Sunset Boulevard Billy Wilder\'s Classic

Sunset Boulevard

Billy Wilder's classic film Sunset Boulevard provides a fascinating insight into the early Hollywood film industry. The movie explores the gritty insides of a system that is based on the advanced capitalist model of assembly line production for mass consumption. Along the way, behind the bright lights and the glamour, there are human lives that are at stake - human lives that the capitalist machinery consumes and destroys. Sunset Boulevard shows how this process takes its toll on the main character, a has-been silent movie actress named Norma Desmond. Ultimately, Sunset Boulevard shows us the ways in which the Hollywood star system uses and discards its "heroes of consumption" - that is, those who become integrated into the star system, only to be tossed aside once their commodified image is no longer considered attractive.

Ironically, Gloria Swanson, who had herself been a major star in the early silent movie era and had not been able to make a successful transition to "talkie" films, portrayed Norma. When fledgling screenwriter Joe Gillis accidentally winds up in Norma's driveway one day as he is attempting to escape his debtors, he is invited inside by the delusional actress, who mistakes him for a man from the funeral home (her pet monkey has just died and she is awaiting a coffin.)

This introduction sets up the morbid scene that Norma dwells in. With her pet monkey gone, she is now all alone in her decaying mansion, save for her servant Max, who is strangely devoted to the aging starlet, going so far as to foster her delusions about herself. While Norma has been discarded by the industry that made her star and all but forgotten by her fans, Max, it is later revealed, drops autograph requests in the mail to her on a daily basis from fake fans in order to give Norma the illusion that she is still revered.

It is not long before an unsteady relationship develops between Norma and Joe. It is a relationship that is based on need, as both characters are desperate. Joe is in need of just the simple things in life. As a failed screenwriter, he is unable to pay his bills, and no one in Hollywood even cares about him enough to lend him money to get through the tough times. Norma, on the other hand, has plenty of money. but, despite her self-perpetuating delusions, a part of her is still aware that she is no longer considered desirable by the Hollywood machinery that had elevated her to stardom. She wants desperately to be able to work again, and has taken to penning scripts herself in the hopes of landing upon a comeback vehicle that famed director Cecil B. DeMille will want to work on. Joe arrives into her life almost like an angel sent from heaven. She immediately offers him a job, and he reluctantly agrees. The fact is, despite his reluctance in dealing with the crazy old woman, who is clearly "dried up," Joe needs the money; at the precocious point in his career, he cannot afford to turn down any job, no matter how bizarre it may seem.

Joe concedes to work for Norma, despite the less than formal contractual agreements - he is required to live in her mansion, in a room located above the garage. What is more, he is given very little freedom in writing the script that is meant to be her comeback picture - she is constantly looking over his shoulder, and in her crazed megalomania, refuses to allow him to throw out any scenes she has written that she is meant to appear in.

Joe needs Norma and Norma needs Joe. One of the most tragic, poignant features of Norma is that she is so desperate to have someone in her life, it is almost certain that she would have latched on to anyone who entered the picture the moment that Joe happened to. It is no coincidence that he arrived as she was burying her monkey. As the film progresses, we watch as Joe is gradually transformed into Norma's monkey. He becomes first her writer, then her friend, her lover, and ultimately, her salvation. He becomes trapped in a web that, try as he might, he is unable to extricate himself from.

Of course, the scenario is not so simple. For Joe is not actually trapped in Norma's mansion - he can leave whenever he likes - and he does. First, he leaves on New Year's Eve, in an effort to resist Norma's romantic advances. He flees to a friend's party, where he becomes crosses paths with Betty Schaefer, a script reader from Paramount who earlier in the film had rejected one of his screenplay pitches. Although engaged to a mutual friend of theirs, Betty is clearly attracted to Joe and even proposes that the two of them work together. Just as they begin to flirt, Joe learns that Norma has attempted suicide back at the mansion. Distraught, he quickly returns - whereupon, at the stroke of midnight, he ultimately succumbs to Norma.

It is at this point in the film that Joe becomes Norma's "kept boy." He is lavished with gifts and riches. The only thing he must give Norma in return is total devotion. Joe effectively becomes, alongside Max, a sidekick in Norma's sad melodrama by and of herself. Like Max, he is reduced to the role of a servant - only in his case, he is an emotional servant. At a chilling moment later in the film, it will be revealed that Max himself was once married to Norma. Joe is thus a reflection of Max at a younger age, in an earlier era - an era of affluence that Norma, try as she might, is unable to recapture.

One of the key scenes in the film involves Norma's visit to Paramount Studios to see Cecil B. DeMille. Joe had finished the script several weeks prior, based heavily on Norma's insistent revisions, and has yet to receive a personal phone call from DeMille. Rather, one of DeMille's underlings has called her repeatedly, presumably on behalf of the great director. Offended, the diva actress refuses to take any calls that are not from DeMille personally. Having made several films with him prior to the "talkie" era, she is operating under the delusion that she still means something to him - when, in actuality, the director has moved on.

At this point in the movie, it is revealed to the three male characters involved in the scene - Joe, Max, and DeMille himself - that the incessant phone calls were not made on behalf of DeMille. Rather, the studio has been calling with a request to rent Norma's antique car as a prop for a film. Norma herself has no further value to the Hollywood system, as DeMille's gentle rebuttal makes clear. When she visits the set, the actors and crew descend upon her. Someone whispers, "Is that Norma Desmond? I didn't know she was still alive!" She has become a living relic, an icon of the past who has no further use in the present. She provides an image to all those currently working on DeMille's film of what they will eventually become.

Joe continues to seek a means of escaping Norma's insane universe. While his first escape attempt occurred on New Year's Eve (as described above), Joe's escape attempts continue once he has settled down to domestic existence with Norma. At night, after she retires, he sneaks off to the Paramount lot, where he works with Betty on a screenplay. Betty serves as a symbol of the "normal" life that Joe so desires, but does not have the confidence he will ever be able to attain on his own.

It is Joe's third escape attempt that proves fatal. When Norma discovers Joe's nightly escapades with Betty, she reacts with fury. She attempts to call Betty and inform her of Joe's dirty little secret - the fact that he is being kept by Norma. Joe catches Norma in the act, and grabs the phone out of her hands. He tells Betty that she should come and see for herself the situation that Joe is living in.

After Joe dismisses Betty, assuring her that he will never be able to provide her with the secure existence that her fiance is offering, Joe decides to leave Norma - and the Hollywood system altogether. But Norma will not allow him to leave, for "nobody leaves a star." It is at this point that Norma shoots Joe dead, thus catalyzing the film's famous climax, whereupon the media descends upon the former silent star's estate, giving her one last chance in the spotlight before she disappears into the oblivion of obscurity.

Sunset Boulevard in many ways serves as a stringent critique of what Adorno and Horkheimer have labeled "the culture industry." The culture industry, of which Hollywood is inevitably a part, is a result of advanced capitalism, in which m]arked differentiations such as those of a and B. films, or of stories in magazines in different price ranges, depend not so much on subject matter as on classifying, organizing, and labeling consumers. Something is provided for all so that none may escape; the distinctions are emphasized and extended. The public is catered for with a hierarchical range of mass-produced products of varying quality, thus advancing the rule of complete quantification. Everybody must behave (as if spontaneously) in accordance with his previously determined and indexed level, and choose the category of mass product turned out for his type. Consumers appear as statistics on research organization charts, and are divided by income groups into red, green, and blue areas; the technique is that used for any type of propaganda (Adorno & Horkheimer).