Hollywood leaders. At one, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer head Louis B. Mayer
Reluctantly, Wilder reshot the opening. Screaming police sirens now told the audience what kind of film to expect, and the dead protagonist’s voice-over introduced the story while his body still floated in a swimming pool. The film finally opened on August 10, 1950, at New York’s Radio City Music Hall to considerable critical and popular acclaim. At Radio City, it posted seven-week gross receipts of approximately $1,020,000, the sixth-largest gross in the famed theater’s history. With its emphasis on the disillusionment and despair behind the appearance of success, however, the film did not appeal to mainstream audiences in middle America.
Like other films noirs, the black-and-white cinematography of Sunset Boulevard is marked by startling contrasts of light and darkness. The film features a brooding, pessimistic tone, and a weak antihero, minor hack screenwriter Joe Gillis. Silent film actor Norma Desmond’s overly furnished and ornamented mansion is seen in relative darkness, in contrast to the lightness of other scenes. The pessimistic tone, established by Franz Waxman’s
In the film, Gillis (played by William Holden) has succumbed to Hollywood values since he left a smalltown Ohio newspaper to pursue success as a screenwriter. Behind in his car payments, he is hounded by men trying to repossess the convertible. He tries to borrow money, telling his agent, in language softened by the era’s censorship, that he would be emasculated without the car. Fleeing the repossession men, a sudden flat tire forces him to seek shelter in the gloomy mansion of Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a character who, like Swanson herself, had been a top box-office star of silent films. The Desmond character was not based on Swanson alone, but—understanding Wilder’s intent—Swanson allowed the director to borrow props from her own films and to show a clip from her film Queen Kelly (production terminated, 1929), presenting them as objects from Desmond’s past.
Desmond, despite her wealth, has retreated into her mansion, hiding from the modern world of 1950 and surrounding herself with old possessions to deny that anything has changed. From the film’s beginning, her behavior is overly theatrical, signaling her fragile mental condition. She is served by her butler, Max von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim in what is arguably the film’s most brilliant performance), who supports her delusions. Stroheim was the director of one of the greatest films of the silent era, Greed (1924), and he plays Desmond’s former director and husband, now relegated to the role of butler in her life. He adores and pities her; he writes the many fan letters she receives, to fool her into believing she is still remembered and loved.
Desperate to restart her career, Desmond has developed a potential script for a film of Salome. The aging woman hopes to play the teenage heroine. Gillis sees the ridiculousness of her ambition and her script, but he allows himself to be seduced by the security and luxury she offers him. He moves into the mansion, accepts expensive gifts, and pretends to edit her script. Together, they watch her old films, and he meets her bridge partners, played by long-forgotten silent stars Anna Q. Nilsson, and H. B. Warner, as well as Buster Keaton (who was arguably less obscure than the others).
Gillis becomes bored, attempts to leave, and goes to a New Year’s Eve party at the home of his best friend, Artie Green (Jack Webb
Desmond is heartened by repeated calls from Paramount; refusing to take the calls, she assumes Paramount is inviting her to renew her career. She undergoes a frenetic beauty regime to prepare herself, but the studio does not want her. It simply wants to borrow her expensive antique car. Not knowing this, she visits Paramount to meet with famed director Cecil B. DeMille, played by himself. DeMille, who directed both Swanson and Desmond early in their respective careers, is, apart from Max, the one compassionate figure in the film. Remembering her as she was and remembering how much money and success she brought to the studio, he treats her sympathetically. Upon learning the truth, he cancels the order for the car, telling the properties manager to leave her alone.
For the moment, Desmond’s delusions are unshaken, but she learns that Gillis is seeing Schaefer. She calls Betty, who visits the house. Gillis decides to do the right thing: he refuses to leave with Betty, telling her to go back to Artie, and once she is gone, he tells Desmond that he is returning to Ohio. He packs to leave. As he goes, however, Desmond—having finally succumbed to madness—shoots him. He dies facedown in the swimming pool that, earlier in the film, he had said he had always wanted.
Wilder, who lost his mother and other relatives to a World War II Nazi concentration camp, felt strongly about those who valued success and possessions more than human beings. In this, he carried into the twentieth century the values of nineteenth century novelist and reformer Charles Dickens
For Gillis, Desmond is a mere convenience. He is shocked when, after he deserts her on New Year’s Eve, she attempts suicide. He suddenly realizes she is a human being with desperate needs of her own. Desmond refuses to be shunted aside and forgotten, relegated to waiting for death as are the former silent stars who play bridge with her, but despite her best attempts time has irrevocably passed her by. There is no place for her in this new superficial world. In contrast with Gillis’s opportunism are figures from the past. Successful director DeMille and unsuccessful director von Mayering are men of compassion and loyalty. DeMille understands Desmond’s need to keep her pride. Von Mayering sacrifices himself to her needs.
Wilder’s target was not simply Hollywood. His next film, Ace in the Hole
Sunset Boulevard was one of the first mainstream films to depict the disillusionment and despair underlying Hollywood’s glamour. It was nominated for Academy Awards in eleven categories, including Best Picture and Best Director, but won only three Oscars. Wilder, Brackett, and Marshman won the award for Best Screenplay,
The National Board of Review named Sunset Boulevard the best picture of the year, as did the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which also gave Golden Globe awards
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Basinger, Jeanine. Silent Stars. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Provides details of Gloria Swanson’s career from which Wilder and Brackett developed the figure of Norma Desmond. -
Hopp, Glenn. Billy Wilder: The Cinema of Wit, 1906-2002. Köhn, Germany: Taschen, 2003. Lavishly illustrated history allows Sunset Boulevard to be seen in the context of Wilder’s total achievement. -
Koszarski, Richard. Von: The Life and Films of Erich von Stroheim. New York: Limelight, 2001. Biography of the director who plays a failed director in Wilder’s film. -
Perry, George.“Sunset Boulevard”: From Movie to Musical. New York: Henry Holt, 1993. Chapters describe Sunset Boulevard as a place, the development of the film, and the later Andrew Lloyd Webber musical version. -
Sikov, Ed. On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder. New York: Hyperion, 1998. Comprehensive, well researched study of Wilder and his films from birth to time of publication. -
Staggs, Sam. Close-Up on “Sunset Boulevard”: Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Describes in detail the creative and technical collaboration that created film.
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