by Julian Spivey
Billy Wilder’s 1950 film “Sunset Boulevard”
scared Hollywood
to death.
The reason why the film scared Hollywood
was that Hollywood was frightened that the picture would make them look bad, in
many ways it did.
“Sunset Boulevard,” written by Wilder,
Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr., is the story of a down on his luck screenwriter Joe Gillis who falls into the clutches
of forgotten movie starlet Norma Desmond. Gillis is played by William Holden. Gloria Swanson owns the Norma Desmond role.
The film shows the dark side of Hollywood; it’s narcissistic, overly ambitiousness
and greedy ways. 20th Century Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck, MGM executive Samuel Goldwyn, actor Tyrone Power
and actress Olivia de Havilland refused to have their names included in the film’s script. Wilder went ahead and used
Zanuck’s and Power’s names anyway.
Swanson and her character Desmond had many similarities.
Both were great silent film stars in Hollywood’s silent film heyday of the
‘20s. By 1950, both Swanson and Desmond had largely been forgotten. The role of Norma Desmond was the role of a lifetime
for Swanson. Swanson made her comeback as Desmond, just as Desmond tried to make her comeback as Salome.
Swanson is ultimately frightening as the former
movie queen. She is able to contort her long, skinny fingers in a way that make them look like spider legs, which is unique
because Desmond basically traps Gillis in her web and never lets him free. She is a black widow.
The film opens with a brilliant scene where Gillis’
body is found dead and floating in a swimming pool in front of a giant mansion. Gillis becomes the film’s narrator telling
the story of how this opening scene occurred. This scene was originally not in the film. Wilder had filmed an opening scene
where Gillis’ body arrives at a morgue and has a conversation with other corpses, each telling about their death. Test
audiences found the scene comical and Wilder went back and thankfully re-shot the opening.
The story between Gillis and Swanson is so good
that it is possible to forget before the film’s end that Gillis was the dead man in the pool at the beginning. This
leads to slight shock at the film’s conclusion.
Gillis’ narration is brilliant and the film
contains many great lines. The three most notable and quoted lines from the film belong to Swanson. “All right, Mr.
DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up,” “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small” and “We
didn’t need dialogue. We had faces.” All three lines were included in Premiere Magazine’s list of “The
100 Greatest Movie Lines.”
The acting in the film is superb between Swanson
and Holden. Erich von Stroheim, who is noted for directing one of the finest silent films ever made “Greed” (1924),
also has a great acting role in the film as Desmond’s butler Max. However, von Stroheim used to refer to his role in
the film simply as “that butler role.” There is a little more to that role than just being a butler, you’ll
have to watch the film closely to figure it out. “Sunset Boulevard” also includes cameos from legendary director
Cecil B. DeMille and silent film stars H.B. Warner, Buster Keaton and Anna Q. Nilsson.
Wilder’s film is virtually on every greatest
films list and ranked number 16 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Movies list in 2007. It is definitely
one of the most important films in cinema history, even if (and because) it scared Hollywood.
