Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Zombos Says: Sublime

Well, this is where you came in, back at that pool again, the one I always wanted. It's dawn now and they must have photographed me a thousand times. Then they got a couple of pruning hooks from the garden and fished me out... ever so gently. Funny, how gentle people get with you once you're dead.

I've watched Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard about 4 times, give or take, but this is the first time I've paid attention that there are no knobs on the doors--no locks--just round holes where they should be. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I better explain why I'm writing about a non-horror movie before you diehard fans de-Twitter me or minus me from your Google+ circles or deface my Facebook page because I insist on talking about a non-horror movie you really must see. Here's why: the story's narrated by a dead guy, the one you see floating in the middle of the pool at the beginning. How can you not love a story narrated by a dead guy? And he's not even a zombie. He's just really dead. How refreshing. 

Why he winds up that way involves a forgotten Hollywood mansion where a forgotten silent film star dwells in a forgotten world of ignorant opulence (maybe not so forgotten). She dreams of returning to the big screen, shutting out any daylight that might wake her up. Those absent door knobs are missing from the big, ornate, doors in her old, brooding mansion. Maybe they were removed, one by one, over the long years, but they most likely were taken off all at once, after she became suicidal. A lot. It's a mystery, really, as to what depresses her so much: is it really the lack of a movie contract or a lover or her lost audience? Oddly enough, it's the only mystery in this noir crime story with the dead guy floating in her swimming pool, and her first husband (Erich von Stroheim) living with her as butler and chauffeur, and with her "waxwork" friends (like silent film comedian Buster Keaton, playing himself) showing up every week to play a quaint game of Bridge and reminisce. Desperation leads the soon to be corpse to this place and desperation keeps him there; not his, but Norma's.

Let's start with the corpse, Joe Gillis (William Holden). He's a down and out script writer--was, rather. Before he wound up in the pool Norma adopts him as her kept man, mostly because he's a good writer and she has a lousy script for him to fix, but also because he's handsome and she's lonely without an audience. With one leg in Norma's world and the other back at the movie studio with the younger and saner Betty (Nancy Olson), Joe's precarious ambitions start sparking from the friction between the carefree luxury he gets from Norma and the inspirational boost he gets from Betty: she collaborates with him on a script with real potential. And Betty falls in love with him, even though she first fell in love with Joe's friend Artie (Jack Webb). That icing on the cake drips guilty all over Joe when Norma attempts suicide over his interest in Betty because it screws up her affair with him. He likes the money Norma lavishes on him--wouldn't you? He likes the attention lavished on him by Betty--ditto? Which way to go is the tough call he needs to make eventually: live in Norma's made up reality or Betty's real future one? That swimming pool sure is inviting. Lounging by it all day can be intoxicating. 

 Sunset Boulevard's not only about Joe's predicament (lucky bastard, we should all have that kind of quandary), it's about a decadent past, present, and future Hollywood Wilder and fellow scripters (Charles Brackett and D. M. Marshman Jr) penalize everyone in the movie with. It's about fickle celebrity, art versus cash, and the futility of holding out, lounging by the pool when you shouldn't, and not taking a dip when you really ought to. It's all about Norma--but not really, and it's all about Joe--but not really. It's introspective, witty, urbane, and accusatory. 

The other mystery--wait, I said there was only one, didn't I?-- is how Billy Wilder got away with it. A lot of people in this movie play themselves or barely cover up the fact: Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper zings as Hedda Hopper; Erich von Stroheim, who plays Norma's former husband now devoted servant, Max, reveals he directed Norma and compares himself to real life directors Cecil B. De Mille and D. W. Griffith.  Stroheim not only directed Swanson in real life, he also got pushed aside when talkies took over, a promising director in real life ignored when it wasn't convenient to pay attention to him. A lot of silent film stars were pissed, too. They saw Norma Desmond from the inside out and the sight was too close for comfort. Wilder went with dark humor and let everyone in on the joke, ironically plays it near parody to make the situation more realistic, and grandly delivers brutal honesty. It's surprising he didn't wind up floating in the pool, too.

Joe's observations are bitingly sarcastic, funny, and sadly true; Norma's delusion is bitingly crazy, funny, and sadly false. When she finally does get a call from the studio it's about the Italian antique car (an Isotta-Fraschini) she is chauffeured around in: they want to use it in a shoot.  Cecil B. Demille (playing himself) doesn't tell her she's not wanted when she comes to the studio her movies helped keep solvent, he's more understanding; but even he knows she will never do another picture and her script reads like a bad silent movie. Norma's past her prime and those exaggerated silent movie gestures she lives and breathes all the time are so not-the-drama anymore. 

The music plays on while Norma and Joe celebrate New Year's Eve dancing across the mansion's empty floor, just the two of them, dressed to the nines. Even when they aren't dancing the musicians keep playing. It's just them, Norma, Joe, and Max, who knows she's two notes short of a full stop. Max directs the musicians to keep playing. He directs Norma's delusion. He knows all she has left is her delusion of returning to the screen. Without it she becomes nothing so he protects her fantasy to the end. He definitely removed all the door knobs. I wonder where he keeps them?

Franz Waxman's (The Invisible Ray, Buck Rogers ) score and John Seitz's camera (Invaders From Mars, When Worlds Collide) bow tie Hans Dreier's (The Uninvited) and John Meehan's (Cult of the Cobra) darkly addressed package of desire, decadence, and demise with a tidy knot, ready to be untied by Norma in ghoulish fashion.  She finally gets the close-up she's been hoping for, although not in the way she planned. We get a classic movie about dreams and delusions, and how the difference between both is pretty small in Hollywood.

The bed in the shape of a swan that Norma Desmond slept in was actually owned by the legendary dancer Gaby Deslys, who died in 1920. It had originally been purchased by the Universal prop department at auction after Deslys's death. The bed appeared in The Phantom of the Opera (1925) starring Lon Chaney. (from the Wikipedia entry on Sunset Boulevard)

Comments

[zoc]

Very good analysis of Norma. I think the main issue with her is how she's insulated herself from everything that's not suited to her previous world. She's like Ms. Havisham in Great Expectations, locking time out, focused on her one desire. Oddly enough, she's the one who isn't confused, but Joe is. She takes herself perhaps a bit too seriously, but he doesn't take himself seriously enough, or his aspirations.

[theoncominghope]

Just rewatched this the other day! But it occurred to me that perhaps Joe is the villain and Norma is the hero of the piece?

I go into a lengthy explanation why here:
http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-shower-philosophy-and-sunset.html

[zoc]

I can believe that about Mae West.
And yes, the door knobs are not such a mystery, but then again...

[Pax Romano]

My ex was obsessed with this movie, I mean OBSESSED. With that in mind, I am pretty damn sure that the missing doorknobs are mentioned to Joe by Max because of "Madame's bouts of melancholia", or something to that effect. He also mentions that the gas has been turned off in her room as well.

Best bit of trivia about the film I ever heard (not sure if it's true, but it's a great story): Mae West was offered the film, but she turned it down saying, "Nobody would believe me as a has-been movie star!"

Great review my friend, this is a movie everyone should see!