Sunset Boulevard (DVD)

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Note: In the following joint review, John and Eddie provide their opinions on the film, with John also writing up the Video, Audio, Extras, and Parting Thoughts.

"All right, Mr. DeMille. I'm ready for my close-up."

The Film According to John:
It's been half a dozen years since Paramount released their "Paramount Collection" single-disc edition of "Sunset Boulevard" in a restored and remastered transfer. Never letting a good thing get away, the studio now offers the film in a special, two-disc "Centennial Collection," which includes a whole passel of new documentaries and featurettes. If you don't already own the disc, this latest issue is the one to buy.

The first time I saw Billy Wilder's 1950 film, it was about a decade after Paramount first released it. I was in my mid-teens, and while I remember liking the film, it meant little to me in terms of thematic content. I thought the movie was creepy with its big, old, dark mansion, its nutty old lady, and its sinister butler-chauffeur. But I had no idea who Gloria Swanson was, no idea that she used to be as big a star in silent films as the character she portrayed. I had no idea who Erich von Stroheim was, no idea that he used to be as big a director as Swanson was a star or that he had actually directed Ms. Swanson in the early days. I had no idea who William Holden was, except that he was a handsome leading man. I had no idea who Cecil B. DeMille was, even though I had by then seen and enjoyed "Samson and Delilah," "The Greatest Show on Earth," and "The Ten Commandments." I had no idea who Billy Wilder was, even though I had seen "Some Like It Hot" a year or two before and put it at the top of my comedy favorites. And I had no idea that Wilder intended "Sunset Boulevard" as an exercise in black humor and satire, or that he intended the relationship between the Holden and Swanson characters as a love match of convenience or that there were so many Hollywood in-jokes and allusions strewn about. I just thought the movie was weird and a little bit spooky.

You can tell that, as a teen, even though I loved movies, I was not too keen on the details of who made what, nor did I have much of a sense of film history other than having watched a whole lot of things that people today consider classics. So, the nuances of "Sunset Boulevard" took a while to grow on me. By the time I was in college and taking my first film classes, I saw the movie again with a heightened admiration. Today, it's one of my all-time favorite films, regardless of genre.

In any case, those first impressions of "Sunset Boulevard" are what stand out in my memory, probably more so than what I've learned about it since. I loved the struggling writer, Joe Gillis (Holden), the all-American boy-next-door, seemingly naive and innocent, being debased by his own laziness and greed. I loved the has-been movie star, Norma Desmond (Swanson), a totally bonkers, suicidal egotist, living out her dying fantasies in a decaying Hollywood palace. "Poor devil," says Joe, "still waving proudly to a parade that had long since passed her by." I loved the exchange between Gillis and Desmond when they first met: "Wait a minute. Haven't I seen you before? I know your face. You're Norma Desmond. Used to be in silent pictures. Used to be big." Desmond replies: "I AM big. It's the pictures that got small."

I loved the mansion's broken-down tennis court and its crumbling swimming pool. I loved the ominous figure of Max Von Mayerling (von Stroheim), the butler, playing Bach's "Toccata and Fugue" on the living-room organ (an instrument that played by itself, too, when the wind blew through the pipes), and loved the weird scenes involving the burial of a dead chimp. I loved Ms. Desmond's magnificent, ancient touring car, an Issota-Fraschini, one of the most expensive automobiles ever built. I loved Franz Waxman's eerie background music. I knew it was a special film; I just didn't know how special.

However, I had no idea at the time how deeply "Sunset Boulevard" got behind the scenes of the Hollywood movie trade, how penetrating and substantial its insights were into an industry that exploited and corrupted so many of the people that it employed, just as it used and threw away Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis. I didn't understand how the rotting mansion symbolized the corruption of the movie industry itself. I didn't know what "yes-men" were all about; what the Macombo or Romanoffs represented; what history lay behind Schwab's Drugstore; who silent stars Buster Keaton or H.B. Warner or Anna Q. Nilsson--Desmond's over-the-hill "waxworks" friends--were; who Hedda Hopper was; or where in the world Sunset Boulevard was, for that matter. Heck, I didn't even understand what a paid "companion" meant (or a kept man, a gigolo).

I saw only a film that got more bizarre as it went along, until by the end it was downright frightening. I saw the development of a love triangle involving Joe, Norma, and a pretty, young script reader named Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson). I saw the absurdity of Norma's dreams, her obsessive possessiveness, and her perverted dependence upon her butler, Max. I saw Norma Desmond's increasing craziness, so melodramatically yet perfectly portrayed by Ms. Swanson. I saw Max's increasing strangeness, culminating in his startling revelations to Joe. I saw the climax as a total and shocking surprise. And I saw that surrealistic ending with Norma Desmond descending the staircase as something I wouldn't forget.

Later, I learned to appreciate the film more, enjoying its finer points. For instance, Gloria Swanson was herself an over-the-hill movie star by 1949, the time she made the film; and like her character, she longed for a comeback (and a terrific one it was, even if it was to be her last hurrah). Nevertheless, as it turns out, Ms. Swanson was not the first choice for the role; Mae West, Pola Negri, and Mary Pickford had all turned it down. William Holden was not a first choice, either; the studio had previously offered the part to Montgomery Clift, Fred MacMurray, and Gene Kelly. The excerpt of a silent movie starring Norma Desmond that appears within the film was actually an excerpt from "Queen Kelly," a controversial silent picture starring Gloria Swanson and directed by none other than her co-star here, Erich von Stroheim! Wilder had to fake the scenes involving Max driving the town car because von Stroheim couldn't drive; the filmmakers had to tow the car! The studio shot the movie's exteriors at the old Getty mansion on Wilshire Boulevard (torn down in 1957 for a high-rise).

Finally, and among many other things, they shot the segment with Cecil B. DeMille directing a big Biblical feature on the very soundstage that DeMille was in reality shooting "Samson and Delilah" at the time. John's film rating: 10/10.