Guide Rating -

Tagline: "A Hollywood story."

Length: 110 minutes
MPAA Rating: Unrated

I think that "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), which takes a sardonic look at the film industry, is one of the masterworks of world cinema. Co-written and directed by the great Billy Wilder, the movie is an unusual mix of black comedy and film noir. "Sunset Boulevard" is an accessible, well-crafted Hollywood movie, but at the same time it has the density and resonance I expect from an art-house film. Although I enjoyed the movie the first time I saw it, I've found multiple viewings to be immensely rewarding. I'm really delighted that this classic American film, along with some excellent special features, has at last become available on DVD.

"Sunset Boulevard" opens with police vehicles driving down tree-lined streets as a male narrator says in voice-over: "Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California… A murder has been reported from one of those great big houses in the ten thousand block." Soon the police arrive at a mansion, where floating in the swimming pool is a dead body.

The story flashes back to six months earlier, and we meet Joe Gillis (William Holden), a destitute young screenwriter. Joe has a blowout while driving along Sunset Boulevard, and he pulls into the driveway of a run-down mansion. At the house he encounters a woman he recognizes as Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a movie star of the silent era. When Joe remarks to Norma that she used to be big, she retorts, "I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

Joe soon learns Norma has written a screenplay, and she expects to play the lead in the movie made from it. When Norma discovers Joe is a screenwriter, she hires him to edit her screenplay. Then the aging former actress gradually makes the handsome Joe her gigolo. We realize Joe has become a kept man when we see him emerge from her pool wearing leopard-skin-patterned swimming trunks!

Joe moves into Norma's gloomy mansion, where she is attended by her faithful white-gloved servant Max (Erich von Stroheim). Two or three evenings a week Max runs the projector while Joe and Norma sit watching her old silent films. I find it fascinating that the movie we see them watching is "Queen Kelly" (1929), which starred Gloria Swanson and was directed by Erich von Stroheim.

Norma becomes increasingly happy as she comes to believe she will soon be the leading lady in a movie directed by Cecil B. DeMille (who plays himself). Meanwhile, Joe grows restless and gets involved with a perky 22-year-old script reader (Nancy Olson), resulting in tragic consequences. But the events are so traumatic for Norma that she loses touch with reality. Under the delusion that shooting has begun on her comeback film, Norma utters one of the most memorable last lines in all of cinema: "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

I think the dialogue in "Sunset Boulevard" is absolutely dazzling by any standard. Consider, for example, how the impoverished Joe characterizes his arrangement with the wealthy Norma: "Older woman who's well-to-do, and a younger man who's not doing too well." Or contemplate Max's description of Norma's heyday: "In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later, he strangled himself with it."

But it seems to me "Sunset Boulevard" is also extremely cinematic. There are three sequences that I think are particularly good visually: (1) the floating dead body as it might look when viewed from the bottom of the swimming pool; (2) Norma's visit to a Paramount sound stage, where she is almost hit in the head by a sound boom microphone; and (3) Norma, dressed as Salome, on the grand marble staircase inside her mansion.

Swanson, Holden, von Stroheim, and Olson all received Oscar nominations for their performances in "Sunset Boulevard," although none of them won. I certainly agree with the Academy that all four actors are terrific in the film, but to my way of thinking, Gloria Swanson gives one of the greatest performances I've ever seen in any movie. She uses a highly theatrical style to give Norma Desmond a vampiric persona that seems exactly right for the character. Yet, I find Norma to be the most sympathetic of the four major characters in the film.

The DVD comes with some nice special features. I particularly enjoyed the feature-length, scene-specific audio commentary by Ed Sikov, author of "On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder." The making-of feature, which is about 25 minutes long, is well worth watching, too. And hard-core cinema buffs like me will love reading the script pages for the morgue sequence that Wilder originally intended to use at the beginning of the film. I'm impressed by the brilliance of the sequence, but I can also understand how it sets the wrong tone, which apparently is the reason it was replaced before the movie went into general release.

Selected Special Features on the DVD:

• Full-Screen (1.33:1)
• English Dolby Digital Mono
• French Dolby Digital Mono
• English Subtitles

• Audio Commentary by Author Ed Sikov
• The Making of "Sunset Boulevard"
• Hollywood Location Map
• Production Stills
• Movie Stills
• Publicity Photos
• Morgue Prologue Script Pages (2 Versions)
• The Music of "Sunset Boulevard"
• Edith Head - The Paramount Years
• Theatrical Trailer