Sunset
Boulevard
a film by Billy Wilder
released through Paramount Pictures in 1950
Screenwriter Joe Gillis, down on his luck and fleeing
the repo men,
pulls into the decaying estate of a decaying star, Norma
Desmond. He concocts a plan that will
allow him to stay at the estate while he touches up an original screenplay
Desmond has written to catapult her back to the top. He chafes at the control she wields over him,
and finds no comfort in the circumspect butler, Max von Mayerling. Joe tries to leave but is guilt stricken by
Norma's suicide attempt. He becomes a
gigolo.
He finds a temporary escape from his
gilded cage in the person of comely Betty Schaffer, a script reader. Together they hope to turn one of Joe's story
ideas into a successful screenplay, all the while inexorably falling in
love. Norma tries to stop it, but it is
Joe who gets rid of Nancy. He then
resolves to leave but is shot dead by Norma.
She slips into insanity as the law finally punctures her carefully
ordered world.
Joe thought he would use Norma. Acting like he gave a rip about the script,
he felt he could earn some dough and get back on his feet. But she fools him. He doesn't get money. And he doesn't leave the estate either. What he gets is Norma's attention, her
embarrassing devotion, and expensively worthless
gifts. But Joe says she
has treated him better than any one else in all of Hollywood. Indeed, without her, he'd be back in
Ohio. But he soon realizes that he can
earn his keep on his own—maybe—with a new script, aided by the beguiling Betty
Schaffer.
He knows he is no good, living the life of a locked-up playboy, and probably wants to protect Betty from that ugliness. He also doesn't want to hurt Artie, one of his best friends, engaged to this same girl. But with his emerging hopes for the new screen story, so grows his attraction to Betty. (Of course—their script is 'Untitled Love Story'). They constantly joke with each other to manage the sexual tension, but finally, one night, she gives in to her feelings.
And yet there is still Norma to deal with.
With Norma harassing Betty
by telephone, Joe decides to invite Betty over to see how he lives. Surprisingly, he acts like he enjoys his
decadent lifestyle. Betty is willing to
forgive him, to forget and just sleep through this nightmare. Yet Joe dismisses her; we think that maybe he
does like it, after all. But with Betty
escorted out of the house and out of his life, Joe takes his leave. He must think he is just not good enough for
the innocent Betty. Maybe she'll always
keep that spark of vitality, but it may be lost regardless. She thought she had learned some sense when
she was rejected by the studio as an actress, saying there's nothing wrong with
being on the other side of the cameras—that it's even more fun. Yes, well...truth is stranger than fiction—especially in fiction.
Sunset
Boulevard sports interlocking love triangles: Max-Norma-Joe and Betty-Joe-Norma. This is one of those twisted love stories
where nobody ends up happy. Betty's
spirit has been broken, Joe is dead, Norma is in prison, and Max...Max is the
most tragic figure of all. We find out
late in the picture that he was the first of Norma's three husbands. He directed her early films and made her a
star. He married her, but she divorced
him. So he sacrificed his career,
offering himself as a butler and manservant.
Life without her was "unendurable." He preserved the illusion of stardom for
Norma, committing his entire life to her fulfillment. And in the end, as Norma is lost to delusion,
she mistakes him for Cecil B. DeMille.
Norma is close to nobody, living her life like it is a movie, always
acting, with exaggerated behavior not out of place in a silent picture. Max just wants to have a front row seat for
the show.
Through the picture, Joe becomes as
delusional as Norma. He thinks he'll use
her, but she uses him, eager for any man to make love to her, even if she has
to buy him off to do it. When that
doesn't work, she goes for the suicide route. He hates her gifts, but makes use of his share. He knows she's playing on his guilt to keep
him around, but she is kind of nice, and a little entertaining, too. He does not see where it all will lead, and
speaks with a much clearer mind once he is dead. One time, huffy and flustered, he asks,
"What right do you have to take me for granted?" Norma replies, "What right?...do you
want me to tell you?"
But even when the truth confronts him
so plainly, Joe still cannot say no. The
siren call of Hollywood is just too attractive.
He can't return to that newspaper job in Dayton, he can't endure the
derision of his jealous, petty colleagues.
And he cannot deal with his guilt.
He must stay with Norma, there in Fantasyland.
The film that Norma tries to put
together, an epic telling of Salome, is quite appropriate. Salome is a princess, in love with a holy
man. She dances the dance of the seven
veils. He rejects her. She kills him, and kisses the lips of the
corpse. She is Salome, obviously, and
both Joe and the public at large serve as the holy man. She will have her revenge. (It would have been revenge enough to foist Salome on the public!)
At the film's climax, Joe does not
take the gun from Norma. He tries once
more to set the record straight, to pull her out of her fantasy world, but Max
will be of no assistance. How can he
admit to Norma that her life is nothing?
Then his life is nothing, too. So
Joe leaves, methodically, incautiously, and in the wrong direction. The way out is not by the swimming pool, but
at the other end of the property, the driveway.
He is shot once, but keeps moving.
Shot twice, he turns for one last look of sadness. Shot a third time, he nosedives straight into
watery oblivion. He wanted to die, to be
free from his guilt, free from future pain, and to put Norma away, where she
belongs.
It's a tragic, funny tale, and few places in the world have seen so much of both as Hollywood, California.