Back To Index Sunset Blvd.
 Barnes & Noble Billy Wilders terrifying valentine to Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard (1950), features one of the most indelible of all screen performances: Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond. Norma, the aging silent-movie star who ensnares down-at-the-heels screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden), is the vamp become vampire (look at those clawlike hands!), a woman who trades on charms that have long since ossified and curdled. In many ways a horror film -- with the broken-down mansion, the wind playing through the organ pipes, the dead monkey, even Norma herself -- Sunset Boulevard is also an essay about Hollywood and its discontents. If Norma is warped (and she is), the warping Hollywood culture of ego, vanity, and delusion is at least partially to blame. Another casualty is Max von Mayerling, Normas servant (previously her director and husband), played to self-lacerating perfection by Erich von Stroheim. Though the movie critiques the excesses of Hollywoods silent era, it also reinvigorates the myth of that time. Stars did have faces then -- and magical names. Compared to the workaday Hollywood of the films present tense, the glamour conjured by Normas mere mention of Valentino is potent indeed. Rachel Saltz Interested in the song lyrics? - Check out themostlyrics.com! Looking For A DVD? - Check out dvd-a-rama.com! |
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