Sunset Boulevard

Wilder, 1950

A blurb on the IMDB claims that this film is a “hard look at Hollywood when Hollywood was bullied by an absurd censorship.” Hard though the look may be, it can scarcely be as hard as looking at the film itself. Shadows are prototype Adam’s family, the cheese-jeeby electro-lin is verbed into schmalz, Max’s fingers are just that shade of ghoulish white, and Norma’s torso is forever billowing. Ultimately a sad, creepy, unpleasant film, mitigated by the following: Joe Gillis plays a womanizing, opportunistic schmuck whom we find perfectly congenial; the story is related by a corpse; and Gillis’ gives the high hat to both love and fortune, thereby converting the standard Hollywood either/or into a much more delicious neither/nor.


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