Review of Sunset Boulevard, directed by Billy Wilder

Sunset Boulevard has been one of those movies I’ve procrastinated on watching for the longest time, despite desperately wanting to see it. I’m someone who lives in a tight balance between procrastination and getting things done, and when I have higher priorities, I tend to push things down the list for a hot minute.

This movie has been one of them. But one night I was just sitting in bed, laptop on my thighs, thinking that I had nothing to do. I headed onto Kanopy for the first time in over a year, and there it was. Sunset Boulevard.

Granted, I know the entire plot of the movie like the back of my hand, and I saw the stage musical when it was at the Kennedy Center with Stephanie J. Block and Derek Klena. That stage musical is what ultimately put it up higher on my list, which is why, when I saw it on my front of page of Kanopy, I pressed play.

I’d had a Vietnamese coffee earlier and wasn’t going to bed before two in the morning anyways, so it worked out perfectly.

Here’s my review of the film.

A struggling screenwriter finds himself tangled up with a former silent film star.

We begin Sunset Boulevard with a crash course on how it’s going to end: the main character, Joe Gillis, has been shot and is found dead in a pool. The suspect is Norma Desmond, a silent film star who’s gone mad—or that’s what we think. The film that wrenches us back six months in the past, when Joe Gillis is struggling to sell a single script.

After submitting a script to Paramount, he listens in as a woman, who we later come to know as Betty, roasts it and basically says it has no depth or originality. Joe’s really struggling and lives in a tiny rented room, and his car is about to get repossessed.

As he’s fleeing from the people that are trying to take his car, Joe ends up pulling in an empty driveway on Sunset Boulevard. It’s the mansion of Norma Desmond, who’s rich from her silent film days. When he comes face to face with her, she realizes he's a writer, then asks him to read her script.

It’s awful, but because Joe needs the money, he convinces her to hire him as someone to fix the script. She ends up letting him move into the mansion with her and the butler, where he comes to realize she is obsessed with her former fame and still thinks she’s got it.

The butler, Max, is even writing fake fanmail to convince Norma that the people still love her. She even watches her own movies in the parlor room, bringing Joe to watch them in with her. She falls in love with him throughout their time together, and confesses at her New Year’s Party.

He tries to decline her affections and heads off to a party with his friends, and gets an in with Betty, who thinks they can work on a script together, but a call from Max reveals that Norma slit her wrists because of his rejection. Joe comes back and agrees to see her.

He falls deeper into this game with Norma, and the script Norma wrote is sent to Cecil B. DeMille at Paramount. At the same time, Joe is working on a script with Betty at night, but is obviously keeping this a secret from Norma.

When Norma starts getting calls from Paramount, she believes they want her and/or her script, but when they end up going to the studio, Max and Joe realize that they only want her vintage 1920s car, not the script or her as an actress.

They keep it a secret from her knowing that if she finds it, it will ruin her mentally. Joe then finds out not longer after that Max was Norma’s former director and husband.

Not long after this, Norma discovers what Joe’s been working on with Betty. She calls Betty claiming Joe is not who he seems, and Joe, overhearing this, takes the phone and tells Betty the address and to come see it for herself. When Betty arrives confused, he flips the switch and claims he can’t give up what Norma gave him, and Betty starts crying and leaves.

He turns around to Norma, tells her he’s heading back to Ohio to work his old journalism gig, and that everything she now believes is a lie. After Norma threatens to kill herself, he turns around, and she shoots him, leaving him in the pool.

The final moments of the film are the cops and press at the mansion. Norma has gone completely mad, and believes she’s in a movie. Max, realizing what’s happening, guides her to the cameras and tells her it’s time, and she gives one last monologue. She has finally gone insane completely, and has now become a cautionary tale.

Overall Thoughts

One thing I think is truly tragic about this movie is Norma. I’d love to do an entire gender/feminist analysis on the film when I’m not crumbling under the pressure of my grad program and work. I think a woman who has gone mad is an archetype in film/art/literature made by men, and that Joe is kind of the antagonist here.

He knowingly leeches off of a woman who clearly has mental health issues in the name of money and security, and he pays for it with his life. But Norma’s story, although it serves as a comedic and cautionary tale, is a tragedy to me at its core.

A woman with severe issues, cannot move on from her past due to said issues, and is depicted as an antagonist because of it. That’s really, really sad. Norma deserved better, and we see a lot of child stars ending up like this even today.

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