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{{work|wppage=Sunset Boulevard (film)}}
[[File:Sunset_Boulevard_Poster.jpg|frame]]
{{quote|''Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture . . . they think the actors make it up as they go along.''}}
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{{quote|''[[Signature Line|All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.]]''}}
 
[[Billy Wilder]]'s classic [[Film Noir]] from 1950, ''Sunset Boulevard'' is a dark take on the film industry and the fleeting nature of fame, to this day one of Hollywood's most scorching (and yet wistful) [[Horrible Hollywood|depictions of itself]], and indeed one of the greatest films of all time. (In 1998, the [[American Film Institute]] ranked it as the twelfth best American film of the twentieth century.) While the characters are deeply flawed, some of them [[Moral Event Horizon|beyond any redemption]], the film still presents them each as complex, sympathetic, and even endearing.
 
In 1993, it was [[Sunset Boulevard (musical)|adapted]] into [[The Musical|a musical]] by [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]]. The Broadway premiere starred [[Glenn Close]], and Thethe 1996 Australian premiere in Melbourne showcased a relative unknown named [[Hugh Jackman]], who played Joe Gillis opposite Debra Byrne as Norma Desmond, (who, at the time, was ironically Australia's own [[White Dwarf Starlet]]). It won the 1995 Tony Award for Best Musical, in a year in which [[Damned By Faint Praise|only one other show was even nominated]].▼
As the film opens, a man ([[It Was His Sled|not yet identified]]) has been found dead [[Rule of Pool|floating in a pool]] in the backyard of an enormous [[Los Angeles|Hollywood]] [[Big Fancy House|mansion]] on [[Title Drop|Sunset Boulevard]]. [[Lemony Narrator|Our]] [[Deadpan Snarker|narrator]], a jaded and struggling screenwriter named Joe Gillis ([[William Holden]]), takes us back and tells us [[How We Got Here]].
 
Some months earlier, Joe, blindly fleeing his creditors, winds up in what appears to be an abandoned mansion, only to find that silent movie great Norma Desmond ([[Gloria Swanson]]) still lives there with her Austrian manservant, Max von Mayerling ([[Eric Von Stroheim]]). The delusional Norma believes that her adoring fans still desperately want her to return to the screen, more than two decades after the advent of "talkies" have obsoleted her and every other silent-film star on the block. Once Norma learns that he's a screenwriter, she offers him room, board and refuge from his creditors -- in exchange for his help in revising the truly hopeless screenplay she's been writing for twenty years to prepare for her comeback--sorry, [[Insistent Terminology|return.]]
 
At first, Joe sees her as a sap he can use to bide time and make some easy cash, but it becomes [[Grey and Gray Morality|increasingly blurred just who's playing whom]]. More and more, he's trapped in his gilded cage: Norma buys him expensive things but never actually pays him, leaving him more and more dependent on her [[Clingy Jealous Girl|every fickle whim]]. Convinced her script (which is juvenile, trashy, and hours too long) will restore her to her rightful place as the greatest star of her day, she puts herself through a strict and at times absurd regimen to prepare herself for her return. She chooses to forget that she's now fifty rather than twenty-five, and for a Hollywood beauty queen, fifty might as well be one hundred.
 
Meanwhile, in secret, Joe has been working with Betty (Nancy Olson), an attractive young female screenwriter, on another script -- a script Joe sees as his redemption in more ways than one. Max, who has a few secrets of his own, appears increasingly annoyed at the attention Norma lavishes on Joe, and at Joe's dismissive attitude toward it. After a failed suicide attempt by Norma on finding out about the Other Woman, things come to a head, leading to a shocking conclusion which is also the [[How We Got Here|film's opening]].
 
▲In 1993, it was adapted into [[The Musical|a musical]] by [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]]. The Broadway premiere starred [[Glenn Close]], and The 1996 Australian premiere in Melbourne showcased a relative unknown named [[Hugh Jackman]], who played Joe Gillis opposite Debra Byrne as Norma Desmond, who, at the time, was ironically Australia's own [[White Dwarf Starlet]]. It won the 1995 Tony Award for Best Musical, in a year in which [[Damned By Faint Praise|only one other show was even nominated]].
 
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{{tropelist}}
* [[All Take and No Give]]: Gillis takes because Norma gives and ''gives''.
Line 108 ⟶ 99:
'''Norma''': ''What you're trying to say is that you don't want me to love you. Is that it?!''
''(She slaps him and runs upstairs.)''
** Then, later that evening, {{spoiler|she slits her wrists with his razor in a halfhearted suicide attempt}}.}}
----
'''The musical also contains examples of:'''
* [[Adaptation Distillation]]: The musical, while staying extremely true to the film, gives more insight into Norma's character, making her a much more tragic and sympathetic well rounded figure, bordering almost on a [[Broken Bird]].
* [[All Musicals Are Adaptations]]: Yep. The plot of the musical is basically identical to the movie, with possibly a few more details tossed in.
* [[Dark Reprise]]: At the end, after finally getting her audience, her cameras and the attention she so desperately craved, Norma belts out a powerful reprise of "With One Look," only the extremely dark and creepy orchestrations remind us what is really going on; {{spoiler|she just killed a man, went insane and is being taken away by the police as the newsreel cameras record her final descent and humiliation.}}
* [[Final Love Duet]]: Subverted, as it occurs right ''before'' the finale and its [[Twist Ending]] (which, of course, [[It Was His Sled|the male lead does not survive]]).
* [[Grief Song]]: "Surrender".
* [["I Am" Song]]: "With One Look".
* [["I Want" Song]]: "As If We Never Said Goodbye".
* [[Mythology Gag]]: During Artie's New Year's Party, one of the girls present sings about her desire to work with [[Billy Wilder]], who of course directed and co-wrote the original film.
* [[Race Lift]]: In the original Canadian production, Norma was played by [[wikipedia:Diahann Carroll|Diahann Carroll]], who is African American.
** Some regional productions have cast a black actor as Joe Gillis.
* [[Shout-Out]]: [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]] based Norma's "mad scene" on a similar scene at the end of Donizetti's opera ''Lucia di Lammermoor''.
* [[Title Drop]]: "Sunset Boulevard," the Act 2 opener.
 
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Sunset Boulevard]]▼
[[Category:Films of the 1950s]]▼
[[Category:Academy Award]]
[[Category:Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]
[[Category:National Film Registry]]
[[Category:Danny Peary Cult Movies List]]
[[Category:Academy AwardFilm]]
▲[[Category:Films of the 1950s]]
▲[[Category:Sunset Boulevard]]
[[Category:Multiple Works Need Separate Pages]]
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