**Part of the Best Picture Project**

What a difference several years makes after having last seen a film!

As a younger still growing lover of film, when I first watched this, I merely watched it from a superficial standpoint. I enjoyed the "behind the scenes" aspect of the film, as well as the deteriorating mental state of Swanson's Norma Desmond.

But many years later, I am able to understand who Max was played by and why it was significant, as well as the many cameos (Shit, Buster Keaton!) and references.

Then there's Wilder's direction, which comes to employ silent film technique more and more as the film goes on and Norma Desmond's mental state begins to collapse, which serves as a contrast to how much more grounded William Holden's subplot is.

This is why revisiting films is important.

Watching the film this time got me wondering about the dead monkey. What if Norma killed the monkey, and what if there was a spin-off film that told the story of the monkey? It could be the exact same idea as this movie, but instead of starting at the pool with Joe narrating, the film would start at the table with the monkey narrating. Now that is a film I would want to see.

I can't decide whether this is a happy ending or a really depressing one. I guess it's more the second.

Great movie, the idea is simple yet amazing, allows for the characters to really be worked with. Her acting is a bit melodramatic at points, but it's also the age of the movie in part. But he is great and really gets you involved and carries the action perfectly.

Masterfully written, directed, shot, performed. Sunset is a demented, disturbing, engaging story of a psychotic aging actress desperately clinging on to anyone that cares about her. It's also a bitter story of Hollywood and its manipulative ways. Both intertwine beautifully, to create a great film.

Arguably the best Hollywood movie about Hollywood, "Sunset Boulevard" combines noir, dark comedy and an uncomfortable nostalgia, allowing us to see through the illusions of Hollywood in both a subtle and blatant manner.

Great movie about a second rate Hollywood script writer who gets entangled in a web spun by a forgotten silent era actress who lives in a decaying castle on Sunset Boulevard. This film contains the germ for many David Lynch tropes, and is a wonderful examination of the workings of the Hollywood machinery.

Being Norma Desmond looks exhausting.

Like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty 50 years later, William Holden narrates his own fatal rise and fall to beautiful effect. Perfectly pitted against the faded silent era movie star Norma Desmond played by Gloria Swanson, watching the film so many years later make for an intriguing perspective on how long Hollywood has been rolling, and how many sea changes it has undergone. The screenplay is sublime - never missing an opportunity to be clever, but never showy - and Wilder is brilliant at picking out the 'director's moments' - when Norma springs up from the couch to be illuminated by the strobing projection light of her own movie, for example. To anyone who didn't know a thing about Hollywood this would seem like the height of surrealism but otherwise it's a just a brilliantly played tragedy, pure and simple.

This movie was almost like a horror movie without being a horror. It was scary how each person allowed themselves to fall so deep into their insanity. I love that there were so many parallels to real life, also a fun cameo by Buster Keaton. I've been watching a lot of Billy Wilder as of late and it fits in well with the others I've seen. Great movie.

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