Prof. Larry Ling-hsuan Tung Tim
Philbin
Film Blog entry # 4 Com
104
“Sunset Boulevard”
By: Billy Wilder
Sunset
Boulevard is the story of an aging silent movie star who cannot let go of her
past life. She lives in a large home on
Sunset Boulevard by herself with only her servant Max and the occasional visit
by some other silent film stars. Gloria
Swanson stars as Norma Desmond who was a huge star in the silent movie era. She longs to once again be a big star in
Hollywood and dreams of making a comeback in a film she has written. One day a chance encounter with a down on his
luck screenwriter named Joe Gillis played by William Holden, Norma sees a
chance to live out her dream. She
convinces Joe to help her finish and revise her script to launch her
comeback. Joe reluctantly agrees to help
Norma because she pays off all of his debts along with his back rent. Joe begins to be seduced by Norma’s money as
he lives in her house and she buys him clothes along with other items. Joe comes to the realization that Norma has
begun to lose some of her faculties. At
about the same time Joe also meets Betty Shaffer who works at Paramount. She and Joe had met earlier through Joe’s
agent and again from one of Joe’s friends.
They begin working on a script together from one of Joe’s old scripts
that Betty had read previously. After
working together for a while, Betty begins to fall in love with Joe. Joe decides to push Betty away because she is
engaged to one of his friends and he realizes that he would lose the money from
Norma. During this time we realize that
Norma has fallen for Joe and gets jealous about all the time that he is
spending at Paramount with Betty. This eventually
leads Norma to shoot and kill Joe in the backyard of her home.
The
main theme of this film is a look at people and their mental state of
mind. We have Norma who is lonely and
longs for her youth, success and popularity again. We also have Joe Gillis whose luck has about
run out until he finds Norma. He uses
her to regain his financial footing in life while acting as her friend. In the end, they both use each other, one for
emotional support and the other for financial.
This film shows us some of the dark sides of human nature.
I
totally enjoyed this classic film of Billy Wilders. It was one well written and well-acted
movie. The storyline was terrific and so
were the actors and actresses. Since I
had never seen this movie before I am now very glad to say I have. This was truly one of Hollywood’s great
movies at a time when they were producing many great ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment