Sunset Boulevard (1950) is Still a Riot in 2024
May 15, 2024 — Sunset Boulevard (1950)
4.5/5 Stars
Norma Desmond here, Norma Desmond there… the Normas are positively everywhere, in lifesize portrait form, in autographed fan photos (all collected by her first husband now butler, one assumes) and in painted caricatures. The acting in Sunset Boulevard (1950) is all spectacular, from Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond to Nancy Olson as Betty Schaefer. Swanson’s over-the-top glamour that becomes more delusional by the scene (and doesn’t exactly start sane) is terrifying, hilarious, and captivating at once, and Olson has a kind of ‘girl next door’ appeal that isn’t bad either. She’s charming and down to earth, young, smart, and a great foil to the aging out-of-touch star. But she doesn’t have Norma’s charisma, and nor should she.
William Holden as Joe Gillis is fun too — perhaps too caught up feeling sorry for himself, but it’s a little hard to blame him. The broke screenwriter who can’t quite make it isn’t exactly a new persona, but it certainly feels relevant today. Agents who don’t want to talk to you, repossession men who want your entrails, and producers who hack your work to pieces. There’s a reason these clichés don’t go away, I suppose, and it works to make Joe sympathetic. Torn between Norma and Betty, it shouldn’t be a surprise he ended up with Norma, but I feel surprised all the same. Showing Joe facedown dead in the pool at the beginning of the film sets up suspense (an additional hint of foreshadowing, even if it might be unneeded) but it also instills a kind of disbelief, when he keeps talking as the narrator. It won’t end that way, surely… but it will.
On the other hand, if you take out that opening scene, what do you have instead? Maybe the film risks losing its tension, or maybe the ending is an even bigger punch to the gut.
It is, too, much better to have a heavy beat of emotional foreshadowing than to try to weasel out of the pre-arranged ending. I half expected a harebrained plot where Joe fakes his death. Credit to Billy Wilder, there is nothing like that at all. The filmmaking is canny and fun (can you see Norma running at Joe with the gun in the mirror?) and the dialogue is great all the way through (that phone call is only “somebody enquiring about a stray dog,” of course).
The movie is a blast. Even in 2024, it’s a riot: the end of the silent film era certainly left nostalgic, antiquated stars in its wake, but as technology evolves and Hollywood still finds ways to extort writers, it feels as relevant and ageless as the drama of a toxic couple. Wonderful moments percolate the film such as the fantastically bizarre introduction of Norma as she proceeds in the elaborate funeral rites of her beloved chimpanzee. Even to the last moment, I hadn’t quite decided how it was going to end. Or perhaps I just haven’t had enough the glowing STAR that is Norma Desmond.
