The Sun Never Set on Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard (1950) Review
Starring…Gloria Swanson
With the Broadway revival coming to a close in the coming weeks and the general guilt I feel for never having seen the movie, I thought it was finally time to sit down and watch Hollywood’s classic, Sunset Boulevard.
Ten minutes into the movie, it seemed to be a fun thing to turn on as an audiobook with the main character narrating just about everything you would need to know. But then, as he stumbles upon the mansion, there is a captivating zoom shot of the once-famous silent film actress, Norma Desmond, looking out the window, beckoning our narrator, Joe Gillis, up.
To my great consternation, I didn’t make it to the Sunset revival on Broadway, and it’s been a while since I’ve sat with the plot, so the details are a little fuzzy, leaving me with not much distinction of what aspects made it into the musical.
The boyish concern of a struggling writer, resorting to car chases to keep his precious vehicle, meets the unsettling delusions of Norma encased in her crumbling castle. Following the eerie image of Norma calling on Joe from the window, she unveils the dead chimpanzee that was set to be buried in the backyard.
Even though the cinematography is as dynamic and reminiscent of the silent film Nosferatu, Joe continues to narrate the film like the viewer isn’t watching the very story unfold: the story of Norma hiring Joe to ghostwrite the script she’s started to be her great return to the silver screen. Much like Nosferatu, Norma rises from her resting place of the romanticized past to absorb the youth and promise of a man who still has a chance in Hollywood.
“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
There was a scene where Norma and Joe are watching Norma’s old silent films, and from the narrow light and smoke of the projector to the antiquated furniture and Norma’s sharp features, the scene offered shots that I would frame and hang on my wall as singular pieces of art.
Before there was the iconic Pretty Woman shopping scene on Rodeo Drive, there was Norma Desmond buying Joe a closet of clothes fit for the life she insisted upon. Of course, unlike Julia Roberts, Joe’s pride is bruised by being Norma’s doll, as his clothes have to match her standards and his whereabouts are under her exact direction. But just when the doll decides he’s had enough, Norma’s self-inflicted near-death experience reels him back in and makes Joe realize he actually cares about his keeper.
As their script finally reaches Norma’s standards to be sent off to Cecil DeMille at Paramount, Norma storms her way onto DeMille’s set to inquire about her return to Hollywood. DeMille sits her on his chair while he tries to figure out how to tell her the script and her career aren’t gracing the Paramount studios like she expects. But while seated in the director’s chair, a microphone—the very embodiment of the technology that ended her career—grazes past her head as Norma bats it away, just in time for past fans to finally recognize the once-great movie star.
Despite everyone except Norma knowing their picture had no future, she furiously preps for her homecoming. All the while, Joe is sneaking off to develop one of his scripts with the other woman dominating his stalled-out career, Betty Schaeffer, the happily engaged script reader who has been giving him advice as to how to make his scripts sell. Of course, they fall in love in the process, which becomes the final straw in the precarious relationship of Joe and Norma.
In all this drama, I almost forgot the opening scene of the film was Joe’s dead body floating in Norma’s pool—a detail that comes rushing back when Joe illuminates the newly filled pool in his grand tour for Betty.
In the grand climax of Norma’s delusions, when Joe finally admits the futility of Norma’s dreams, the ever-devoted butler/ex-director/ex-husband, Max, reassures Norma that she is a star. ‘Star’ becomes the drumbeat of the sequence as Norma repeats the reassurance with wild eyes, leading to the sensational murder that fulfills Norma’s desire for cameras and attention, all directed at her.
“So they were turning after all, those cameras. Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her.
This Hollywood classic, with an Andrew Lloyd Webber-sized musical to follow, has stood the test of time, orchestrating tension and grandeur that remains captivating even through a modern lens. Although some plot points have become familiar—such as the forgotten women whose dreams come true through a mental break and a publicized murder (Chicago and season two of Why Women Kill, to name a few)—it is clear that Sunset Boulevard is the blueprint that will never quite be recaptured.
