A camera pans to a gutter scattered with dead leaves against a curb that reads Sunset Blvd. The camera pulls back, revealing that the asphalt street before it is fractured and worn. Next, it follows a procession of motorcycles and police cars streaming across the Sunset Boulevard only to find a young man dead, floating face-down in an otherwise pristine Beverly Hills swimming pool amidst the backdrop of an opulent mansion. Here, Sunset Boulevard is metonymic for Hollywood and such images of decay amid decadence depict the inevitable demise of individuals lured by its glamour. This is the portrait on which Billy Wilder bases his film noir, Sunset Blvd. By contrasting Joe Gillis, Betty Schaefer, and Norma Desmond, Wilder continues this image in his film to express the danger of the Hollywood system — in specific, the risk of becoming opportunistic and disillusioned when pursuing fame and glory within the system.
Wilder uses strong characterization to reveal the different stages through which an individual undergoes when in pursuit of Hollywood. Betty Schaefer characterizes the innocent newcomer to Hollywood, Joe Gillis portrays the opportunistic struggler within the system, and Norma Desmond represents the disillusioned veteran produced by the Hollywood system. Through comparison of these characters, Wilder reveals the evils of the Hollywood system.
According to Joe Gillis, Betty Schaefer is the untarnished novice to the system — “she was so like all us writers when we first hit Hollywood.” She is portrayed as the loving, hardworking, and trustworthy woman. Firstly, while Betty is an unemployed actress, she seeks any honorable job and becomes a reader. In contrast, while Joe is an unemployed writer, he dishonorably leeches off of Norma after he finished helping with her Salome script. Secondly, she can honestly and decisively confess her true feelings for Joe Gillis and risk losing the love and security that her relationship to Artie Green offers, whereas opportunistic Joe Gillis cannot do the same and risk losing the love and security of Norma Desmond. In fact, Gillis reveals his lack of morals and basis for idleness near the end of the film, when he explains how he prefers his dependent lifestyle — “a long-term contract with no options” — and suggests that Betty and Artie be “admirable” instead. Because Betty is more feeling, moral, independent, and forthright than Joe, Wilder suggests that after continual struggle in the Hollywood system, which is also filled with long-term contracts and no options, one is bound to become cynical, immoral, dependent, and dishonest. Indeed, when Gillis does choose to lead a more honorable and independent life by leaving Desmond for Dayton, Ohio, he is shot. Thus, through comparison of Betty Schaefer and Joe Gillis, Wilder suggests that those who survive the Hollywood system of “long-term contracts” must adapt to its indifference and even take on Gillis’s opportunism.
Whereas a comparison of Schaefer and Gillis illustrates the dehumanization and greed caused by pursuing Hollywood ‘s riches, an understanding of Norma illustrates the decay that results from existence within the system.
In Norma Desmond’s initial shot, the camera captures her with a long shot, zooming in on her unflinching figure in a way so slow that it suggests the lifelessness and silence of 1920’s era horror films. Desmond’s face is masked by sunglasses as well as the shadows cast by the blinds, hence indicating both her imprisonment within her horror house and her distorted vision of the world outside. Here, Wilder relates the bygone greatness of her glory days in Hollywood to a horror-inspiring confinement to the past and blindness.
Wilder uses the indignant voice of Norma Desmond to remind the audience of the historically unsteady career in entertainment during the rise of talkies and its consequences on the human psyche:
“[the silents] are dead, they’re finished! There was a time in this business when they had the eyes of the whole wide world. But that wasn’t good enough for them. Oh, no. They had to have the ears of the world, too. So they opened their big mouths, and out came talk. Talk! Talk!”
Just as the advent of sound in film abruptly ended the existence of silent stars in the Hollywood system, the advent of television was taking over the existence of movie stars in the late 40’s. Because of the historical context of the film, Norma Desmond’s lamentations better function to remind us that in the film industry, the risk for loss is always imminent and large. Stylistically, this scene utilizes mis-en-scene revealed by a pull-back shot following Joe Gillis‘s figure approaching the door. Desmond speaks of her fall amid a splendid, candlelit room with a dead monkey displayed in the middle of it. The scene parallels the opening scene in which the audience viewed Joe Gillis’s dead body floating in the middle of a swimming pool, hence conveying the motif of decay amid success. As for the composition of the scene, Desmond is seen through a two-shot midshot from the viewing angle of Gillis, continuing the narration through Gillis’s point of view. She exits the extravagant interior of the room and passes through several shadows in the frame as she tells of her elimination from the industry. The shadows give a flickering effect, symbolizing deterioration and a fragile existence. By the time she done reliving her past and passing through the shadows, a key light falls on the side of her face, leaving a quarter of it in the shadow, thus implying that she is incomplete — only a shadow of her lost existence within the industry. Furthermore, when Desmond defiantly rises from her seat in the projection room to deliver her famous lines “We had faces!,“ the flickering light of the projector also only illuminates a sliver of her profile. Though his use of lighting, Wilder emphasizes the faded life Desmond leads, and through use of a low camera angle, he suggests Desmond’s defiance against reality. The scene with the dead monkey and the scene within the projection room expose the fickle nature of the industry and warns of the pain and loss that can result from it.
Next, the audience is introduced to Norma Desmond’s delusion and avoidance of reality throughout many instances of the film. For example, her entire house is filled with portraits of her during her glory days in Hollywood and she rarely ventures out of her house. She cannot face the fact that she has grown old and the world has moved on. Strangely, the mansion she chooses to live in is filled with vaulted ceilings and covered windows. The setting’s spatial emptiness emphasizes her insignificance and brings to mind a shell of the past confining her within it. Desmond seems unnerved by her surroundings and continues with her delusions of grandeur, thereby supporting the strength of her delusions. In addition, we see how desperately Desmond avoids reality when she is in her bedroom scene on New Year’s Eve. Gillis tells her that she was foolish for wanting to kill herself and she calmly retorts back, “Great stars have great pride.” Then, she closes her eyes and slowly covers them with her bandaged arm as if shielding herself from reality and the truth of unrequited love. The scene closes with soft focus and a dissolve after Desmond takes Gillis into her arms, suggesting that she is still in her fantasy world. It seems that when Desmond is not in her fantasy world, she is busy either shielding her eyes from reality or contemplating suicide rather than face her losses and move on. In her final scene, she mistakes the police and news cameras for studio cameras awaiting her return to the movie industry. In a full length tracking shot, the camera follows Desmond’s slow descent from her staircase. It seems as if time has stood still, for she is too entangled in her dream. She pauses at the bottom of the stairs saying how pleased she was to be back, obviously in her dream world, and declares,
“This is my life. It always will be. There’s nothing else -just us and the cameras and those wonderful people out there in the dark… Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
With these final words, her figure approaches the camera and then fades out in a blurring soft-focused close-up, suggesting that up close, in person, she is just part of a nightmarish dream that she has created for herself. Desmond copes with reality by deluding herself into believing that she still holds an important place in Hollywood society. Her lines establish that there is no way to cure her of her delusion and her delusion confirms the evils of Hollywood.
The movie industry provided Desmond with a deceptively comfortable lifestyle in her “white elephant of a house,” but Wilder shows the true evils of the industry by presenting her psychological decay as a result of Hollywood. Thus, the film’s existential philosophies are conveyed when Desmond exposes how within the Hollywood system, individuals can lose their high standing just as easily as they had obtained it. Moreover, from Desmond’s bedroom scene to her final scene descending from the staircase, Wilder shows the audience sees how great loss is a great danger. Moreover resistance to reality through means of suicide and delusion demonstrate the negative impact of such losses.
In the words of Joe Gillis himself, Joe always wanted a pool — “Well, in the end he got himself a pool — only the price turned out to be a little high.” Wilder’s swimming pool represents those things that everyone dreams for when they pursue Hollywood, but the price of those things seem to always be high in the exploitative and demanding world Hollywood is. Thus, Wilder warns the viewer of the deceiving glamour Hollywood casts. While comparing Schaefer and Gillis reveals the danger of the Hollywood system through the depersonalization and opportunism that arise from pursuing its riches, an analysis of Norma Desmond to reveal the danger of the Hollywood system through her ceased existence within it and her disillusionment that arose from obtaining its riches.
