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Sunset Blvd. falls into a strange period in Paramount's archiving. All of the films the studio produced prior to 1950 were sold to MCA, (who make great-looking LaserDiscs of these films). So Sunset Blvd. is the oldest picture Paramount Home Video has to deal with, and like many of their LaserDiscs of the films from this last bit of the black and white / 1:1.33 era, one can sense that they could do better. As long as the picture has plenty of contrast and lots of detail, it looks okay, but as soon as you get into anything rendered in the lower end of the greyscale, look out! I suspect that the negative hasn't been too well looked after, for new 35mm prints of the film are pretty wishy-washy looking in these grey scenes (the Paramount studio print, struck in 1950, is jaw-dropping, it's so great-looking).
Sunset Blvd. . has finally been released again in a digital format. The DVD of the film looks a damn sight better than the old LaserDisc — as long as the picture has lots of detail and contrast. The scene late at night in the garage still looks as awful as DVDs get. It plugs up to such an alarming extent that I can't imagine it looking okay on any display device. Also, in the shadow areas there seems to be a green cast to the signal. I find that it works better to turn ALL the color off and decrease the contrast and the film won't look too bad. Much of the time, it looks wonderful.
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| Directed by Billy Wilder / Starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim / Paramount Pictures / 1950 / 1:1.33 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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So much has been written about Sunset Boulevard, that I am in awe of having to put into words how I feel about it. It’s difficult. But I do know one thing: put someone who has never seen it in front of this picture, and you will discover the secret of its success: Its sheer storytelling power. It’s because of this film, perhaps more than any other, that I believe that it is possible to make a film about any subject. "Just don’t make it too dreary," as the hero of the film, Joe Gillis, puts it. When we talk about the "style" of a given film, what are we talking about really? We usually talk in general terms of whether the creative team on a given film is "in tune" with the material they are trying to make come alive on the screen. John Ford and the western. Alfred Hitchcock and the suspense film. Billy Wilder and the films about guys who are trying to get ahead in this world without selling themselves out in the process.
What makes Sunset Boulevard such a compelling movie, is the authority of its voice – not just the things it has to say about people, Hollywood, and the spaces in-between – but it’s a film told in the height of the Hollywood style. A film about Hollywood, told in the grammar of film invented by Wilder’s direct predecessors. I wouldn’t have wanted to see Wilder direct Easy Rider, but if he had, surely it would’ve had a better script. 1950, the year Sunset Boulevard was released, was an interesting year. A challenging year. Things were drastically changing for Hollywood, and everyone who worked there. No one was safe from the uncertainty surrounding the drop in movie attendance (which had been a marked trend since the end of World War II), and the unwelcome menace of the new television networks (all controlled, physically located and financed in New York). No one was safe, except perhaps, Billy Wilder. After an apprenticeship of writing comedy scripts for some of the leading Hollywood directors, Wilder and his writing partner, Charles Brakett, were among the first Hollywood writers to awaken to the possibilities of the darker problems affecting human beings. In a very short while, the "BrackettandWilder" writing team became a writing, producing and directing team, with Wilder attracting much attention from the executives at the studio he was under contract to, Paramount Pictures. After co-writing and directing a couple of films, Wilder co-wrote (with Raymond Chandler) a film adaptation of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity (1944). It was a film many thought "impossible" in terms of what an audience of the time would accept: an insurance salesman and a woman kill the woman’s husband for the insurance money. Wilder made it play. Then, he and Bracket made an adaptation of Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend (1945). Another unlikely film for "the great unwashed" out there – it was about a man’s struggle with alcoholism, and one of the most fascinating films of that period in how it "sells" its story. Incredible examples of storytelling, both. They were whopper hits. After these films, Wilder was riding very high indeed. After making a couple of strange films that obliquely or directly had to do with Wilder’s Austrian heritage, came the idea of making a picture about Hollywood. Wilder and Brackett and some other writers were playing the word game at Oblath’s (A small café, which can been seen in the film Sunset Boulevard – it’s the building in the background of all the shots looking away from the Paramount Marathon Street gate. There is a vertical sign that says "café"). One of the writers there at these lunchtime games was a magazine writer named D.M. Marshman Jr. Brackett and Wilder discovered he was a good bridge player, so they started inviting him up to the office, and before long, he was writing the Hollywood project with these two masters. Initially, the Hollywood project was too absurd even to show to the Paramount brass. It was originally conceived of as a vehicle for Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and was called A Can of Beans. It didn’t get much farther than its opening shot of the duo sleeping in the "O's of the "Hollywood" sign. It was to be a light, funny, soufflé featuring the silent comedians – hmm, interesting. From such tiny seeds, towering trees grow. Sunset Boulevard seems so real; you would think it could have only come from direct experience – that it had really happened to somebody. Think of it: if they made Sunset Boulevard today, they could send it out with the tagline "Based on a true story!" And yet, this entire project was the result of three grown men sitting in an office day after day talking about it, scribbling it down, and refining it. And not only that, but it’s a movie about writing! Now I realize why they have the poster art for Sunset Boulevard reproduced prominently in the lobby of the Writer’s Guild of America, West’s offices here in Los Angeles. It’s a great movie about writing. Where did they get the inspiration for Norma Desmond, the ex-silent movie star that our hero meets in the opening reel? Certainly, there were a number of wealthy people in Hollywood whose days of picture making were over. But Norma rings true not because she is based on anyone real. She rings true on the pages of the Sunset Boulevard script, because she is the embodiment of the Hollywood dilemma: what to do after you’ve been a movie star, what to do when your reason for being – making films – doesn’t want you anymore? It is a problem that Joe Gillis (William Holden) faces as well. When we first meet Joe, he’s dead – floating in a swimming pool. You can’t be more of a loser in Hollywood than this. Sunset Boulevard has the distinct advantage of perhaps being the first film to be narrated by a dead man. But this was only arrived at after some trials. In the original script, the film opens with a scene of a morgue. Joe is wheeled in there with a sheet over his face, and he joins the others. When the attendants leave, the dead people begin to tell each other the story of how they came to die. And this is how Joe comes to tell the story. When they previewed the completed picture, the audience thought this was hilarious. There was a shot of an attendant looking at the tag on one of the corpse’s toes, and this sent the preview audience into gales of laughter. They cut it. Joe tells us the story of how he winds up floating dead in a swimming pool. At the beginning, he is a lowly "can’t get arrested" screenwriter in a one-room apartment. It’s midday, but Joe is still in his bathrobe. There are clothes strewn about. Yes, that is what the glamorous job of screenwriting looks like. I can’t think of too many producers who would allow somebody like this to be the hero of a film nowadays. Joe’s troubles begin when he answers the doorbell. Two guys from the finance company have come to take Joe’s car away. Joe shines then on. He must make the rounds to get the money he needs to get caught up with his car payments. It’s nice to see someone sweating over this issue of being without a car in Los Angeles at this early date. It’s been going on for a long time.
Joe has parked the car someplace away from his apartment so the finance people wouldn’t find it. There is a shot of him driving the car off the lot "behind Rudy’s Shoeshine Parlor" on Vine Street, up from what is now called the Palace. Where the camera is positioned in this shot is almost the exact spot were Billy Wilder’s star in the "Hollywood Walk of Fame." is. DeMille’s is nearby. Weird, huh? Now that everyone in the world is hip to all the tricks of filmmaking, it is a testament to the ingenuity of Sunset Boulevard’s creators that you don’t see the wires until long afterwards. For instance, the "meet cute." The concept is there, but it is masked so heavily, that one simply doesn’t recognize it at all. Joe drops in on a producer he knows to pitch a script about a baseball team. Sheldrake (Fred Clark) calls the reader’s department for their coverage, and a nice young woman named Betty Shaffer (Nancy Olsen) delivers it. Not seeing Joe upon entering, Betty approaches Sheldrake’s desk to say that the script he is asking about stinks. Joe is real pleased to hear this. She apologizes and leaves. I love the bit when Sheldrake stretches out on his luxurious couch in his luxurious office to stretch Joe’s script all to hell. He wants to make it a musical. You know what somebody in this situation would do today: they would turn it into a musical. Not Joe. He has to change gears and go from saying "no" to Sheldrake’s musical idea to asking for a loan. Holden’s awkwardness in having to do this invokes our complete compassion, as do the following scenes of his making phone calls at Schwab’s Drugstore, and his agent (Lloyd Gough) blowing him off on a golf course. Many people talk of Sunset Boulevard as a "film noir." It has many of the elements necessary for this classification. So far, everything has occurred in the sun-drenched environs of Los Angeles. But that is about to change. As Joe is driving back to town from Bel-Air, he ruminates on giving up on the whole Hollywood idea:
This hopeless and grim concern for survival is a central element of "film noir." The emphasis is on "If it was still open." But this isn’t some hard-bitten gumshoe in an alley. This is a handsome young man in a convertible in L.A. This kind of frankness regarding the rough spots in life was a rare thing in American films of this period. It still is. There follows another "noir" element: the car chase. This is one of the few car chases in all of Wilder’s films. There’s sort of one in One, Two, Three (1961), and definitely one in the opening reel of Some Like It Hot (1959). As Joe ruminates, the two guys from the finance company spot him, and give chase. Accompanied by Franz Waxman’s intense music, the chase is short and sweet. Total running time: 45 seconds! Joe’s car blows a tire around Sunset and Mapleton, and he’s forced to duck into a driveway (it is amazing to see these streets familiar to Los Angeleos – Sunset and Beverly Glen – almost totally devoid of cars. One immediately jumps to the conclusion that they must have filmed it in the morning, but no, the shadows cast by the sun indicate noontime!) The finance guys zip past and Joe finds that the driveway belongs to a huge, neglected mansion. The fact that Joe is supposedly a writer gives cover to the fact that Sunset Boulevard is the most extensively narrated film in Hollywood history. Development people are forever telling writers that narration is the kiss of death. But here, there is something about the words and the sound of Holden’s voice as he says the words that border on the Shakespearean. Here is one reason the play of Sunset Boulevard functions so well for most people. Gillis describes what they cannot put onstage. There is a shot of the dilapidated 5-car garage, and Gillis observes:
In the next shot, we see Gillis drive the car in and he gets out. He looks at the flat tire, then looks up off screen. Before the camera can show us, Gillis says:
Then we see it onscreen. Just a small example of the art of "revealing" which is so important in this type of storytelling. It is fascinating to read the Sunset Boulevard script because of all this narration. Wilder and Co. divide the page down the middle, with the description of the visuals on one side, and with Gillis’ narration on the other. Joe discovers the house and describes it as resembling the home of Miss Haversham in Great Expectations. It’s another great universal: everyone has seen houses that are run-down like this. It’s only human nature to wonder who would live in such a manner. I love the shot of Holden as he stands there looking at the place (This is the home of an ex-wife of J. Paul Getty. You can see the house in color in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause). Joe is on the point of leaving when a voice calls out to him. It’s the voice of Norma. She is a mystery hidden behind a screen.
It’s one thing to stand and stare at a house such as this one, but quite another to have that house pull you in. There is a gentle humor to the proceedings as Joe is prodded into the house by a butler, Max (Erich von Strohiem). Max tells Gillis to go upstairs where Madame is waiting. There is a brilliant composition, sort of a low-angle shot as Joe makes his way up the curving stairs. The focus shifts as Max’s head enters the foreground and he says:
There is a cut to a shot of Holden on the stairs, and his reaction to this is a great example of how to drag something out; from looking back at Max, then telegraphing his uncertainty, and then looking ahead. At the top of the stairs stands Norma (Gloria Swanson), who is wearing dark glasses. She leads Joe into the most overdone boudoir imaginable; swanboat bed, frilly curtains all over, a fire in the fireplace. I love they way they have set this up. Norma strides into this setting with absolute confidence – as though it were nothing, while Gillis is looking at it like he had just dropped in from a spaceship. It seems that this woman has lost her pet monkey – it has died, and she thinks that Joe is the undertaker who has come to fit him for a coffin. As Joe looks in at the monkey, there is a tremendous sense of the absurd in the interplay of the woodwinds on the soundtrack. Joe tells her that he is not the undertaker, and that he had thought that hers was an empty house, she says,
She takes off her dark glasses for this line, revealing her eyes. Wilder was the kind of director who liked shooting his pictures in sequence. It is said that when they saw her use of her eyes and the force of Swanson’s delivery of the dialog in this scene, they knew that they were on to something. A great deal of rewriting occurred. Joe recognizes the woman as Norma Desmond. I think that Holden is a perfect foil for Swanson’s tirade against "those idiots in the front offices." I can relate. I have met hundreds of people who say things like this. The funny thing about being a film buff; once you find a particular era of films that you like, everything that comes after is only worthy of your scorn and contempt. The march of time is a tough thing to get used to. "They don’t make ‘em like that anymore." So during Norma’s tirade, many people side with her, while Joe remains coolly flip:
Joe has mentioned that he is a writer during this, and during his flight from this loony bin, Norma stops him to ask if he really is one. She has a project that she wants him to look at. She leads him into the huge lavish living room done up in a vaguely Spanish/Italian Renaissance style. This whole sequence where we are learning that Norma is writing a script that she wants DeMille to direct based on the "Salome" story is just fascinating. The way Norma describes the story is so reminiscent of anyone who is working on a script; no matter how insane it sounds, they think it’s marvelous! Joe begins to think that perhaps he can con Norma into paying him to fix the script. He leads her on by underplaying (always a good tactic). She has Max take him to a room over the garage. Joe notes:
In the room, we learn that Norma was a very big star indeed. Max comments that Joe wouldn’t know about Norma’s career because he was too young, but that Norma received 16,000 fan letters a week. von Stroheim delivers this dialogue with such authority because he lived through it. von Stroheim was 65 when they shot Sunset Boulevard. Swanson was 51, and Holden 32. Nancy Olsen was only 22. Another thing that comes into play here is that once the films made by von Stroheim and Swanson were released, they were completely forgotten. In 1950, the history of film was only just beginning to be taken as a subject at all, much less a subject to be taken seriously. Unaware of the past, a guy like Joe Gillis knew only one thing: what was hot and what worked in the here and now. But he is genuinely a decent fellow. The writers of the picture have given him an excellent excuse to be in this set-up, and Joe’s basic goodness is continually on display. This is one of the reasons men have always liked Holden as an actor. During the scene that follows, where Joe is working on the Salome script under Norma’s watchful eye, he throws away a scene, telling her that it’s too much of the Salome character. She tells him that she is the reason they will come to see the film. She retires to her card table, where she is, in fact, autographing stills to be mailed out. Joe has enormous sympathy for her:
There follows the famous scene of them watching Queen Kelly in the living room, which culminates in Norma vowing to be up there on the screen again. But the whole issue of kindness and manners and the goodness of Joe Gillis’ character is touched on in a very interesting way in this scene. In the script to Sunset Boulevard, it just says that Norma and Joe enter the room with drinks, sit down, and the movie starts. What they filmed has an added touch in the staging. The two enter and move to the couch. Joe begins to sit, then without really even noticing Norma, he realizes that he should let the lady sit down first. Norma sits with a smug smile of satisfaction. Not in the script. I always thought it was. It is because Joe is a decent guy that Norma begins to have romantic notions about him. Circumstances force him to assume the characteristics of an impoverished lover without actually consummating the deal. In a brilliant scene, a number of things are established. Norma is playing bridge with "The Waxworks" (Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson), who are all smartly turned out in evening clothes (Buster Keaton looks swell in his vaguely civil-war era formalwear). But the thing here is that Joe (who is wearing a blah sportcoat) doesn’t know how to play bridge (remember that one of the film’s writers, D.M. Marshman, got on the film because he was a good bridge player), so that puts him at a disadvantage socially, with Norma. She asks him to empty the ashtray. He notices that Max is talking with the two guys from the finance company. Max sends them away. There is a wonderful composition as Joe and Max conspire with one another in the foreground while the bridge game continues in the background. Joe and Max don’t need to go into specifics. They both know what Joe is doing here and what he is supposed to be doing. The bottom line is that the finance guys are going to tow Joe’s car away. This forces Joe into the ultimate indignity: to beg for money. He was okay with doing that in Sheldrake’s office, but what makes it even more humiliating here is that it’s in the intimate confines of the bridge game. Norma behaves as though what Joe wants is less important that what bid is out. Total humiliation! Just a brilliantly conceived and executed scene. You learn so much about all of them. Joe goes out to the terrace to seriptisciously watch the car get hauled away. Norma comes out and blithely inquires what the fuss was about. Joe tells her bitterly that his touchstone with the outside world – his car – is being taken away. Her reply?
Already, she is quite used to thinking of the two of them as we, despite the huge differences in their actual standings. So Joe finds himself sitting in the back seat of an Isotta-Fraschini upholstered in leopard skin. The humiliations continue. She tells him that she is tired of seeing him in the same clothes every day. He begins to protest; then she asks him if he must chew gum.
Everyone loves the scene in the men’s shop where the smarmy salesman (Archie Twitchell) suggests getting the vicuna. But there is a visual component to the scene as well: Joe is standing there in one of the fitting suits with all the tailoring chalk marks here and there. If clothes make the man, then in this scene, Joe looks like the beginnings of a statue that Norma is molding. It’s subtle, but as Wilder said, "Make the subtleties obvious." This is followed by a huge rainstorm, which causes the roof of Joe’s room to leak. He and Max are moving Joe’s stuff into the main house. Joe is wearing the new clothes. Just before the scene concludes, Joe takes the vicuna overcoat with him. Moving into the main house is portrayed as a trip to a fantastic land. They music grows very dreamy as the camera drifts slowly across the room Joe is to occupy – right next to Norma’s. But rude reality interrupts as Joe asks Max about the door locks being missing. There are just holes where the hardware ought to be. Max tells him that there are no door locks anywhere in the house. In a shot that is just the two actors standing there talking to one another, we find out that Norma has attempted suicide. Joe thinks this is a trifle ridiculous, since she still gets fan mail. But Max hints to Joe that the fan mail is something that Max sends out. It’s an illusion Norma unwittingly accepts. Max tells Joe not to be late for Norma’s New Year’s Eve party. When Joe comes down to the living room in his tuxedo, Holden knows just exactly how to carry himself to show his anxiety. This is where Joe finds out that Norma is seeing him as a lover. The scene builds, first with the dancing, then with Norma’s wonderful envisioning of the next year’s activities, what with shooting the Salome film and all the things that she’s going to do for Joe. He knows where all this is going, so he tells her to keep her money. Norma, who has had a few, tells him not to worry:
There is a reverse angle as she says this, and there is the brilliant touch of Norma moving her leg up and down in imitation of an oil pumper – but it looks like something else to me! She is getting physically playful with Joe, which causes him to get up and confront her. He suggests that she is taking him for granted and that she has no right to do so. She motions to him up and down. He is completely outfitted in clothes that she bought and paid for. If he were a real man, he would either become her lover or – he would walk out on all the creature comforts and go back to the uncertainty of the real world. Norma forces the issue and slaps Joe in the face. She flees to the comfort of her room. There is a shot that is a killer. Norma is staggering down the hallway toward her room. The camera is dollying behind her. She pushes the doors open, and then she shuts them before us. That’s when we see the holes in the doors to prevent suicide. Every single person in the theatre knows what those mean. Joe is still downstairs where the musicians are still sawing away. Max is acting as though nothing happened. Joe decides to leave. The cut to the rainy entrance outside comes as a welcome relief. Joe is hitchhiking in the rain.
Joe is heading toward his pal Artie Green’s apartment, where he figures there is a New Year’s bash going on. Despite the inevitable laughs which stem from a "wild Hollywood party" opening with a shot of people sitting around a piano singing "Buttons and Bows," the party sequence works very well. All the party scenes in Wilder’s films have a very lifelike quality about them. With Jack Webb playing Artie Green, there is a flow of events and dialogue here that I like very much, especially the references to "The Rainbow Room" as a nickname for the bathroom, and the touch of water dripping from the showerhead as Joe and Betty sit on the edge of the tub talking (turns out, Betty is there because she’s Artie’s girlfriend). This jocular tone is not only welcome at this point in the film, but it serves to heighten the most dramatic moment in the film, and one that I really identify with philosophically. Seems like just when you are trying to have fun, something you have done catches up to you. Joe makes a call and speaks to Max, telling him to pack up all his stuff, that somebody will come by to pick it all up – Joe has made his decision to break from Norma. Max tells him that Norma has cut her wrists and righteously hangs up on him. It’s just an incredible moment. Anybody can relate to how Joe feels, and this moment is one of the rare instances in a film where what a character in a film is feeling transfers directly to the viewer. Everyone has had a moment like this happen – without really meaning to, you just find yourself over the line. The party, the laughter, Betty coming back with her silly observation about the punch being served, all mock Joe to the point where he has to rush out. Artie is so anxious to make contact with Joe that he jumps up on the couch to hail him. Another incredibly orchestrated scene. Joe returns to Norma, who is bandaged up in bed and crying. Joe is there in the vicuna. It’s an awkward moment, but after an exchange of dialogue, it’s clear that something is going to have to give. Joe doesn’t want to hurt Norma:
But Norma isn’t going to beg for Joe. She has her pride. There is a long shot of the two of them on opposite sides of the screen. Norma lying in her bed, and Joe sitting tensely on the edge of a chaise lounge. These people are at a Mexican standoff – totally at odds with one another and miserable. There is a similar composition in Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge (1971), between Ann Margeret and Jack Nicholson. Only nothing saves that couple. In Sunset Boulevard, it is Joe’s innate goodness that breaks through. It’s music that comes to the rescue. The musicians downstairs begin to play "Auld Lang Syne." It’s midnight. At many key moments in Wilder’s films, when characters have to make decisions, there is some emotionally charged piece of music that serves as inspiration to them. Many people think that this is crass manipulation on Wilder’s part. His films are so odd, dealing as many of them do, with the twisted aspects of human behavior. Some take exception that a film as acidic as Sunset Boulevard, should have a hero who consents to become Norma’s lover because he hears "Auld Lang Syne." But I think that this mixture of elements is why this film touches and fascinates people. We know that a person can be as hard as nails and still be moved to action by the strangest and simplest of motives. Norma is a pretty bull-headed person. But what she wants is the same thing we all want: someone whom we can put our head on their shoulder while we’re dancing on New Year’s Eve. This is the reality of people. Not all good. Not all bad, either! This combination of aspects of character wasn’t exactly unique to Wilder, but try finding this kind of complexity of character in any film of this period.
Betty Schaffer is calling the house trying to find Joe. She has a script of his that she wants to get Joe to rewrite, but Max tells her the he is not there. Max knows his role and what he is supposed to do. We find that Norma has had the pool fixed, and we have another nicely done scene where we see where Norma and Joe’s relationship is. Joe emerges from the pool all tan and buff, while Norma offers to dry him off. The message we get: Joe must be okay in the sack. Norma wants to send the script to her old director/mentor Cecil B. DeMille at Paramount. She tells Joe that she has never felt better in her life, and that it’s because of him. This is not such wonderful news to Joe. As the French sometimes say: "There is the lover, and then there is the one who consents to be loved." That Joe has resigned himself to this new role is demonstrated in the next scene. He must bump into his former acquaintances. It is masterly the way that this is done. Norma and Joe are riding in the car at night. Norma discovers that she is out of cigarettes, so Joe, ever the obliging fellow in his new role, offers to get some for her. He tells Max to pull the car over to the next drugstore, which happens to be the Schwab’s Drugstore mentioned earlier as the place where all the movie people hang out. Betty and Artie happen to be there. It’s just great the way this is handled. This is what I have always admired about Wilder’s accomplishments. At this point in the story, they have to demonstrate that Joe has gone completely over, and they come up with this entirely believable scene to do just that. Betty tells him that she has dusted off Joe’s script called Dark Windows about teachers that she found. She has talked it up with Sheldrake, who seems interested in it. She wants to co-write it with Joe; she doesn’t want to be a reader for the studio all her life. Joe blows her off. He also forgets to get the cigarettes for Norma. Great touch. He’s showing his indecision again. In perhaps the most bizarre scene in the picture, Norma imitates Charles Chaplin’s Little Tramp character, while Waxman’s music pounds out a misshapen honky-tonk. Max interrupts to say that Paramount is calling. Norma assumes it’s DeMille, but it’s an underling named Gordon Cole. Norma tells Max to hang up on him. She will talk to DeMille about the Salome script on her terms. The calls from Gordon Cole continue, so Norma decides to pay a visit to DeMille at Paramount. For some reason, even though Norma is a fully formed character due to the writing and Swanson’s performance, she becomes quite real here. This justly famous series of scenes shows Norma’s true dimension. The Isotta-Fraschini with Norma, Joe and Max drives up to the Marathon gate at Paramount (look for Oblath’s in the background!). A younger guard, Mac (John Cortay) won’t let them in – they have no appointment. Norma calls to an older guard she recognizes from the old days, Jonesy (Robert Emmett O’Connor). I dislike quoting from Sunset Boulevard too much (everybody else does), but I cannot resist here:
They open the gate, and Norma’s car pulls through. Max stops it so that Norma may speak with Jonesy more.
The car pulls away. This is a clear demonstration of Norma’s power. Norma fascinates because she is a powerful woman, which is a rare thing in films. Oddly enough, at this period in film history, in order to be successful at writing for the movies, one had to be able to create believable women characters. Not anymore. I know writers who cannot even say the word "woman" much less write about one. Meanwhile, on stage 18, the phone rings to announce the arrival of Norma. It is fun to watch the call being taken by the guy who answers the phone, then the message goes up channels to DeMille’s Assistant Director (Stan Johnson), who suggests to DeMille that they "give her the brush." DeMille must show her the respect she deserves; if she is coming to see him – even if it is about that "awful" script – he must see her. Another demonstration of Norma’s power. I don’t know how the Sunset Boulevard writers conceived of inserting DeMille into their story. DeMille, at 69 years of age, was not adverse to appearing before the cameras, usually in bit parts, and he never failed to personally narrate his films. So the request must not have seemed so odd to him. From his performance here, it is easy to see why DeMille was (and is) such a legendary figure. He instills a loyalty in some – a trust. People would be willing to do anything to make him happy.
Norma sweeps in while Joe and Max wait outside. She upbraids DeMille for not calling, leaving it up to this Gordon Cole person. DeMille has never heard of him. He parks Norma in his director’s chair, and makes a retreat to the sidelines to get Gordon Cole on the phone. Then there is the magical moment when Hog-eye, a gaffer (John ‘Skins’ Miller), spots her, and swivels a huge lamp onto her. This draws the attention of nearly everyone on the stage, and they all go over to say hello. It doesn’t sound like much when you describe it on paper, but that’s the magic of a movie. The image of the forgotten woman sitting in that chair, squinting up into the gantries at her old pal Hog-eye as the light comes on – it never fails to raise the goose bumps on me! The visit to the studio is a total epiphany for Norma. It effects her deeply. DeMille has found that Gordon Cole is a Paramount property man who wants to rent Norma’s car for a picture. DeMille thanks him and returns to Norma, who is in tears with emotion. DeMille is too kind to tell her the truth, so Norma assumes that DeMille wants to make her picture. He tells her that she should sit there and watch – that pictures have changed quite a bit. Then this interesting thing happens, which I shall mention only so that it can be written down somewhere as film history continues on. DeMille says that, "Pictures have changed quite a bit." Then he grabs the microphone from his microphone-holding guy, and strides towards the set, where they are making – what else? – a DeMille bible picture. Something that DeMille had been doing since making his first film of The Ten Commandments in 1923. He is also wearing riding boots and jodhpurs, just as he and other directors had been doing for years and years. There were some that accused Wilder of playing fast and loose with the wardrobe here. That no director could be such a walking cliché that they would be wearing jodhpurs! Wilder defends himself by saying that the Sunset Boulevard unit literally walked in on DeMille’s stage as he was shooting Samson and Delilah – no alterations of any kind, and if DeMille was walking around in jodhpurs and riding boots, so be it. Wilder says of DeMille, "That was the way he was until the day he died." While all this is going on, Joe notices Betty’s office in the readers department close by, so he goes up there to tell her that although he has no intention of working on it, she should take Dark Windows and finish it herself. She suggests that they collaborate, since Artie is out of town on a picture – they are engaged now. Max is standing by the car in his uniform, and some prop guys spill the beans that Gordon Cole is considering renting the car for a picture. Max tells this news to Joe, so they are both keeping the truth from Norma, who takes her leave of DeMille. She gets into the car with Joe, telling him that DeMille has agreed to make their script of Salome. Joe is very dubious about this, since he knows the truth. As they drive away, there is the terrible, terrible revelation that DeMille has no intention of having anything to do with Norma. He tells his Assistant Director to tell Gordon Cole to find another old car someplace. He walks back into the soundstage as the thick soundstage door shuts. When you’re out of Hollywood, you are out! The following montage of Norma going through her beauty treatments is perhaps the most punishing of all. The tension of it builds until we arrive at the shot that goes for the jugular. With the e-string of the violin whirling stridently above, we examine Norma’s eyes under a magnifier. Then in case anybody hasn’t got it yet, a penlight traces along a line under one of the eyes. How far we have come from the scene in A Star Is Born (1937), where they playfully apply make-up to Janet Gaynor. Joe stays up reading The Young Lions, and after Norma retires for the night, he gets into the Isotta-Frachini to meet with Betty in order to work on the Dark Windows script. Betty stumbles across a cigarette case inscribed to Joe from Norna, so Joe neatly explains that Norma is a friend. They go on a walk around the back lot at night – which is a great way to un-stick yourself when you are stuck during a writing session. Betty tells Joe about how she was from "a picture family," and that after a half-hearted attempt at becoming an actress, she is more comfortable working behind the scenes. The idea here is that Joe is inevitably attracted to Betty. Many people have commented on the fact that Nancy Clark is no match for Gloria Swanson, but of course they are missing the point entirely. Joe doesn’t love Norma. He knows that he’s not right for Betty either. He wants to get romantic with her. At the end of this scene, he warns her not to allow him too close to her. The way Holden walks away from the camera with Betty – stoop-shouldered – he is so wupped. As Joe returns, he finds Max waiting for him in the garage. He is there to warn Joe that Norma is watching, waiting for him. Joe uses this as an opportunity to confront Max with his duplicity regarding keeping Norma away from the reality of DeMille and all the rest of it. Max reveals that he created Norma and that he cannot allow her to be destroyed. He had discovered her and directed all her early films. Joe observes that Norma has made him her butler, but Max says that he wanted to be around Norma at all costs. That he was her first husband! von Stroheim is so oddly affecting in this whole film. This is the role that he would be remembered for, to paraphrase George Cukor. Wilder had directed von Stroheim in his Five Graves to Cairo (1943), and Wilder was an enormous fan of von Stroheim’s work as a director. But there is something so weird about von Stroheim’s performance here. He really speaks as though the twisted things he is saying are real for him. von Stroheim was so in tune with the obsessional delusion of Max, that he suggested to Wilder that they should do a scene showing Max washing Norma’s undergarments – and loving it! Ahm! After finding that Max is the puppet master here, we see Norma pacing in her boudoir, like a caged animal. She enters Joe’s room to rhetorically ask his sleeping figure where he’s going every evening. She finds the outline for Dark Windows with Joe and Betty Schaffer’s name at the top. We dissolve to these two very people working away in Betty’s office. I don’t know who would use so direct a tactic to show Betty’s indecisiveness than to have her blank out at the typewriter for twenty seconds. A full twenty seconds. I timed it. Where did they come up with that? Betty is in a state, because Artie has suggested that she come out to Arizona (where he is working on a picture) and that they get married. Joe doesn’t know why she doesn’t. Betty is further frazzled by the fact that Joe doesn’t have the slightest idea of why she is hesitating. She tells him that she is in love with him, not Artie. I mean, if you had to choose between William Holden and Jack Webb . . . They have a passionate embrace, which throws Joe into a quandary. He must decide what to do. He discovers Norma in the middle of a phone call to Betty, kindly warning her off. Joe grabs the phone from her in another scene of great power. He tells Betty to come on over, and gives her the address in the 10,000 block of Sunset Boulevard – right near Mapleton Drive in Holmby Hills – right where they shot the tire blowing out in the first reel. But Norma’s got a gun! Look out Joe! The shot of Norma pleading with Joe from her bed with the gun there would make a great pulp novel cover. Another reason people like to classify this film as a "film noir." Finally, Betty shows up. Joe shows her around, explaining that he is the "kept" companion of Norma Desmond. Betty tries to convince Joe to run away from all this with her. He declines and sends her off. His decision is that he can’t allow himself to ruin Betty’s life. But he doesn’t want to toady to Norma anymore either, so he packs his gladstone bag. Max knows the score. He says that he will take Mr. Gillis’ bags to the car.
Norma has been fed the elixir of stardom for so long that she is thrown into a bizarre state upon being confronted with the truth by Joe. Max reassures her that she is the greatest star of them all. That Joe is walking out on her is not something that she can tolerate, so she shoots him as he is making his getaway – his dead body hits the surface of the pool. I love Joe’s next line of narration:
Which is another line I’ve found requires a little explaining nowadays. You see, after a film played in first-run, it went out to the neighborhood houses, where it played on double features – two films playing together. What always used to happen was that you would come in late on the first picture and see the thing with the first 20 minutes cut off. Then you would watch the second film all the way through, and then you would watch the part of the first film until you reached the point "where you came in." The police and the reporters and the press photographers show up along with the newsreel cameramen. The ending of Sunset Boulevard is a very early foreshadowing of the confusion in society between people who have varying reasons for their celebrity. I don’t believe that Sunset Boulevard’s makers really could put into words what they were trying to paint here. That perhaps the only reason that anyone commits a crime is to beg for attention, and when that attention is given Norma at the end of the film, she just mops it up. The ending speech for her is so pointed that when she looks right into the camera and beckons to
You feel almost as if Norma were speaking directly at you. An incredible finish to a spectacular, one-of-kind movie. I’ve rambled on a bit longer than normal, but this film deserves it. My relationship to this film is rather lengthy. I think it was the first really great film I recall seeing, first on television, and then at The Billy Wilder Marathon held at the 1972 FILMEX (which I sat through all 28 hours of). I have seen the picture theatrically many times since, and I always enjoy showing the LaserDisc of it to people who have never seen it (would that Paramount would make better-looking copies of it). Sunset Boulevard remains an inspiration because of its ability to tell a strange story in an acceptable manner. Also because, while being in the classic form of "guy story" (see Cool Hand Luke for the perfect expression of the "guy story"), it has a very strong character that women relate to: misunderstood, powerful, talented, underappreciated, murderous . . . It’s all there. Many people like to make light of Sunset Boulevard’s "quaintness." The people singing "Buttons and Bows" at the party, the incredibly young Jack Webb in his pre-Dragnet days and so on, but this seems to be one of the points of the movie. Life goes on, the parade passes by. To quote Wilder again on this, "Sunset Boulevard was a period picture the moment we finished it." Thank goodness they did finish it. 5.22.01 |
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Copyright
© 2001 by Kurt Wahlner
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