Slideshow
SUNSET BLVD.
U.S., 1950
Directed by Billy Wilder
Starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim
Screenplay by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D.M. Marshman Jr.
Approx. 110 min. DCP.
Luck has run out for William Holden’s hack screenwriter Joe Gillis. But even from the depths of a Beverly Hills swimming pool, Gillis recounts his tormented affair as kept man to Gloria Swanson’s has-been silent star Norma Desmond. “To date Hollywood’s most bitter self-portrait… Over seventy and counting, [SUNSET BLVD.] is far more remote from contemporary Hollywood than the silent era was from Billy Wilder’s landmark film noir when it was released in the summer of 1950.” – Foster Hirsch
Reviews
"That rare blend of pungent writing, expert acting, masterly direction and unobtrusively artistic photography which quickly casts a spell over an audience and holds it enthralled to a shattering climax."
– The New York Times
"A delicious comedy with a psycho edge... This is an unmissable commentary on Hollywood's rejection of its silent past: a kind of Sobbin' in the Rain."
– The Guardian
"Remains one of the best, truest, funniest, saddest and scariest of all movies about Hollywood."
– Chicago Tribune