No one ever leaves a star. That's what makes one a star.

I've seen many films with the same premise as Sunset Boulevard: an aging film star down on his or her luck tries to come to terms with the loss of their youth and fame. And yet, I believe that there has never been a more biting, contemptuous, yet loving portrayal of one such star with leftover delusions of grandeur.

Norma Desmond is a silent movie star who hasn't acted in a film for twenty years. One day Joe Gillis, a writer down on his luck, arrives at her doorstep and allows himself to be drawn into the web that Norma weaves around him. Nothing bodes well for either…

Noir-November Challenge! Movie #18

The first time I became aware of the character Norma Desmond was from comedic skits on the Carol Burnett Show! See link below to reminisce right along with me..

youtu.be/3-mhGVTc2BU

If I hadn't joined David Toppers Noir-November movie challenge I may never had the opportunity to see one of the greatest Billy Wilder films out there! It is everything I could have ever hoped for from Film Noir film and so much more! Seriously it's all that and a bag of chips!

Gloria Swanson didn't simply bring a character alive on the big screen, she literally transformed into this bigger than life persona that is Norma Desmond! It was an extraordinary privilege to witness Gloria Swanson…

Once in a while you come across a performance in a film that not only dominates that film, but overwhelms it to the point where you wonder if they had done an edit of the finished product that only included said performance if the film would actually have been better.

Sunset Boulevard could easily have been such a picture. The magnitude of the performance of Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond can be measured in the fact that in so many ways this is not only an incredible film, but also a daring and unusual film for its time. Yet her performance as the faded Hollywood icon, left desperately clinging on to her glory days coupled with forlorn hopes for a…

Of all the films Billy Wilder made during his Hollywood career, Sunset Boulevard may be his most celebrated and well-known. This film introduced the idea of being "meta" forty-six years before Wes Craven did it with the horror genre in Scream, referencing Hollywood as well as the silent days of filmmaking before sound came into the picture and how it was nothing more than a machine that treated its talent like cogs. It certainly has gone on to be highly regarded as a true classic and walked away with three Academy Awards, while also proving that not much in Hollywood has changed even when the Studio System got disbanded during the latter half of the decade going into the 1960s.…