Sunset Boulevard study guide

Sunset Boulevard was co-written and directed by Billy Wilder, who also came up with the original idea. He was intrigued by the palatial mansions built in Hollywood by the stars of silent cinema, and wondered what had happened to these people who had once been so famous, but were now forgotten.

The real-life Sunset Boulevard "was a kind of a symbol of Hollywood film production ever since the 1910s. It was the place where Hollywood’s first studio was opened, and a neighborhood flooded with glorious, luxurious mansions belonging to the biggest movie stars of the period." (Mikulec)

In writing the Sunset Boulevard script, Wilder and his co-writers Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman explicitly connected this story of a forgotten star from a bygone era and a failed young screenwriter to the cruelty of the Hollywood film industry, and its treatment of people as disposable commodities.

Wilder began his career as a screenwriter and his films are very writerly – he placed great emphasis on character revealed through distinctive dialogue, and was passionate about effective narrative structure and driving the story neatly forward to its conclusion.

Find out more

• You can find out more about Wilder and his approach to film in '"Well, nobody’s perfect”: Billy Wilder's cynical, classic cinema' on the ACMI website.
• Dig even deeper with this exhaustive and brilliantly written Ultimate Guide to Billy Wilder and his Directing Techniques
• Get some context plus a link to the original Sunset Boulevard script here. Wilder's original opening which presented Joe telling his story to other dead people in the morgue didn't work with preview audiences, so they reshot the opening sequence.
• Filmmaker Cameron Crowe published a book recording a series of conversations he had with Wilder. If you are super-keen you get hold of the book, but you can also have a bit of a taster here.
• Watch the video essay (below): "What would Billy Wilder do?"

Self-referentiality

Sunset Boulevard is a film about the power of Hollywood and the destructive capacity for the filmmaking business to take over people's lives. To stress this power, the narrative remains locked inside the hermetic world of Hollywood highlighting that this very unreal business becomes everything to those under its spell. There are many, many ways that this idea is expressed in Sunset Boulevard including the continual use of in-jokes and self-referentiality.

A significant feature of Sunset Boulevard is the way it breaks down the barrier between what is real and what is fictional through the casting process. The casting of the former silent movie star Gloria Swanson in the role of former silent movie star Norma Desmond was not only bold and cheeky, but also a striking way to express the cruelty of the business of Hollywood and the way actors function as commodities to be used and cast off according to their current market worth. Anther example of what might be called metacasting is the casting of former silent movie director Erich von Stroheim as former silent movie director now butler Max von Mayerling and three former silent movie actors cast as Norma's card-playing former silent movie acting cronies, "the waxworks". For audiences of the period, the most tantalising of these casting choices would have been the appearance of iconic silent movie star and filmmaker Buster Keaton as a forgotten has-been. The fact that renowned director Cecil B DeMille is cast as himself highlights his successful real-life transition from silent films to sound.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Hollywood self-referentiality. For instance, the film that Norma and Joe watch is Queen Kelly, a failed project starring Swanson and directed by von Stroheim. The drugstore where Joe stops off to buy Norma's cigarettes is the real-life Schwabs pharmacy a popular meeting place movie folks located on Sunset Boulevard. Joe lives at the recognisable Alto Nido apartments. And all roads lead to Paramount Studios: Sunset Boulevard was made by Paramount; it was the studio where Gloria Swanson made a series of hugely successful films with Cecil B DeMille; Norma Desmond visits Paramount studios where Cecil B DeMille made Samson and Delilah (a set was reconstructed for the scene between Norma and DeMille); the Paramount News team comes to Norma’s mansion to film the aftermath of Joe’s murder.

Stardom

While present-day movie stars continue to be renowned for their luxurious lifestyles, in the 1920s the stars of the Hollywood silent film industry earned and spent huge amounts of money. Glamour and prestige were at the heart of their public personas and the stars' palatial mansions, fashionable clothes and fabulous parties contributed to their exotic allure. By the late 1940s, most of these stars had disappeared from the film industry and from people's consciousness, but their grand and ostentatious homes, sometimes fallen into disrepair, remained as a testament to their previous fame.

For Billy Wilder, the stark contrast between these actors' former fame and their subsequent disappearance from the public eye was intriguing, as was the way their homes served as monuments to their past glory. This trajectory from fame to obscurity became the germ of the story told in Sunset Boulevard, a story that explored the tragedy of lost status and prestige and the cruelty and power of the Hollywood film industry.

In Sunset Boulevard, Norma Desmond's disappearance from the screen is primarily attributed to the introduction of "talking pictures", feature films with synchronised sound, so that actors could now deliver dialogue for audiences to hear. It is fascinating to realise how big silent movie stars were before the arrival of sound films and how many of these silent movie stars failed to navigate a successful transition to the new medium.

Along with the arrrival of this new form of filmmaking, the implication is that Norma was also reaching the age where she was too old to make the transition. We learn that she was a 16-year-old girl when she was first discovered (by Max) and youth continued to be a premium for female stars during the sound era.

Silent cinema

The first feature-length film in the world is considered to be The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) filmed in Melbourne and a huge international success. The brief flowering of the Australian film industry was outpaced by imports from the US, and once the Hollywood feature film industry got underway, its product became the top entertainment choice in the US and throughout the English-speaking world. Cecil B DeMille's film The Squaw Man (1914) is understood to be the first Hollywood feature.

The Hollywood film industry was a serious business with large profits to be made and, as studios competed with each other for viewers, they recognised that the best way to market these films was through the actors appearing in the films. These actors became part of what is called a star system. A lot of the glamour of silent movie stars depended on them being extraordinary, with unattainable wealth and beauty. In the publicity that was built around the stars, they and their lives were offered as a fantasy that gave audiences an escape from their everyday lives. We can see in the characterisation of Norma that she has come to believe her own publicity. Think about Cecil B DeMille's comment in response to his assistant's comment that he'd heard she was a terror to work with: "She got to be. A dozen press agents working over time can do terrible things to the human spirit."

Silent movies included written intertitles that helped tell the story, but for the most part the story was communicated through the actors' gestures and facial expressions. These needed to be more exaggerated, as they were doing so much heavy lifting in terms of story. From the first moment the audience meets Norma, her histrionic delivery and exaggerated gestures and facial expressions not only show she is always performing for an imagined audience but also that she is using out of date conventions and techniques to deliver this performance. An important part of the language of silent cinema, was the use of the close-up to form an emotional connection with the viewer.

The talkies

A key date in the arrival of talking pictures is the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927. It was the first Hollywood feature-length film to include synchronised dialogue and singing. It is astounding how emphatically audiences chose the new talkies over the silent movies they had previously loved so much, and how they also looked to a new generation of actors to speak the lines they were so eager to hear. Sound required a different more naturalistic acting style, and many silent film stars struggled to deliver lines effectively. By 1930 silent film production had all but finished.

With the arrival of sound, studios needed screenwriters to provide the words that audiences were now so eager to hear. And of course, this is Joe’s role – though just as Norma Desmond is an actor without an audience, Joe is a screenwriter without a movie.

A new era

Sunset Boulevard was made in a post-war era of changing lifestyles, tastes and entertainment choices. It was also made in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision that broke the studio monopoly over production, distribution and exhibition. Much of the discussion that built up in response to this monopoly related to the impact this state of affairs had on creativity and quality, and how the audience was being fobbed off with formulaic films made according to a "recipe with ingredients". In Sunset Boulevard, we get the first glimpse of the business of Hollywood in Sheldrake's office, where Joe is desperately trying to pitch a hackneyed script about a baseball team. This scene effectively communicates that any talent Joe may have had when he arrived in Hollywood has been crushed by disappointment and failure. At the same time, while this scene is played for comedy and we can also see that at least one of Sheldrake's projects has garnered an Academy Award, Sheldrake does not present as a confident producer at the top of his game. And, except for the Samson and Delilah set, there is little to suggest that the present-day industry is a vibrant hive of creative success. This article exaggerates a bit to make its point but it does add an extra layer to the Sunset Boulevard narrative to reflect on what it might be saying about the state of the industry in the present day. In this context, Betty's youthful ideals and commitment to originality could potentially stand for a new era of more human and personal stories.

Find out more

• What do the meta casting and the many inward-looking references to the world of Hollywood add to the narrative?
• Cecil B DeMille was rewarded handsomely for his participation in Sunset Boulevard and the recreation of the Samson and Delilah set was no small undertaking. What does the scene with DeMille contribute to the narrative? How would you describe his performance in comparison to the performances of the other characters? What is the impact of Cecil Be DeMille playing himself when other actors such as Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim merged fiction and reality through the characters they played?
• Silent movie stardom was not only created by popular and glamorous onscreen roles but also by publicity and marketing. Integral to this process were fan magazines. You can learn more about them here.
• To read more about the star system, read the "Feature Films, Stars, Fan Magazines and Scandals" section of this online article.
• You can discover more about Gloria Swanson's real-life rise and fall here.
• Do your own research on: Cecil B DeMille, Samson and Delilah (1949), Erich Von Stroheim, Anna Q Nilsson, Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, Hedda Hopper, Paramount Studios, Hollywood press agents, Schwab's pharmacy and newsreel production.
• Sunset Boulevard is distinguished by its blinkered focus on Hollywood. And we also spend most of our time ensconced in Norma's house which is not only isolated from the rest of the world, but is also a monument to the past. Because of the limited scope of the Sunset Boulevard world, it is worth catching up on some of what was actually happening in American society during the post-war era.
• The video essay (below) provides some helpful context to the making of Sunset Boulevard as well as some perceptive interpreatob if character and theme.

When we talk about genre, we are talking about the kind of film we are expecting to watch. Genres are great for marketing purposes as they help audiences choose a film based on their taste and on their experience of similar films they have watched previously. But what is most exciting is when a filmmaker meets this expectations with something completely unexpected. In the case of Sunset Boulevard, Wilder does this by drawing on a range of genres and narrative styles to create something completely unexpected and difficult to categorise. It has elements of black comedy, social satire, melodrama (drama of high emotion), gothic horror and film noir. It could even be described as a dark fairytale – think "Sleeping Beauty", "Hansel and Gretel" or "Beauty and the Beast".

Black comedy is a hard genre to explain but its purpose is to keep us at a distance from the characters, who are all a bit exaggerated and ridiculous, while also engaging with dark themes such as murder, suicide and mental illness. You could imagine that the Sunset Boulevard plot could have been the basis for a genuinely tragic narrative in the mode of A Star is Born. Instead, the voiceover, dialogue, exaggerated emotions and absurd details (such as the monkey corpse) combine to highlight the absurdity of these characters who have been caught up in the preposterous world of the Hollywood film industry.

Social satire highlights the ridiculous elements of a society. In Sunset Boulevard, the object of the satire is the insider world of Hollywood. Typically represented as a glamorous ideal, Hollywood becomes in Sunset Boulevard a world of insiders and outsiders, with Norma and her decaying mansion standing in for the emptiness of the dreams it offers and the inhumanity of its business model. Joe's voice-over contributes to the satirical perspective. For instance, when the crowds descend like vultures on Norma's house, excited by the tragedy that has taken place there, he comments: "By this time, the whole joint was jumping. Cops. Reporters. Neighbors. Passers-by. As much hoop dee doo as we get in Los Angeles when they open a supermarket." Another element is the hermetically sealed world of the narrative. Through restricting the world of the narrative to the parameters of the Hollywood film industry, Sunset Boulevard highlights its blinkered and limited perspective.

Melodrama is the drama of high emotion and is particularly associated with the silent movie era, where actors relied on exaggerated facial expressions and gestures to tell the story without dialogue. We see how Norma has absorbed this style of acting into her real-life behaviour, so it seems that she is always performing for an audience. (Remember when Norma threatens to kill herself, that Joe sees this as performative: "Oh, wake up, Norma, you'd be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left twenty years ago.") Melodrama plots were typically very sensational and overblown, and characters were broadly drawn and were often created out of stereotypes. We can see how this form of storytelling has influenced how Norma envisages her final scene on the staircase.

Film noir is sometimes looked at as a genre and sometimes considered a narrative style. (It doesn't really matter – I consider it to be a style but this helpful guide opts for genre.) It is most typically associated with crime and detective films of the 1940s and 1950s, and is used to create a sense that the world is a dangerous place, and that society is a space of threat, fear and mistrust. Key narrative elements are: a cynical male anti-hero protagonist; voice-over; predatory female character known as a femme fatale (deadly woman!); recognisable visual style related to the low-key lighting (creating high contrast between dark and light), claustrophobic sets and dramatic camera shots.

You can see how these elements play out in Sunset Boulevard:

• It begins with a crime and a mystery, which positions the viewers as a detective, watching the film and waiting to uncover the perpetrator of and motive for the crime.
• Joe is an outsider with few ideals and very little to look forward to and, as such, is a classic film noir anti-hero.
• The voice-over builds our understanding of the character’s pessimistic outlook and internal conflict. The fact that Wilder lets us know from the beginning that Joe’s voiceover belongs to a dead man is a bold move that refuses viewers any optimistic or forward-looking belief in the character’s redemption or a resolution to his struggle.
• Norma is a femme fatale who lures Joe into her world through her warped and tenuous connection to the movie business.
• Through his extraordinary cinematography, John F. Seitz uses the visual language of film noir to create a world of constraint and confinement. Go to the narrative section of this resource for further discussion of the film noir visual style in Sunset Boulevard.

Gothic horror uses many of the same visual techniques as those associated with film noir – unexpected camera shots, contrast between light and dark, threatening mise en scene and a general sense of fear and menace. (These techniques were first used in German silent cinema and brought to Hollywood by European filmmakers.) Gothic horror becomes very much part of the mix when Joe enters Norma’s mansion. When we talk about gothic horror – we mean the kind of creepy film or story that features haunted houses, shadows, curses, ghosts, vampires, bats, spiders etc.

When Joe encounters Max at the door, it is as if he is under a spell, as he is drawn into the house and crosses the threshold into Norma and Max's private and hidden world. (There is a link between the control Max has over Joe in this first meeting and the power he wields in the final scene.) Gothic elements associated with Norma's house and life frozen in time include: mysterious butler, grand winding staircase, decaying columns, coffin, monkey corpse, rats in the pool, a midnight funeral etc.

Gothic horror is a mode of storytelling that brings the repressed elements of human existence to light – the greatest fears that are hidden and ignored. In the case of Sunset Boulevard, Norma is the dark hidden underside of the Hollywood machine. With its focus on youth, success, modernity and newness, the Hollywood film industry expels and conceals anything or anyone that counters the glamorous illusion.

Romance is integral to classic Hollywood narratives, and in Sunset Boulevard Joe and Betty's relationship alludes to the heterosexual romance relationships that the audience in 1950 would have been used to. However, in the case of this relationship, it is apparent from the very beginning of the film that Joe and Betty have no future together – after all, the viewer's first encounter with Joe is seeing him lying face down in a swimming pool. Their relationship is also compromised by duplicity and betrayal, with Betty cheating on Artie, and Joe deceiving Betty, Norma and his best friend, Artie.

Yet, some of the qualities of Hollywood romance are channelled through Joe and Betty's relationship, with Betty metaphorically resuscitating Joe through giving him a sense of purpose and self-worth. In turn, Joe reveals his better self in the scene where Betty comes to Norma's house. He decides to paint his relationship with Norma in the worst light possible so as to set Betty free. He has made the decision to leave Norma but says to Betty: "Look, Sweetie, be practical. l've got a good thing here. A long-term contract with no options."

Max and Norma's relationship can also be viewed as romance, representing a nightmarish version of this genre through a mutually destructive relationship that leaves them both frozen in the past and disconnected from life and the future.

Find out more

• If you do some reading about genre, you will learn that its key purpose is typically to set up audience expectations. With this in mind, what is the purpose and impact of Sunset Boulevard's referencing of multiple genres?
• Focus on a key scene in Sunset Boulevard and spend some time thinking about the genre/s being referenced in that scene and identify the genre conventions being used. How do these conventions contribute to: story, theme and character?
• Read this quote from a Guardian article written by Pamela Hutchinson and explain how the mixing of genres feeds into this description: "For all its humour, Sunset Boulevard is a bitter and queasy film, and the figure of Desmond is its greatest grotesque, a woman of 50 striving to be 25, surrounded by images of herself and entranced by her own face on a cinema screen."
• There are some very imaginative single sentence descriptions attempting to capture what 'kind' of film Sunset Boulevard is. Try creating your own single sentence description and see how effectively you can describe the film. This could be a fun challenge to share as a class.

Billy Wilder resisted being pinned down to a particular film style and commented that he began directing because so many directors failed to do justice to his screenplays. He was determined that story came first but, in fact, Sunset Boulevard is a masterpiece of visual style. The film's director of photography John F Seitz lit and shot the film with immense craft but always held true to his belief that "cinematography must exist to tell the screen story, rather than to stand out as a separate artistic entity.” (Williams)

The distinction between the two worlds represented in the narrative is an integral element of Sunset Boulevard, with the everyday world of LA placed in direct contrast with the film noir/gothic setting of Norma's life:

"The everyday world ... is conveyed through documentary-like shots at such locations as the Alto-Nido apartments, the Bel-Air golf course and the Paramount Studios lot. Despite Seitz’s belief that 'the least interesting time of the day is noon,' day exteriors often feature the glare of midday sun. They are an effective contrast to the film’s more exotic locale, Desmond’s shadowed, secluded estate." (Williams)

See the images below to compare these two worlds.

The everyday world of Hollywood only appears intermittently to punctuate the suffocating narrative dominance of Norma's world, where her obsession with her past glory overwhelms the mise en scene through lighting, decor and camera. We have already talked about the film noir/gothic lighting that produces shadows and contrast and is associated with threat and menace, and in Sunset Boulevard this atmosphere is magnified by the production design and the cinematography, with Seitz using deep focus (or deep depth of field). The use of deep focus means that the whole shot is in focus so that, instead of the viewer being given one element of a shot to concentrate on, they see all elements of the image, with the foreground and the background given equal weight. In Sunset Boulevard, this technique works in combination with the set design and decor to highlight the claustrophobia of Norma's house, and to suggest it is a labyrinthine series of tunnels closing in on the people inside it:

"Seitz’s lighting within her mansion gives only a hint of sun beyond the cluttered walls and creates a suffocating atmosphere. Desmond’s decadent domain is revealed largely through deep-focus shots that keep the vast spaces of her rococo mansion in sharp view." (Williams)

The use of deep focus means that specific scenes are presented across more than one plane, with what is revealed in the background interconnecting with events in the foreground to tell a second story that could almost be considered a commentary on the narrative being built through character and dialogue.

For instance, as Max tells Joe that his car is being repossessed in the foreground of the shot, Norma's upright impervious demeanour in the background as she continues her card game, communicates so much about her power and how Joe's life has become a pawn in the game of manipulation and control that she and Max are playing together.

Seitz's cinematography works in combination with the mise en scene. Norma's huge once magnificent but now decaying house, the cluttered, object-filled rooms and the composition of the actors in the frame and in the shot contribute to the mood of claustrophobia. The house is presented as a trap from which Joe will never escape. Think about the shots down hallways, the bars across the front door, the tight shots where the actors have very little space around them and the wide shots that reveal the characters overwhelmed by decor and setting. Everything that you see in Norma's house reveals information about her character and about Joe's position in her household.

Find out more

• Spend some time looking at the images below and consider what is being communicated through the use of wide shots and deep focus in each of these shots.
• Dig deep into what is being communicated in the mise en scene of each shot (lighting, decor, set design, actors, composition, colour, props, costume).
• Describe each element and explain the effect of:
  • the visual juxtaposition of each shot – juxtaposition is a helpful term referring to the effect achieved/meaning produced by placing different things next to each other.)
  • the costuming of characters. Are certain shades or particular styles used? What is suggested about personality, status, dreams and desires?
  • the setting and what it communicates
  • décor and props and how they add to our understanding
  • the composition of the characters as a group and in the frame
• How does what you see work on a symbolic level, acting as a motif (a dominant or recurring idea) or metaphor? Explain.

The Sunset Boulevard narrative is meticulously constructed according to the principles of classic Hollywood screenwriting. It follows a three-act structure which includes: an opening that sets up the characters and their story (up until fade to black following monkey funeral) , a middle based on advancing the plot and building character (up until end of visit to Paramount), and a final act where a resolution is reached.

However, while following conventions about pacing (such as the New Year's Eve party providing the midpoint culmination), Sunset Boulevard casts convention aside in terms of what this structure contains. For instance, the classic Hollywood narrative typically includes a heterosexual romance plot. And, in the case of Sunset Boulevard, both the main plot and the subplot are indeed organised around this idea. However, the Norma and Joe relationship is viewed as perverse and destructive, while the Joe and Betty romance is doomed from the start.

Other elements that leave the audience guessing and lend this narrative a twisted and off-kilter quality relate to: the use of competing genres; the interplay between Joe's naturalism and Norma and Max's gothic exaggeration; weird vignettes such as the card game interrupted by the car being repossessed or Norma's march down the stairs to the music of the tango.

The musical score composed by Franz Waxman is an integral narrative element. In particular it builds story and character through competing musical themes: "In Sunset Boulevard, both Norma and Joe have their own leitmotifs (recurrent musical themes), each representing the time in which they live. Norma, who dwells on the past and mentions her encounters with Rudolph Valentino at her parties, appropriately receives a classic-sounding tango melody, while Joe, a 1950s urbanite who lives in the moment, gets a jazzy bebop motif, a type of music that in film and television of the day represented both youth and the hectic element of big-city life." (Wissner) Norma's leitmotif dominates the score and reinforces the strength of her powerful persona.

The opening title sequence

The opening titles set the scene for the rest of the narrative and take the audience into a film noir world of danger, pessimism and threat. The music that dominates the opening is resounding and ominous ushering in the opening establishing shot where the camera tilts down to reveal the title of the film stencilled on the kerb next to the gutter. With this establishing shot setting the scene for the narrative that is to follow, the fact that the film begins in the gutter makes it clear this is not going to be a glamorous depiction of Hollywood wealth but something much more sinister. Note how long the camera remains tilted downwards as it travels relentlessly forward along the road. This is a striking way of presenting the titles but also sustains the grimly urban depiction of one of Hollywood’s most iconic streets, as does the stencilled text of the titles. Accompanied by dramatic, pulsating non-diegetic music, the movement forward of the camera establishes a sense of inevitability and lack of escape. The relentless movement forward comes to an end at the swimming pool and the shock is that it is the film’s star William Holden – and the character delivering the voice over – who is floating in the pool.

The New Year's Eve party

According to screenwriting conventions, the second act of a film typically contains a turning point, sometimes called the mid-point culmination or mid-point reversal. In the New Year's Eve party sequence, the glimpsed possibility that Joe might escape followed by his return, foregrounds what the viewer already knows – that he will never escape.

When Joe first becomes caught up in Norma's household, he believes that he is the one with the plan and is humouring Max and Norma to make a bit of money editing Norma's script. As the second act plays out, the viewer is aware long before Joe, that Norma is the one calling the shots. This kind of awareness on the part of an audience is called "dramatic irony", a mode that emphasises a character's vulnerability and, in this case, lack of knowledge.

Joe is strung along with presents and trinkets, while losing his independence and dignity. From Joe's first entry into the house, accompanied by the hypnotic notes of the musical score, it is as if he is under a spell passively responding to Max's gruff orders. From the moment Joe's bags materialise, it is clear that events are now out of Joe's control. As he empties ash trays, sees his precious car towed away and is measured for a new wardrobe of clothes, he is now playing a role in Norma's life, as directed by Max.

At the New Year's Eve party, Joe realises he is trapped, a realisation highlighted by the extreme high angle shot of him and Norma dancing and underlined by his voiceover observation that: "I felt caught, like the cigarette in that contraption on her finger." When he heads out of the house in the rain and desperately tries to get a lift, it is as if he is a prisoner on the run.

The mise en scene of the crowded, smoke-filled party scene is strikingly contrasted with that of the previous scene in Norma's cavernous mansion. In the opening shot of this scene, depth of field is used to emphasise the number of people crammed into the tiny apartment. The next shot moves into a close-up emphasising the pleasure that Joe and Marty take in each other's company, and the easy intimacy of their friendship. Everything about this scene – Marty's greeting, the lively energy of the crowd, the simplicity of the decor and entertainment – represents youth, fun and being alive. The lighting used here is naturalistic and, despite the crowds, there is none of the sense of claustrophobia communicated in the scenes set in Norma's house through the decor, set design and use of deep focus Nevertheless, even though Joe is given such a warm welcome, his incongruous tailcoat brands him as different and connects him visually to his life with Norma. When he picks up the vicuna coat he shoved with embarrassment into a bookshelf, it is as if he has tried to escape his shackles only to be trapped more decisively.

The visit to Paramount Studios

The scene where Norma visits the soundstage where Samson and Delilah is being shot by Cecil B DeMille encapsulates the conflict between the two eras, with Norma batting away the microphone that looms over her and feasting in the spotlight that Hog-eye the lighting technician turns on her.

In. his article on the way that the silent film industry turned female actors' faces into a commodity to be sold to the audience, Grayson Cooke singles out how this scene communicates the power of cinema to bequeath and take away status and identity. When the spotlight is turned on Norma, "It is suddenly as if, there in the middle of the soundstage, the screening of an unexpected film begins. Where before, unlit, Norma entered the set unnoticed, now, in the spotlight, her “presence” re-asserts itself. Cast-members become spectators and flock around, fascinated with this apparent resurrection, drawn to the light of this spectacle unfolding in their midst." (Cooke, 206). By the same token, we can see that her presence leaves the younger people on set unmoved, while it is the older cast members and crew who are excited by her presence.

In reality and as represented in this scene, Cecil B DeMille is a man who has not just survived the transition to sound but has thrived. The fact that he plays himself lends his character a unique authenticity. The set of DeMille's hugely successful epic Samson and Delilah was rebuilt for Sunset Boulevard and the gravitas lent to his comportment on the set separates him out from the satirical, darkly comedic lens through which the rest of the characters are viewed.

The microphone that Norma bats away at the beginning of the scene is a symbol of the sound era that led to her demise, and the scene is brought to an end by a microphone, when DeMille barks into his mic that everyone needs to get back to work. DeMille's authoritative, future-facing presence is the obverse to Max's backward-looking directorial role dedicated to maintaining Norma's connection to the past.

The conclusion

The conclusion becomes a portrayal of the corrupting power and cruelty of Hollywood, as Norma's empty house is filled with onlookers creating "as much hoop dee doo as we get in Los Angeles when they open a supermarket".

At this point of the narrative, Norma has become a sleepwalker cut off from reality, and the spell, or curse, cast by Hollywood is now complete. Lost in her delusion, Norma appears vulnerable and lacking control. Surrounded by male police and then lured out of her room by Max's direction (which includes a glance of complicity passing between him and the detective), the power and agency she has enacted in her relationship with Joe is diminished by the patriarchal underpinnings of not only Hollywood but society in general. As Max directs his protegé's final scene, his creative authority in this moment is communicated by the people around him wielding their lights as required, freezing in place on the stairs and starting their cameras on hearing his cue.

Throughout the narrative it has been apparent that Norma has a very tenuous hold on reality but in this final scene, it is as if her delusion overlays the entire scene and the other characters have become part of her final performance. When you return to this scene, as you will again and again, think about the classic 3-act structure and the idea of resolution. What has been resolved at the end of Sunset Boulevard? What do you think of this narrative resolution and how does it connect with the pessimistic perspective dominating the narrative as a whole?

Find out more

• Check out Billy Wilder's screenwriting tips and explain how they relate to and illuminate the Sunset Boulevard narrative.
• Have a look at this breakdown of how Wilder's screenwriting tips might be understood in practice, and consider how they might apply to Sunset Boulevard.
• If you want to dig deeper into Wilder's philosophy of and approach to screenwriting, head here.
• Dig deep into Sunset Boulevard's narrative by focusing on key scenes and engaging in close reading. Our scene analysis worksheet (below) offers prompts to support your analysis.

Character is at the heart of this film. And, ironically, considering the Norma Desmond’s great fear of being forgotten, the character lives on in the pantheon of great Hollywood characters. Perhaps one of the reasons she is so memorable is that she is so exaggerated. The implication is that Norma’s identity has become so interconnected with her former star persona, there is nothing left of the real Norma, "the plucky little girl of seventeen with more courage and wit and heart than ever came together in one youngster" that Cecil B DeMille remembers with such affection. Swanson’s performance gives us no genuine glimpse of the sweet girl she once was before she was turned into a commodity with a use-by date by the Hollywood machine.

As well as through her physicality and those terrifying teeth and claw-like hands, Norma’s predatory persona is elaborated through costume and décor. Notice for instance the prevalence of leopard skin and fur, and jewellery that includes a Medusa-like necklace wrapped around her neck (scene when Joe finds himself moved into Norma's house), eagle headpiece (New Year's Eve) and snake armband (final scene). During the scenes where Norma sets her mind to preparing her face for her comeback, she increasingly resembles Frankenstein’s monster, an analogy that serves as a reminder that her monstrous narcissistic persona is a product of the Hollywood machine.

Her costumes were designed by Edith Head, who said that “Because Norma Desmond was an actress who had become lost in her own imagination, I tried to make her look like she was always impersonating someone.” (2) Swanson throws herself into portraying this ageing narcissistic former star as someone whose performance never ends. As I have already mentioned, the Sunset Boulevard narrative has the quality of a sinister fairytale, and Norma’s endless performance calls to mind Karen from The Red Shoes who is cursed to keep dancing forever.

The claustrophobic mise-en-scene in the scenes set in Norma’s house, reinforces that Norma has lost her true self to her star image. There is sooo much to look at, but nothing new to learn about Norma – Norma is a character of excess, so the countless photographs, objects and decorative elements with which she has surrounded herself reveal nothing new about her but exist as a testament to her wealth and fame.

Have you thought about how curious it is that a character who insists on the preeminence and expressive power of the face should talk so much? Moreover, her script is excessively long, and she cannot bear any suggestion that Joe should cut some of the dialogue. It is as if Norma is building a protective wall of words around her star image in the same way that she has walled herself up in her house to protect herself from the reality of the outside world.

In addition to her exaggerated persona, Norma’s desire to return to the screen is viewed as ludicrous because of her age. In an industry committed to female youth and beauty, Norma is just too old to imagine she could play the female lead in a movie. Even though Gloria Swanson looks fairly youthful in Sunset Boulevard, she uses voice and gesture to give Norma a crone-like quality. The absurdity of Norma's dream and the immensity of her self-deception are amplified by her choice of the role of the teenage princess Salome for her "return". The film title Sunset Boulevard highlights that Norma's place in the sun is well and truly over.

There is a horror subgenre labelled hagsploitation that features dangerous older women fighting back against society's attempts to render them invisible. With its gothic horror elements and Gloria Swanson's powerfully grotesque portrayal of Norma, you can how Sunset Boulevard can be perceived in these terms. Yet while this role casts light on a social context that devalues older women (particularly on screen), it also unleashes a powerful performance through which Gloria Swanson demands she be seen and taken into account.

The character of Joe embodies Billy Wilder’s fascination with characters who battle between cynicism and idealism. In the case of Sunset Boulevard, this dilemma is played out through his relationships with Norma and Betty. The fact that Joe allows himself to be absorbed into Norma’s house highlights that he, like Norma, has lost his sense of self and presumably lost sight of the reason he came to Hollywood in the first place. Joe is our guide through the film through the voice over.

In his hard-bitten voice-over Joe uses heightened, expressive language in line with the dictates of film noir. Whereas, in his interactions with Norma, when he can get a word in, the jokey ordinariness of his language contrasts with Norma’s florid over-the-top speeches. Perhaps with his voice-over, he is finally able to be the writer he has always wanted to be.

There is a lot of commentary around the casting of Sunset Boulevard, including the fact that William Holden was cast as Joe Gillis at the eleventh hour. In the critical discussion of the film, it is often suggested that, because of Swanson’s well-preserved appearance and Holden’s rugged persona, the age difference between the two leads is not as clearly articulated as it might be. However, the fact that Joe is portrayed as a wordly-wise and experienced adult highlights the ignominious nature of his place in Norma’s household and of moments such as the one where she orders him to empty the ashtray or when she outfits him in an array of costly outfits.

The curious fairytale logic of the Sunset Boulevard narrative is such that Max appears to have conjured Joe up as a replacement for Norma's dead chimp. That Joe allows himself to be drawn into Norma's life as a replacement for her dead pet prompts questions relating to what motivates Joe to accept this role. It would appear that Joe will do anything to remain in Hollywood, and that even Norma's obsolete association with the movie business beats giving up his screenwriting dream. The message is that once the world of Hollywood has cast its spell, it is almost impossible to imagine life outside its orbit. Despite their obvious differences, Norma and Joe are alike in their desperate desire to cling onto their Hollywood dreams.

Joe as film noir anti-hero

The film noir style is most particularly associated with the post-war era, with the disappointed morally ambiguous anti-heroes typically at the heart of these narratives bearing with them the trauma of war and the difficulty of finding a place in contemporary society. In Sunset Boulevard, there is no mention of the war and the only information offered about Joe's past is that he used to be a copyeditor on a small town newspaper. Be that as it may, Joe is a man who has lost his way and, having failed in his goal of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter, is now struggling to retain a sense of self and purpose. Joe's car is a symbol of his desire for a bigger more glamorous life and, when he watches it being towed away, he is seeing more than his car being taken from him – after all he has already revealed that losing his car would be like having his legs cut off. Norma's ancient and cumbersome Isotta-Fraschini is offered as a replacement, communicating how Norma's past fame and prestige have become a warped replacement for his dreams of a better future.

In keeping with both the gothic horror and fairytale motif of being held captive as if under a spell or curse, Max’s life is frozen in time along with Norma’s. There is a fascinating ambiguity in whether he has been trapped by Norma or he has captured her and is working to maintain the delusion of her ongoing star status to keep her from moving on. Max tells Joe that he discovered Norma when she was sixteen years old, and it seems that he has been directing her life ever since. He has become the director and production designer for Norma’s fantasy life – maintaining an impression of luxury and opulence in the faded glory of her mansion, sending her fake fan letters, and protecting her from the harsh realities of the outside world and her lost glamour.

As the director of Norma’s life, Max procures Joe as a companion to replace her dead chimp and oversees their developing relationship including, it would seem, having the pool refilled, getting Norma's ancient car back on the road and overseeing the New Year's Eve party. It is therefore fitting that Max should direct Norma's final performance, as he steps in with an authority that sees the frenzied crowds that have descended on Norma's mansion meekly responding to his direction.

By the same token, the contrast between Cecil B DeMille at the heart of a vibrant present-day film set and Max von Mayerling living a half life as Norma's servant suggests that Max is as much a victim of the Hollywood machine as Norma. Moreover, just as the final fade to black leaves the viewer wondering about what's next for Norma, it is also a decisive ending for Max, a loss that is registered in the tears in his eyes as he watches Norma's final performance.

Betty offers Joe an alternative identity and future that turns out to be just as much a fantasy as Norma’s dreams of reviving her dead career. Betty, played by Nancy Olson, has the fresh-faced prettiness and unaffected naturalness of someone in her early twenties and she is placed in clear juxtaposition with Norma. With Joe as our guide, we are continually comparing Betty’s youth and authenticity with Norma’s age and artificiality. Where Norma repels Joe with her cloying smell of tuberose, Betty is the epitome of freshness and simplicity, smelling of laundered handkerchiefs or a brand-new auto-mobile. The difference between Norma and Betty is also communicated visually through costume, hair and make-up. And Betty's youth is emphasised by the fact that she wasn't even born when The Jazz Singer was released, while her grandmother worked in the silent film industry with Pearl White.

Unlike both Norma and Joe, Betty has the capacity to learn from her experience and her mistakes, with the story about her nose-job being a repudiation of the narcissism that has destroyed Norma. By the same token, if you think about the sequence where Norma works tirelessly to regain her lost youth in preparation for her imagined role as Salome, then you can see there is a link between the two female characters and the pressure on them to change their appearance to conform to a standard of female beauty imposed by the Hollywood image machine. Also, while Betty has moved on from her desire to appear in front of the cameras, it emerges that she has a family connection to the industry, and cannot imagine a life beyond the confines of Hollywood. While she may no longer be in thrall to the camera, she remains desperate to make it within the Hollywood world that is part of her family heritage. If Joe could be considered to be redeemed at the end of the film, his redemption comes from breaking the spell and setting Betty free.

• Use the character analysis sheet (below) to track the development of these main characters.
• In keeping with the constrained world of Sunset Boulevard, the cast of characters is very limited, but there are a number of briefly glimpsed characters who contribute to building the narrative. Artie is an obvious secondary character, but there is also Cecil B DeMille, the waxworks and Hedda Hopper. Explain the role of the minor characters and how they contribute to building story.

For a film that is so eccentric and that specifically critiques the values and culture of the Hollywood film industry in the first half of the twentieth century, the themes and issues explored in Sunset Boulevard are very relevant to the present day. Sunset Boulevard's exploration of the tyrannical power of the image has achieved a new resonance, with so many of us obsessed with how we represent ourselves and our image to the rest of the world. Norma's narcissism and her never-ending performance is a very recognisable part of twenty-first century representations of the self and identity. The focus on fame and celebrity in Sunset Boulevard is also familiar, so that if we think about the impact of publicity and media attention on present-day celebrities, it can be imagined that Norma – who was only 16 when she began acting – was taken over by her public glamorous star image and lost sight of her authentic identity. The exploration of women and ageing also very much speaks to our times, as does the portrayal of the power of money. Other key themes include:

• obsession
• control and manipulation
• relationships
• deceit and duplicity
• self-delusion
• dreams and aspirations
• loss and disappointment
• identity
• desolation of the outsider

This is such a rich film and can be read and interpreted through different lenses influenced by diverse themes. For instance a focus on gender and ageing highlights Norma's struggle for self-determination in an industry that has treated her as a commodity with a use-by date, and suggests that her authoritarian persona within her household is a form of compensation for her lack of autonomy beyond the walls of her mansion.

In contrast, when looking at the theme of control and manipulation, Norma's narcissistic and bullying personality comes to the fore, along with her unflinching preparedness to destroy those who don't accede to her desires or support her view of her place in the world.

In exploring these themes it is also important to look beyond individual characters and dig into the underlying story of the corrosive power of Hollywood. In turn, the brutality of Hollywood is representative of the wider society that has produced it and that it feeds. This is made clear in the final scene, where Norma breaks the fourth wall and looks straight down the lens of the camera, acknowledging that "There's nothing else. Just us and the cameras and those wonderful people out there in the dark..." As an audience watching Norma's downfall from the perspective of the twenty-first century, we are challenged to think about our responsibility for the toxic media culture that feeds our inexhaustible desire for something – and someone – new to entertain us.

Find out more

• Spend some time brainstorming themes that stand out for you and present evidence for how they are explored in Sunset Boulevard.
• Dig deeper into important themes and build the evidence you need to write an analytic response. Use the theme worksheet (below) to guide your planning.
• Use your notes to write a paragraph relating to your theme, and that uses evidence from the text.
• Brainstorm a set of theme-related prompts and essay topics that encourage analysis – this is much harder than you might think!

• "Billy Wilder About Film Noir: An interview by Robert Porfirio“, Cinephilia and Beyond, https://cinephiliabeyond.org/billy-wilder-film-noir/
• “Film Noir”, Filmsite, https://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
• “Sunset Boulevard”, Filmsite https://www.filmsite.org/suns.html
• “Unpacking Billy Wilder’s 10 Screenwriting Tips”, New York Film Academy, https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/unpacking-billy-wilders-10-screenwriting-tips/
• Ann Bilson, "'Hagsploitation': horror’s obsession with older women returns", https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/18/hagsploitation-horrors-obsession-with-older-women-returns
• Cameron Bel, “Ultimate Guide To Billy Wilder And His Directing Techniques”, Indie Film Hustle, August 19, 2022 https://indiefilmhustle.com/ultimate-guide-to-billy-wilder-and-his-directing-techniques/
• Cameron Crowe, Conversations with Billy, Vanity Fair, 7 Oct. 1999, https://admin.acmi.net.au/admin/pages/139735/edit/preview/
• David E. Williams, "Beyond The Frame: Sunset Boulevard", American Cinematographer, 30 Nov. 2018, https://theasc.com/articles/beyond-the-frame-sunset-boulevard
• Grayson Cooke, "We Had Faces Then: Sunset Boulevard and the Sense of the Spectral", Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2009 https://scholar.archive.org/work/clbvdgzs55brrmar2pqdaqbq7m
• Pamela Hutchinson, “Sunset Boulevard: what Billy Wilder's satire really tells us about Hollywood”, The Guardian, 1 August 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/aug/01/sunset-boulevard-what-billy-wilders-satire-really-tells-us-about-hollywood
• Richard Armstrong, “Billy Wilder”, Senses of Cinema, May 2002 https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/wilder/
• Sam Moore, “Boulevard remains a glorious Gothic horror”, Little White Lies, 10 Aug 2020, https://lwlies.com/articles/sunset-boulevard-billy-wilder-gothic-horror/
• Sam Staggs, Close Up on Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream, St Martin's Press, 2002.
• Scott Bomboy, “The day the Supreme Court killed Hollywood’s studio system”, National Constitution Centre, May 4, 2022, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-supreme-court-killed-hollywoods-studio-system
• Sven Mikulec, "Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett’s Sobering Exposure of the Dark Side of Hollywood", Cinephilia and Beyond, https://cinephiliabeyond.org/sunset-boulevard-billy-wilder-charles-bracketts-sobering-exposure-dark-side-hollywood/
• Tom Joudrey, "Sunset Boulevard at 70: we’re all Norma Desmond now”, The Guardian, 4 August 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/aug/04/sunset-boulevard-at-70-were-all-norma-desmond-now