SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) - COUGAR TOWN!

This is my contribution to the CMBA Fabulous 50s blogathon and also serves as an entry into my 2014 series, Hooray for Hollywood.

Joe Gillis makes a fateful turn

Billy Wilder, that old softy, he's like a cynical hard-as- nails brass ring on the outside and all sentimental and gooey on the inside. Sunset Boulevard: hard, unforgiving, ghoulish black comedy, right? I used to think so, but now I see it differently. I used to see Norma Desmond as a grotesque old relic who lost touch with reality. Now, older than Norma was at the time of the story (50), she seems perfectly normal (well, except for that monkey....).

Norma invested wisely in oil, real estate, jewels and cigarette holders.
 If she really was nuts, she would have been broke.

Norma normal? Let's examine the facts:

1. Norma is 50 years old. Dead to Hollywood, but hardly finished. She still has passion and when hunky Joe Gillis happens by, well, can you blame the girl? Cougar spotted on Sunset Boulevard!

So, in the 1950s this was considered grotesque......

but THIS was okay? All I can say is  - Norma - you go, girl!

2. Norma says:

 "we didn't need dialogue. We had faces." 

You bet they did, Norma. They had Garbo, Fairbanks, Valentino, Pickford, Pola Negri, Norma Talmadge and Gloria Swanson.

the great face of La Swanson

 "I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

And so they did. The gritty films of the depression married with sound and the true magic of film was lost.

 "They took the idols of the world and smashed them, the Fairbankses, the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who've we got now? Some nobodies!"
Yes, once they opened their mouth,  out came words, words - and suddenly, stars were just like real folks.

The woman was a prophet! But like so many prophets, she is deemed to be a nut case.

Wilder's affection and sadness over the passing of an era is evident (Kevin Browlow's great book about the silent era, "The Parade's Gone By," drew it's title from Joe's observation that Norma was "still waving proudly at a parade that had long since passed her by"). The beauty of Swanson in a clip from Queen Kelly stops the heart. Seeing the face of Buster Keaton melts the heart. They are both beautiful and they evoke not ridicule from the viewer, but awakening of a forgotten longing.

By 1950, the silent screen seemed as old as the Rosetta Stone. The silent stars were ancient relics, either dead,  playing small parts or living in obscurity - or even worse, appearing on television.  The glamour, the mystery, the size of Hollywood stardom had all shrunk to merely lifesize. Wilder, who grew up on the Hollywood glamour of the silent films, never forgot the sheer magical fantasy of the era, even though film had moved so far from it by 1950. We never forget that which first enchants us, do we?

And so, what once seemed to me to be a story about a crazy old bat living in a crumbling mansion is now anything but that. The greatness of this film lies in the push of the realism and the pull of the past. The casting of Swanson, Erich Von Stroheim and those Waxworks (Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, and H.B. Warner) was true inspiration and a bouquet of roses to the past just to show the audience what they might not realize they still missed.

All right, maybe Norma was nutty, but there is real cause for her pain. She lived the dream, but it was only a dream (and a big nightmare for poor Joe Gillis).And as one of the wonderful people in the dark, I appreciate the effort, Madam and Max.

In 1950, Valentino would have been 55, Clara Bow was 45 , Mary Pickford was 58 and Greta Garbo was 45. Too old to be seen. Too old be idolized, thus, too old to be useful. Hollywood is a cruel town.Wilder makes that clear in this greatest of films. And if you think its funny, you're not yet 50.

a cougar's instinct is to hunt