Classic film review: Sunset Boulevard is one of the best films ever made

I took in a screening of Sunset Boulevard at the Jane Pickens theater in Newport, R.I., my local historic theater, and was completely surprised by the timeless brilliance of the classic. Not only was it an amazingly tight script, but it also held parallels to our culture today. You could take the character of Norma Desmond and find her contemporary at any time in Hollywood. It’s no wonder that the theater was full at my screening, with several young people in the audience to boot.

I went into the theater expecting a sort of camp classic but walked out praising a cinematic masterpiece. The script, helmed by the great Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment), Charles Brackett, and D. M. Marshman Jr. contained not an ounce of fat. The film centers around the exiled, forgotten silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), living in a grotesquely decaying mansion on Sunset Boulevard and dreaming of her great comeback.

William Holden’s Joe Gillis enters her world by accident—half her age and trying to outrun repo men—he stumbles upon what he thinks is an abandoned mansion, the perfect place to stash his “hot” car. The much younger down-on-his-luck writer gets suckered into re-writing her comeback clunker, “Salome,” eventually becoming her gigolo.

Sunset Boulevard is every bit as relevant as when it first premiered in 1950, due to Wilder’s compelling directing as well as writing. And there are several details that lend an air of authenticity to the gothic story.

The character of Norma Desmond was supposedly based on by real-life silent movie actress Norma Talmadge and the name was inspired by another silent movie actress, Mabel Normand, as well as director William Desmond Taylor, whose 1922 murder was never solved. Sunset Boulevard begins with the death of Joe, floating face-down in the swimming pool. You can see how Taylor’s sensationalized death probably inspired the circus atmosphere of Norma’s arrest.

As Norma’s faithful butler, Max von Mayerling, Erich von Stroheim’s emotional resonance is tethered in his real-life experience as a former silent-movie director. In Sunset, the reveal that he discovered Norma as a young actress and directed her at the beginning of her career is quite shocking. Oh, and he also became her first of three husbands, forever remaining lovingly devoted to her, even after both their careers have declined. They are stuck in a time warp shrine to Norma’s prominence, which feels very real because both von Stroheim and Swanson are essentially playing versions of themselves.

In this Picture of Dorian Gray-type narrative, Norma shows her old movies on a picture screen in her grand living room surrounded by multitudes of frames that contain her image (they are literally on every surface!). One of this films shown include von Stroheim’s Queen Kelly, the silent film he directed Swanson in 1928, one of many such fascinating details that tethers Sunset in reality.

Among the bridge-playing “wax works” are silent movie icons Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson. Even the movie set where Norma visits the director Cecil B. DeMille is a real one that he was working on for Samson and Delilah. As Norma gets ready for what she thinks will be her comeback film, many of the beauty rituals she undergoes look like they were pulled straight out of our current time.

Then there’s the performance of Norma Desmond itself, forever etched in cinematic glory by Gloria Swanson, a celebrated actress who successfully graduated from silent movies to “talkies.” Swanson incorporates theatrical mannerisms and her exaggerated fingers/fingernails look more like talons. The role could have easily been played for camp, but in Swanson’s hands, it never crosses the line, even if it hovers just on the precipice. It simply is a performance of a lifetime for which she won the 1951 Golden Globe award for Best Actress (and was clearly robbed of the Oscar). When she utters the iconic line, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small,” I believed every word. But she also brings out Norma’s charm, encapsulated in her captivating impersonation of Charlie Chaplin’s “Little Tramp.” It's a masterful performance.

Sunset Boulevard offers a harsh lens to the state of silent movie stars, many of whom bought mansions along the real Sunset Boulevard. It is also one of the greatest dramas ever made, it’s no wonder that it’s frequently listed in the top 20 of the greatest American films created. Sunset features a love story, with Joe sneaking off to write an actual good script with budding screenwriter Betty (Nancy Olson), who is engaged to his more successful director friend (and “nice guy”), Artie (Jack Webb). Betty falls in love with Joe, who rejects her in an act of generosity, recognizing that she would be better off with his friend than with him. It is this moment when he confesses how he affords his lifestyle, which then inspires him to finally leave Norma, sealing his fate.

In many ways, Sunset Boulevard is a simple tale. But like Earnest Hemingway, the simplicity of the telling doesn’t take away from the magnificent impact of the storytelling. In another masterful stroke, Joe’s fate is foreshadowed with the dead monkey at the beginning of the film, who is aptly buried next to the pool that Joe admires (and dies in) so much.

And the final scene is unforgettable, where Norma descends her grand staircase, believing she is filming a scene from her awful script, one last allusion that Max has concocted, in order to persuade her to come down so she can be arrested. Here she utters the marvelous line, “"There's nothing else. Just us, and the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my closeup." The camera of course closes in on the delusional Norma, in a haunting vision delivered with dramatic perfection by Swanson.

Like Sunset Boulevard, I will be reviewing several movie classics for the holidays. If you’re like me during this time, I tend to take in several older films among our favorites during the Christmas and holiday break. If you haven’t had a chance to see Sunset Boulevard, I can’t recommend this film enough. If you’re a writer, it should be required viewing!

Stay tuned for other films I’ll be reviewing in the coming weeks for your holiday viewing.