Sunset Blvd. (1950)'s activity - page 2

What is perhaps most surprising about Sunset Boulevard - not just a Billy Wilder classic, but point blank a cinema classic - is how much of real Hollywood is in it. Gloria Swanson was, like Nora Desmond, a silent film star at Paramount (and one of their hottest tickets). She didn't go mad (though she was "aged" out of the business when talkies took over and hadn't been in a feature in more than 15 years). but others like her did have well-reported struggled with mental health (like Clara Bow). C.B. DeMille appears in person as himself. We see producers, scriptwriters, readers, technicians. And it seems like Wilder is making a couple of indictments. One is the very idea of sending actresses (never seemed to happen to the chaps) out to pasture after they hit 35. Nora (and Swanson!) is only 50 years old and treated like a hag ("I thought she died"), and yet, Swanson here proves she can do it all - tragedy, comedy, horror, subtlety as well as theatricality. But Nora is also used to undermine nostalgia for the silent era. She's one of those people who say "they don't make them like that anymore" with a measure of bitterness, and Sunset Boulevard is filled with the words she so hates, with narration on top of witty dialogue. Wilder is a talky writer-director and he affirms himself. Or does he? He still celebrates the silent era here, and his hero is a hack writer who gets killed for his trouble (in a kind of reverse of Video Kill the Radio Star). And so the film has that push and pull between the visual and the writer's mediums - the film maker's internal struggle. And of course, it's well made, has some great classic lines AND visuals. It certainly wasn't my first viewing.