“All Right, Mr. DeMille, I’m Ready for My Close-Up”: 75 years of Sunset Boulevard
In a present obsessed with celebrity culture, algorithmic fame, and the fear of aging out of relevance, Sunset Boulevard still feels extremely contemporary.
Written by Giorgia Cattaneo
Last November, I had the rare opportunity of attending a Sunset Boulevard screening at my local theatre. It was also my first time watching the movie, and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. Released in 1950 and still casting long shadows over Hollywood’s dream factory, Wilder’s masterpiece turns 75 this year. Directed during the golden years of his career, the film – scratchy, stylish, and psychologically haunting – is not the typical declaration of love one would expect, but rather an open poison-pen letter to the state of the cinematic industry back in the Fifties.
A dead man is floating face-down in a swimming pool: it’s Joe Gillis (William Holden), our posthumous narrator and a screenwriter in the story. From the underworld, passing through a decadent Tinseltown, his voice leads us to Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson, here in a career-defining performance), the beating heart of this narration. A former silent goddess discarded by the movie industry with the advent of sound, Norma lives in a crumbling mansion on Sunset Boulevard, surrounded by images of her former glory. The name choice doesn’t seem casual at all, suggesting a place where dreams go to die, illusions fade, and everything is, as the audience will see, eventually destined to set. From the way Norma talks about herself, it’s safe to say she is stuck in a past that will never return to her, no matter how delusional she becomes about it (“I’m big. It’s the pictures that got small.”). Grotesquely exaggerated, her cynical attitude alone appears as a symptom of personal failure, but in reality, it reflects a deeper societal breakdown. More than a character, she embodies the relic of a world obsessed with youth, fame, and beauty, and, most importantly, one that values image over substance. Norma is not real, but her story reflects that of many actors and actresses whose careers, for various reasons, could not withstand such a profound change in the way their profession was conceived. They were all victims of an industry that devours its own from the inside.
Although it’s hardly the first adjective that comes to mind when watching it, some film critics, such as the well-known Richard Corliss, have gone so far as to call Sunset Boulevard “the definitive Hollywood horror movie”. What Wilder certainly introduces here is less a traditional noir – as is, for reference, his own, successful, Double Indemnity (1944) – and more of a gothic fever dream, with all the elements in their place: the haunted house, the ghost of fame, the fatal seduction of ambition. The movie’s history reflects its controversial nature: to avoid censorship or interference from Paramount, which was part of the same studio system that was being satirized, director Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett submitted a dummy script under the title A Can of Beans.
The trick worked, and so Sunset Boulevard became possible. When the movie came out, Hollywood was shifting more and more rapidly: the old studio system was beginning its downfall, and the optimism of earlier decades was paving the way to darker, more introspective storytelling. It is precisely here that Wilder’s critique takes up again, by throwing a sharp spotlight on how the industry treats its screenwriters: just like Gillis, these people are often exploited, erased, or chewed up by a machine designed to manufacture dreams, exactly as if they were products, “on demand”. Though differing in tone and style, the same theme is explored over a decade later in Fellini’s 81⁄2 (1963). Guido Anselmi resembles Joe Gillis in many ways, as both of them are trapped in environments that no longer inspire them, caught between a personal crisis and professional expectations that ultimately make them estranged from their own work. Yet, while Joe is consumed by the system demands, Guido’s struggle is more of an introspective one, where the boundaries between memory, desire, and fiction blur, offering not destruction but, perhaps, a tentative path toward reconciliation.
In a present obsessed with celebrity culture, algorithmic fame, and the fear of aging out of relevance, Sunset Boulevard still feels extremely contemporary. While the machinery may look different, the dream – and therefore, the nightmare – remains.
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