Billy Wilder’s Hollywood drama is funny, frightening and merciless about the need to be remembered. Gloria Swanson makes its faded star painfully human, though the screenplay sometimes enjoys humiliating her more than it should.
Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is a savage Hollywood drama we would recommend to almost anyone. Its subject is the damage done when people come to depend on being watched. Norma Desmond has kept faith with her own celebrity long after the industry has lost interest, and the film lets her be frightening and ridiculous without making either response comfortable. Wilder takes her vanity seriously enough to see how frightened she is of being forgotten.
Swanson’s performance is large enough to risk our disbelief, which is exactly the risk the part needs. Norma speaks as though her importance should end any discussion of her circumstances. We laughed at her insistence that the pictures have become small, then felt uncomfortable about laughing. Swanson makes the boast sound necessary to Norma, as if admitting how things have changed would leave her unable to speak at all. The force of the delivery gives a funny line a degree of desperation that the words alone would not supply.
William Holden’s Joe Gillis gives us someone more recognisably at home in everyday conversation. Holden’s relative restraint keeps Swanson’s theatrical manner from setting the volume for the entire film. Erich von Stroheim is even harder to read, and his reserve makes his attentiveness unsettling. He can suggest that too much has been accepted without making a speech about it. The contrast between these performances keeps Swanson’s expansiveness effective rather than exhausting.
John F. Seitz’s cinematography helps the Hollywood setting feel close to a horror film without making Norma merely a monster. The images encourage us to stare at her, then make that staring feel intrusive. Arthur P. Schmidt’s editing gives the dialogue room to register, allowing the discomfort beneath a joke to emerge before moving on. Franz Waxman’s music adds to the unease, and its emotional weight suits a story whose jokes so often come at someone’s expense.
The screenplay by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and D.M. Marshman Jr. does occasionally enjoy its own sharpness too much. Some lines arrive so ready to be remembered that we hear the writing before we hear the person speaking. There is also a danger in making a faded woman’s insistence on being seen the source of so much horror. The film sometimes encourages the easy laugh at Norma before Swanson has to make us consider its cost. That is a fault in a film otherwise alert to the harm of treating people as entertainment.
As Hollywood satire, it earns its anger by allowing the people inside the industry to be interesting even when they are behaving badly. The mixture with gothic horror works because Norma’s need for attention is recognisable, however extreme Swanson makes it. We do not need a history of silent cinema to understand the terror of becoming dispensable. Nor does Wilder make affection for films a condition of understanding how thoroughly these people have been damaged by them.
Set aside its 110 minutes for an evening when nobody needs cheering up. This is a film worth watching in company, if only to argue about when the laughter stops feeling decent. Watch Swanson, of course, but keep an eye on von Stroheim; his quieter performance deserves just as much attention.
