Movie Review: Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Sunset Boulevard

Note: This is #24 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.

Oh, man. Talk about bringing the crazy. Sunset Boulevard really surprised me by being an absurdly black comedy with a performance by Gloria Swanson that by all rights should be so completely over the top that it circles back up behind you But it’s fantastically bizare and crazy and cringe-inducing and awesome.

The movie follows Joe Gillis (played by William Holden), a struggling screenwriter looking for any straw to grasp at to keep from returning home in disgrace. While speeding down Sunset Boulevard and evading repo men intent on taking his car, Gillis happens upon the decrepid estate of faded silent film starlet Norma Desmond (Swanson) and her totally creepy butler. After spraying crazy all over the place and chewing up every bit of scenery in sight, Desmond decides that she likes this particular fly that has stumbled into her lair and conscripts him to rewrite a sprawling screenplay that she believes will be her vehicle for a Hollywood comeback. Gillis acquiesces, seeing this as the least of the bad options available to him at the moment, but before long he complicity settles into the role of Desmond’s boy toy.

Gloria Swanson’s portrayal of Norma Desmond absolutely dominates this movie, though. Desmond is intense, larger than life, and grandiose in her opinions of how great she was, is, and will be. This isn’t just your garden variety celebrity’s exaggerated opinion of self worth –Desmond is F’ING CRAZY, and Swanson plays this megalomania with a really strange, fantastical, incredibly florid style that gives the character a weird gravitational pull in every scene she’s in. Your eyes just can’t escape her. If nothing else, she’s memorable in the role, and it’s the kind of spectacle you probably won’t regret seeing.

It’s also notable that Sunset Strip is apparently one of the first movies to really take Hollywood to task over the injustices it can do stars who have outlived their usefulness. While Desmond is obviously the author of much of her own misfortune, he film isn’t very kind to the Hollywood machine of the time, which one can only assume exists today, possibly in a more monstrous form. This is in fairly strong contrast to other movies about movies (not to mention public relations efforts coming out of Hollywood) that portray actors’ lives as nothing but idyllic and glamorous.

At any rate, I really liked this movie. It’s just so crazy and weird and darkly funny that it feels pretty far ahead of its time. Trailer below.

Memorable quotes:

Joe Gillis: You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond: I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.

Norma Desmond: All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

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