Sunset Boulevard ranks among the most memorable motion pictures that deal with the Hollywood film world. The movie was released in 1950 and starred Gloria Swanson, one of the biggest stars of silent films during the 1920’s. Swanson had been inactive in movies for several years, and her performance in Sunset Boulevard remains one of the most remarkable comebacks in motion-picture history. The film is also a dramatic commentary on how the loss of fame can destroy an individual.
Sunset Boulevard deals with the relationship between Norma Desmond (Swanson), a faded and neurotic movie star of the 1920’s, and Joe Gillis, a movie scriptwriter. Gillis drives into the driveway of an old mansion on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles to evade creditors who are chasing him. The spooky mansion is Norma Desmond’s home. She lives there with her butler, spending her time looking at old movies and planning a triumphant return to motion pictures. When she hears that Gillis is a screenwriter, she offers him a job working with her on a movie script that will mark her comeback in films. Gillis accepts and moves in with Desmond.
Gillis is plunged back into the world of silent movies through the mentally unstable Desmond. She eventually kills him and is taken away by police, believing she is on her way to the movie studio to resume her career.
Billy Wilder received an Academy Award nomination for his directing and shared an Oscar for the witty screenplay with Charles Brackett and D. M. Marshman, Jr. Swanson and co-star William Holden, who played Joe Gillis, were also nominated for Academy Awards. Nancy Olson also received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress for her performance as Joe Gillis’s girlfriend.
To add realism to the story, Wilder cast several stars of the silent films as supporting players. The most notable was Erich von Stroheim, who played Desmond’s butler and her former director. Stroheim had actually directed Swanson in Hollywood in the 1920’s. Other old-time film personalities with roles in Sunset Boulevard included Buster Keaton, Cecil B. DeMille, Anna Q. Nilsson, and H. B. Warner.
The English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber adapted the film into the musical play Sunset Boulevard (1993).
See also Wilder, Billy .
