"I am big! It's the pictures that got small!"

Masterfully snappy dialogue like only Billy Wilder and the golden age of 40's and 50's film-noir can deliver. A comeback performance from Gloria Swanson to redefine the very notion of a comeback (I still can't get over how expressive her face is). Incisive commentary on the process of filmmaking which extends to the real lives of its cast and crew (Gloria Swanson returning to film as Norma Desmond returning to film; Erich von Stroheim, the director of Gloria Swanson's early films, as Max von Mayerling, the director of Norma Desmond's early films). Prescient awareness of the critical lack of genuinely new stories two decades before anyone would use the term "postmodern" to describe literature. A truly one of a kind film.

Top 10 Film Noir | Metacinema
List of Shame | The Rewatch List

100

A final image can be ambiguous or illuminating, ill-defined or razor-sharp, but Billy Wilder takes a moment of supreme clarity and showcases it through gradual opacity; a star slowly succumbing to an out-of-focus recreation of the glory days, one which is, in actuality, confined to a homicidal reality. Ah, showbiz.

**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.

Bueno bueno!

"Yes, this is Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, California. It's about 5 o'clock in the morning. That's the homicide squad, complete with detectives and newspaper men."

هل تخيلت انه بيوم من الايام تكون مشهور ومعروف للكل عالميا ومحليا ومن بعد هذي الشهرة الني جعلنك معتز بنفسك تصبح نكرة منسي من الكل
اذا وضعت نفسك بهذا الموقف ماذا تتوقع ان تكون ؟
ستكون متوهم ام ستصاب بجنون العظمة ام سترضى بحالك ماذا ستصبح بعد كل العز الذي عشته ؟
في هذا الفيلم الجميل بيلي وايدلر يوريك حياة ممثله كانت بقمة الشهرة والعز والجمال الى ان اصبحت عكس كل ذلك ... ويسردها لك عن طريق كاتب وتشعر بان الكاتب هو انت
شاهدوا الفيلم هذا الجميل جدا ... انا شاهدنه سابقا لكن اعدته قبل كم يوم مع مجموعة افلام والى الان معجب به.

An asinine story about a screenwriter(lol, another movie with a writer as the lead) and a woman fallen from grace ( a trope even in the 1950's) and how she desperately is clinging to her past fame and beauty (funny how older or overweight women in movies are antagonized in such ways while the petite youngens are admired and demure) I'm side eyeing the 4.4 rating and the entire letterboxd community. Do you guys rate any mediocre movie that involves hollywood/screenwriters/actors highly? Is this the la la land of yesteryear?

Leider hat mir der sehr nervige Erzähler einiges von dem Spaß am Film genommen. Trotzdem sehr gelungen Hollywood-Satire mit einer sehr kühlen Inszenierung, spaßigen Dialogen und tollem Schauspiel. Knapp an einer 8/10 vorbei.

A

This movie is a warm hug.

Far from my favorite Wilder film but also not his most overrated (that goes to Some Like It Hot, which I shall give a second chance at some point), Sunset Boulevard is an entertaining but unremarkable Hollywood-set drama, its meta casting and intriguing opening shots enough to pull one along but I found that finale, complete with its famous lines, fairly lackluster and disappointing this time around.

sunset provides so many places for respite so frequently while playing chicken around whether or not norma is who we think she is that the entire viewing is unsettling, which is impressive considering how often films fumble a “creepy” tone by overselling it (also considering the limits of major studio 50s films whose adherence to morality codes limit anything directly transgressive to on screen/in dialogue suggestion)

this was so simple but it feels like it shouldnt have been