Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard ranks among the most scathing satires of Hollywood and the cruel fickleness of movie fandom. The story begins at the end as the body of Joe Gillis (William Holden) is fished out of a Hollywood swimming pool. From The Great Beyond, Joe details the circumstances of his untimely demise (originally, the film contained a lengthy prologue wherein the late Mr. Gillis told his tale to his fellow corpses in the city morgue, but this elicited such laughter during the preview that Wilder changed it). ...
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Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard ranks among the most scathing satires of Hollywood and the cruel fickleness of movie fandom. The story begins at the end as the body of Joe Gillis (William Holden) is fished out of a Hollywood swimming pool. From The Great Beyond, Joe details the circumstances of his untimely demise (originally, the film contained a lengthy prologue wherein the late Mr. Gillis told his tale to his fellow corpses in the city morgue, but this elicited such laughter during the preview that Wilder changed it). Hotly pursued by repo men, impoverished, indebted "boy wonder" screenwriter Gillis ducks into the garage of an apparently abandoned Sunset Boulevard mansion. Wandering into the spooky place, Joe encounters its owner, imperious silent star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Upon learning Joe's profession, Norma inveigles him into helping her with a comeback script that she's been working on for years. Joe realizes that the script is hopeless, but the money is good and he has nowhere else to go. Soon the cynical and opportunistic Joe becomes Norma's kept man. While they continue collaborating, Norma's loyal and protective chauffeur Max Von Mayerling (played by legendary filmmaker Erich von Stroheim) contemptuously watches from a distance. More melodramatic than funny, the screenplay by Wilder and Charles Brackett began life as a comedy about a has-been silent movie actress and the ambitious screenwriter who leeches off her. (Wilder originally offered the film to Mae West, Mary Pickford and Pola Negri. Montgomery Clift was the first choice for the part of opportunistic screenwriter Joe Gillis, but he refused, citing as "disgusting" the notion of a 25-year-old man being kept by a 50-year-old woman.) Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running musical version has served as a tour-de-force for contemporary actresses ranging from Glenn Close to Betty Buckley to Diahann Carroll. Hal Erickson, Rovi
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Charles Dayton, Larry J. Blake, Franklyn Farnum, Jack Webb, Lloyd Gough, Fred Clark, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim, Gloria... Very good. 1950 Run time: 110. Providing great media since 1972. All used discs are inspected and guaranteed. Digital copy/codes may be expired or not included. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
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Seller's Description:
Charles Dayton, Larry J. Blake, Franklyn Farnum, Jack Webb, Lloyd Gough, Fred Clark, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim, Gloria... Very good. 1950 Run time: 110. Providing great media since 1972. All used discs are inspected and guaranteed. Digital copy/codes may be expired or not included. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Charles Dayton, Larry J. Blake, Franklyn Farnum, Jack Webb, Lloyd Gough, Fred Clark, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim, Gloria... Very good. 1950 Run time: 110. Providing great media since 1972. All used discs are inspected and guaranteed. Digital copy/codes may be expired or not included. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Charles Dayton, Larry J. Blake, Franklyn Farnum, Jack Webb, Lloyd Gough, Fred Clark, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim, Gloria... Very good. 1950 Run time: 110. Providing great media since 1972. All used discs are inspected and guaranteed. Digital copy/codes may be expired or not included. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Charles Dayton, Larry J. Blake, Franklyn Farnum, Jack Webb, Lloyd Gough, Fred Clark, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim, Gloria... Very good. 1950 Run time: 110. Providing great media since 1972. All used discs are inspected and guaranteed. Digital copy/codes may be expired or not included. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Dare I make a tilt at a famed classic, albeit a small one? For a film that has so very much going for it, it leans towards the tedious. The cast is exemplary: Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, aging star of the silent films, takes over the screen, while Erich Von Stroheim as her ex husband/chauffeur/factotum gives a perfect performance of a strange man still in love with the star. William Holden and Nancy Olson are just right as two young writers whose growing closeness becomes the catalyst for Holden's murder as Norma's dependency on him increases. (No, this is not a spoiler: In the first few frames we see Holden as Joe Gillis lying face down in the swimming pool.)
The Desmond mansion set is magnificently reminiscent of old Hollywood, its Gothic proportions and decadent furnishings demonstrating that funereal atmosphere that the stars of yesteryear used to favour - an over-abundance of pleated hangings, of low lighting and large spaces filled with clutter.
The plot is good but a little too slow, Wilder's excellence as a director missing out due to becoming too close and fussing a little too much, hence the tedium, together a sense of claustrophobia as though spending too much time in a funeral home. Would the claustrophobia have mattered had the tedium not been evident? Maybe not, although William Holden as the breath of fresh air is doomed anyway.
But for all that, it's a film worth seeing for its craft and content.
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