Sunset Boulevard
A film by Billy Wilder
Year: 1950
Country: USA
English with English sub titles
Run time :110 min
3rd Oct 2010; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theater, Perks School
Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard'' is the portrait of a forgotten silent star, living in exile in her grotesque mansion, screening her old films, dreaming of a comeback. But it's also a love story, and the love keeps it from becoming simply a waxworks or a freak show.
Gloria Swanson gives her greatest performance as the silent star Norma Desmond, with her grasping talons, her theatrical mannerisms, her grandiose delusions. William Holden tactfully inhabits the tricky role of the writer half her age, who allows himself to be kept by her. But the performance that holds the film together, that gives it emotional resonance and makes it real in spite of its gothic flamboyance, is by Erich von Stroheim, as Norma's faithful butler Max.
The movie cuts close to the bone, drawing so directly from life that many of the silent stars at the movie's premiere recognized personal details. In no character, not even Norma, does it cut closer than with Max von Mayerling, a once-great silent director, now reduced to working as the butler of the woman he once directed--and was married to. There are unmistakable parallels with von Stroheim, who directed Swanson in "Queen Kelly'' (1928).
In one of the greatest of all film performances, Swanson's Norma Desmond skates close to the edge of parody; Swanson takes enormous chances with theatrical sneers and swoops and posturings, holding Norma at the edge of madness for most of the picture, before letting her slip over.
We might not take her seriously. That's where Max comes in. Because he believes, because he has devoted his life to her shrine, we believe. His love convinces us there must be something worth loving in Norma, and that in turn helps explain how Joe can accept her.
Sunset Blvd. is considered by some to be a black satire, by others to be film noir, and by others as a character-centered drama. To an extent, all of these categorizations are correct, since elements of the three are present in the text. What everyone can agree upon, however, is that this is the greatest film about Hollywood ever put on celluloid by Hollywood.(Source:Internet)
Billy Wilder(1906 -2002)
From the late 1930s to the early 1960s, Billy Wilder dominated Hollywood’s Golden Age. With over fifty films and six Academy Awards to his credit, he is one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest directors, producers and screenwriters. His films range from stark melodrama, like DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), THE LOST WEEKEND (1945) and SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950), to antic farce, such as THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955) and SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), to satiric comedy, like A FOREIGN AFFAIR (1948) and THE APARTMENT (1960). Billy Wilder has had a powerful creative influence on both the experimental and traditional film industries in America.
He was born Samuel Wilder on June 22, 1906 in Sucha, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Max Wilder, who died in 1926, ran a chain of railway cafes. His mother Eugenia had spent several years in the United States in her youth. She nicknamed her younger son “Billy” because of her fascination with legendary American hero, Buffalo Bill. Wilder briefly studied law in Vienna before obtaining a newspaper job writing interviews, crime and sports stories, and hard-hitting personal profiles. In 1926, Wilder’s interests led him to a publicity job with the American jazz bandleader Paul Whiteman in Berlin. He remained in Berlin writing for the city’s largest tabloid.
He remained in Germany co-writing and directing films until the rise of the Nazis forced him to move to France, and ultimately to the United States. Wilder arrived in Hollywood in 1934 with virtually no money and little knowledge of English.
He worked on and off until 1938, when he began a long and fruitful collaboration with Charles Brackett. Their partnership, which lasted twelve years, produced a succession of box office hits. The 1950s saw Wilder produce several films alone ncluding STALAG 17 (1953) and THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, before teaming up with the writer/producer I.A.L. Diamond in 1957. The two would collaborate for over twenty years, producing such major hits as WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1954), SOME LIKE IT HOT and THE APARTMENT.
Often running into criticism for his presentation of taboo topics such as alcoholism and prostitution, the high quality of the films redeemed him in the eyes of both the public and the industry. Of the many great stars he directed, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Shirley MacLaine, Jimmy Stewart and Jack Lemmon are only a few.
Wilder’s films remain an important part of American culture, and he is viewed as one of Hollywood’s greatest successes.
(Source:Internet)
