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Sunset Blvd.

  • Film
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Time Out says

One of Wilder's finest, and certainly the blackest of all Hollywood's scab-scratching accounts of itself, this establishes its relentless acidity in the opening scene by having the story related by a corpse floating face-down in a Hollywood swimming-pool. What follows in flashback is a tale of humiliation, exploitation, and dashed dreams, as a feckless, bankrupt screenwriter (Holden) pulls into a crumbling mansion in search of refuge from his creditors, and becomes inextricably entangled in the possessive web woven by a faded star of the silents (Swanson), who is high on hopes of a comeback and heading for outright insanity. The performances are suitably sordid, the direction precise, the camerawork appropriately noir, and the memorably sour script sounds bitter-sweet echoes of the Golden Age of Tinseltown (with has-beens Keaton, HB Warner and Anna Q Nilsson appearing in a brief card-game scene). It's all deliriously dark and nightmarish, its only shortcoming being its cynical lack of faith in humanity: only von Stroheim, superb as Swanson's devotedly watchful butler Max, manages to make us feel the tragedy on view.
Written by GA

Release Details

  • Rated:PG
  • Duration:111 mins

Cast and crew

  • Director:Billy Wilder
  • Screenwriter:Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, DM Marshman Jr
  • Cast:
    • Gloria Swanson
    • William Holden
    • Erich von Stroheim
    • Nancy Olsen
    • Fred Clark
    • Jack Webb
    • Cecil B DeMille
    • Buster Keaton
    • Hedda Hopper
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