The Oscar-winning Sunset Boulevard (Sunset Boulevard, 1950) by Billy Wilder is a classic noir and satirical black comedy and psychological drama, and a film dedicated to the stars of the old era of silent cinema. Sunset Boulua deservedly occupies a place in the top twenty of the TOP 100 best films, and is included in all kinds of registers of cinematic heritage. One of the film’s slogans is “The stars are ageless. Are’nt they?”
An attentive viewer who has watched those silent movie masterpieces at least once, which are even funnier than the works of Charlie Chaplin, recognizes the aged Buster Keaton in the bridge players. Next to him are other stars of that era: H.B. Warner (who played Jesus in DeMille’s production) and Anna Quirentia Nilsson. Holden said they were like wax figures, to which Keaton remarked “waxworks is right” after the first take, which turned the others into hysterical laughter. By the way, in a certain sense, Chaplin himself has a cameo here.
"I'm not in love with myself! So, I just like you..."
So why was Meyer tearing up and raging after watching the movie, calling Wilder the last words, saying that he had disgraced Hollywood by slapping the dream factory that feeds him, and that he should be chased away, tarred and feathered? Of course because of the satire. Many called Wilder’s approach cynical, to which he told the story of how he once witnessed a car accident in which a female driver who lost control was injured, and while he and other eyewitnesses tried to help the victim, the photographer filmed the incident, refusing to call an ambulance, citing that “his work It’s a shoot.” That’s where the cynicism is. Wilder’s film “Ace in the Sleeve” is about the same cynic, where a reporter, the hero of Kirk Douglas, makes a newspaper sensation on a man stuck in the rubble, leaving him in a life-threatening situation because of his career ambitions. So in Wilder’s case, it’s satire. And what did he say to Mayer? A simple “go fuck yourself,” as the friends of Nancy Olson, who is currently the only surviving participant in this cult film, later told there.
"Checkmark, you're going to die now!"
The situation of Norma Desmond is tragicomic, but this does not mean that the director mocks her, on the contrary, it is a tribute to the bygone era of silent cinema and its fading stars. Sunset Boulevard is an elegant metaphor. The film looks in one breath and does not let you get bored or distracted for a minute. Everything is extremely dynamic. The duet of William Holden and Nancy Olson will again be transferred to the screens in the same 1950 at Union Station, a railway noir.
The path to returning to the big screens
Barely noticeable details of a film thought out to the smallest detail, when, for example, Norma takes Joe by the hair, like Salome, who will bring the head of John the Baptist, add to the delight. The distraught look of Norma, looking down the stairs in the spotlight in her last role, is imprinted on memory. In a paranoid desire to return to the world of cinema, a young and beautiful madame goes through seven circles of hell of cosmetic and care procedures. If there were injections of youth, as in the recent Substance, the Norm, not knowing the norm, would stab itself with them lengthwise and across. Ms. Desmond would have been diagnosed by any practicing psychoanalyst with a deep narcissistic disorder and the onset of schizophrenia, which, of course, only worsens by the end. The sinister butler Max von Mayerling (actor and director of silent films Erich von Stroheim, who worked with actress Mae Murray, who became the prototype for Norma Desmond), like Uncle Fester Addams, watches every step of Alphonse the screenwriter. Butler has done his madam a disservice by indulging her stellar illness, because in reality no one writes to this colonel. Woven from the smallest details, Wilder’s film is imbued with the atmosphere of the collapsing house of Norma Desmond — this haunted mausoleum of Hollywood of the past.
Faith is Cold
The best script of Joe Gillis is the foot of his own destiny, which kicked him in the ass, overthrowing the suddenly popular ladies’ man, the great pretender, who at the climax became honest with the ladies who idolized him and made it clear to everyone that Joe Gillis does not love anyone but himself.
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