It is with much trepidation that I step down Sunset Boulevard. Reviewing a film that for 50 years has been considered a masterpiece by much of the film community is a daunting task and one that could easily end in luminous insight or ridiculous failure. Few films approach Sunset Boulevard’s level of cinematic perfection or Billy Wilder’s insight into the reality of the Hollywood system. Along with Out of the Past, it represents the pinnacle of what noir can be — a bleak and shadowy representation of the darkness visible in the human heart.

If asked to name the first shot of Billy Wilder’s inimitable masterpiece Sunset Boulevard, a common answer might be the famous shot of William Holden floating facedown in a pool, a hint of blood coming out of his suit jacket, flashbulbs popping above the surface. Indeed; it’s a bravura shot and one that took more than a hint of cinematic trickery to create. But it’s not the first shot.

Sunset Boulevard has one of the most thrilling openings in film noir, beginning with a slow dolly gliding across a featureless concrete surface until we see the words SUNSET BLVD. spray-painted in brawny stencil on the curb. But this isn’t just a movie title — we see these words emblazoned around the gutter. We’re not shown the famed Hollywood mansions or lush palm trees; instead we get our faces smashed into the pavement and kept there for a good amount of time as title cards are shown. With an elaborately different kind of mise-en-scène, Billy Wilder is already making sure we know that this isn’t the Hollywood we’ve always thought of. This is the real deal: a cold and colorless sewer of a world where even the fondest dreams go to die.

Palm trees or mansions don’t fill the screen until police cars start to roll by and Joe Gillis pipes in with narration telling his sad story. He is the man lying facedown in the pool and he’s going to be a very well-founded narrator for his own story. After all, what does the guy have to lose?

In his essential essay on film noir, Paul Schrader said that narration in film noir “creates a mood of temps perdu: an irretrievable past, a predetermined fate and an all-enveloping hopelessness.” Joe Gillis’ narration in Sunset Boulevard (one of the films Schrader cites) never sounds as hopeless as Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past, but neither does he sound pleased with himself like Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity. Gillis (both on screen and in the narration) is sardonic, consistently sarcastic, and never sounds one bit sorry. Wilder has written narration providing the antithesis to Raymond Chandler; William Holden’s voiceover doesn’t sound like a warning to viewers, but more like a pity party. “See what happened to this poor, stupid schmuck?” he seems to be saying. “He was gullible … but you’d be taken in just as easy.”

Joe Gillis is a struggling writer barely making enough cash to pay the rent and certainly not enough to make car payments. But he has his bases covered when the authorities come looking for his car: he’s secretly parked at Rudy’s Shoeshine Parlor where “Rudy never asked any questions; he’d just look at your heels and know the score.”

At Paramount Studios, Joe speaks with a producer named Sheldrake about a baseball drama he’s written. Sheldrake wants to turn it into musical about a women’s softball team. They call for the secretary to deliver the script – her name is Betty Shaffer and she’s quick to say that Joe’s script is “just a rehash of something that wasn’t very good to begin with.” Taken aback by her lack of tact and her undeniable cuteness, Joe tells her that next time he’ll write her The Naked and the Dead. He leaves, stops a few places, and finally inventories his prospects. They add up to zero and on his way back to the apartment, those annoying authorities from the apartment chase after him.

While in hot pursuit, one of his tires blow and he’s forced to pull into a hidden driveway with an old garage. There’s a fancy old car in the garage as well.

And this is just the beginning.

The huge house waiting for him behind the overgrown shrubbery is, as you know, Norma Desmond’s – a forgotten star of silent films with a career pounded into obsolescence by the dawning of sound technology. Gillis is immediately confronted with the butler Max and after being mistaken for someone else, is introduced to Norma Desmond.

“You’re Norma Desmond.” He says. “You used to be in pictures. You used to be big.”

“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

Desmond is a cadaverous creature and Gloria Swanson plays her with an eerie confidence that is hard to shake. Like the tail of an over-excited young pup, the skeletal fingers of her right hand never stop moving, drumming or grasping. Some would say the performance borders on overacting, but it must be pointed out that Norma Desmond has completely receded into a twisted pastiche of every silent film character she has ever played. She is not herself, but the sum of all her roles. Her career is dead and so is her soul.

Norma follows Joe downstairs and when she finds out he’s a writer, she convinces him to fashion her epic Salome “script” into something the great Cecille B. Demille would direct. Joe is reluctant, but what else does he have to do?

What he doesn’t know is that by now, Norma Desmond has fallen hopelessly in love with him. She convinces Joe to move into her mansion … all expenses paid. It works out until she becomes increasingly possessive. Eventually the pretty young secretary from Sheldrake’s office falls in love with Joe, but Norma’s clutches have gone too deep. The screen star is possessive to the point of insanity and her delusions lead to what Wilder shows us in the beginning: a dead Gillis.

Sunset Boulevard is the height of film noir, wrapped in classic Hollywood melodrama. The performances and direction never strike a wrong chord and the film is no less effective today that it was in 1950. Many directors have tried to make films exposing Hollywood for what it really is, but this will always remain the finest for its biting and effective subtlety. Wilder exposes every corner of Hollywood here, not just one part. Writers, directors, actors, producers, office workers … no one goes untouched. His cynicism is ever-present, but never as bludgeoning as it would become in Ace in the Hole. Sunset Boulevard is never distracted by anything other than its primary objective and because of that, it is one of the greatest films ever made. The sum of its parts is a brilliant, glorious whole.

Max Waxman’s musical score is a thickly orchestrated work. It’s hard around the edges with heavy brass, but coupled with arpeggiated piano motifs that evoke a profound sense of dazed confusion. But unlike many scores from this time period (even his own score for Hitchcock’s Rebecca a few years earlier) Waxman’s work on Sunset Boulevard is not the least bit sentimental. It pounds and pulses through the opening scene like a relentless warhorse, eventually calming down and working very subtly to reveal different layers of the film. Film scores from the 40s and 50s often let the string section of the orchestra get carried away, but from the first second of Sunset Boulevard, Waxman’s score is a commanding presence

One of Norma’s favorite self-loving rituals is to watch old silents in her living room. Near the beginning of their relationship, she shows one of her old films to Joe. As they sit in the darkened living room, Max starts the projector and a beautiful ray of reflected light shines down in between the couple. The film begins and Norma starts her obligatory commentary track:

Still wonderful, isn’t it? And no dialogue. We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces. There just aren’t any faces like that any more. […] Those idiot producers! Those imbeciles! Haven’t they got any eyes? Have they forgotten what a star looks like? I’ll show them. I’ll be up there again. So help me!

With subdued irony that shouldn’t be hard to notice, Wilder uses a specific intertitle from the silent picture to create a piece of mise-en-scène establishing the core of his film. Halfway between Norma’s dialogue, we see the actual movie — a closeup of the beautiful young Desmond surrounded by melting candles, looking up at someone unseen and saying:

Quite obviously it refers to Norma’s dream of being a star again, but it is just as applicable to Joe and his on-and-off delusion that Hollywood will work for him. Or to Betty Schaeffer’s love for Joe … a love that could never ever be. Or the husband-turned-butler Max, who takes the director’s chair again during Norma’s infamous and delusional walk down the staircase. As we’ll see later, the consequences of these selfish, ingrown dreams can only end as a nightmare for all.

“Cast out this wicked dream which has seized my heart.”

Sunset Boulevard proves that in the twisted and selfish land of Hollywood, this can rarely be accomplished.