Sunset Boulevard, 1950

Billy Wilder and the Tightrope of Perspective

Wilder loved his sleazeballs. The trick was getting audiences to love them too.

A couple of lowlifes make their bed with a get-rich homicide scheme; a never-been writer drinks away the words and his self-respect; an indigent screenwriter degrades himself as the boy toy of an over-the-hill movie actress; a deceitful newspaper man is…