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Movies & TV

Sunset Boulevard

SUNSET BOULEVARD (Paramount, 1950) D: Billy Wilder, w/ Gloria Swanson, William Holden. Rating: NNNNN Blu-ray package: NNNNN


Everything comes together in Sunset Boulevard to make it one of the world’s great films noir, Hollywood movies about Hollywood and good-as-it-gets-anywhere classic cinema.

Billy Wilder’s tale of a broke screenwriter who falls into the clutches of a forgotten silent movie star is elevated to something resembling tragedy by a tight, witty script with scenes both surprising and inevitable, complex characters, sumptuous visuals and a big theme: corruption and compromise.

At its centre is Norma Desmond, once the silent screen’s greatest star, now a half-mad recluse obsessed with mounting a triumphal comeback. She’s a creature of exaggerated gestures and overblown emotions, but Gloria Swanson shows us the cunning and vulnerability behind the grotesquerie and never lets Desmond become laughable.

In contrast, William Holden keeps his performance small and tight to present screenwriter Joe Gillis as a cynical opportunist who can’t hide his self-loathing.

There is a previously unseen deleted scene to mark the Blu-ray debut, but most of the lavish extras come from Paramount’s Centennial Collection DVD, with excellent pieces on stars Swanson and Holden and director Wilder, the movie’s origin and legacy and much more.

EXTRAS Commentary, stars and director bios, making-of docs, appreciation docs, costume designer Edith Head doc, locations doc, studio doc, more. B&w. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese audio and subtitles.

movies@nowtoronto.com

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