@randywhite3947 Off the top of my head: Casablanca. The Year of Living Dangerously. A Clockwork Orange. The Red River. The Maltese Falcon. A Single Man. Pride And Prejudice. Casino Royale and Skyfall. Snatch. 12 Monkeys. Mad Max: The Road Warrior and Fury Road. Rocky 4. Desperately Seeking Susan. Basic Instinct. The Quick and the Dead. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (either one). 2001: A Space Odyssey. American Gigolo. Showgirls. Witness. The Right Stuff. Pink Flamingos. Andy Warhol’s Bad. The Matrix. Das Boot. The Talented Mr Ripley. Brokeback Mountain. Domino. Mario. Three Kings. Gia. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Nosferatu. The Hunger. There are others that never let me down, but I can’t think of them at the moment.
One of the most brilliant things about this film is its score, by Franz Waxman. Waxman employs a "leitmotif" for each of the principal characters, a theme which plays whenever each is having a particular scene. Norma's theme, which can subtley be heard during her scenes, becomes distorted and dissonant upon her insane, final descent down the staircase and into the cameras at the end. It's sheer genius.
I think Gloria nails this performance I don’t think there’s ever been another like it. Her voice ,her face , every move was so perfect! She was still gorgeous too
You are correct: her friends are all actual silent movie stars, like Buster Keaton. And the butler is played by Erich Von Stroheim, one of THE very first "genius" artists in Hollywood/cinema. Notorious director! His character is quite accurate: there was Griffith, De Mille and Von Stroheim, as far as giants of the at early Hollywood era of the 1915-1925 period. Gloria Swanson also, huge star in the 20s, first in Cecil B. DeMille films. Later Stroheim directed Swanson in "Queen Kelly", one of the biggest bombs in Hollywood history, ended his career. When you see them watching her old films, that's what they're showing: "Queen Kelly". And the idea of glamorous Gloria Swanson doing Chaplin (her friend and contemporary) is definitely another "meta" thing. There had NEVER been "celebrity" as we know it until the early movie stars. People didn't know what to do with all this love and affection they had for these people on the screens. So these early movie stars really got so much intense adulation, some of them for 20 years like Mary Pickford, the original Queen of Hollywood (and who was originally offered this part. Mary Pickford really did "build" Paramount, as Norma Desmond boasts about herself. It was built on Mary Pickford movies). And then overnight: all gone. All that fame, all that love from millions.....gone. And these people went on and lived long lives, often in obscurity, and the medium that they pioneered and invented totally forgot them. Gloria Swanson INVENTED Hollywood glamour as we know it. She is THE original glamorous movie star, the archetype. The more I learn about the silent era - which has become a real passion of mine over the last bunch of years - the more I see in this movie! It really is brilliant. "Singin' In The Rain" from 1952 is the flip side of this: a SUPER entertaining, dazzling, fun movie that also uses the silent era transitioning into sound as the backdrop. Highly recommend that one!
Great reaction video, by the way! Thanks! You guys totally got it. It's totally a comment on Hollywood, no question about it. This is definitely a major classic! Billy Wilder, one of the great directors, he's got lots of classics under his belt! Congrats for scratching this one off your list!
Nice background! I believe Mary Pickford was such a big star, she was the first actor to get $1 million for a film, and was the richest woman in America. Yes, celebrity as we know it started with them, famous worldwide.
Mary Pickford was one of the leaders of the group who started the Academy Awards. When sound came along, people had a preconceived notion of what their voices sounded like. The audiences heard them for the first time and were shocked. Mary Pickford’s voice was high, squeaky and was said to sound like a mouse. So instead of quitting, she continued behind the camera. She may sound like a mouse, but she had as much power as any man and used it to get ASCAP started with Fairbanks and others, along with getting movies made. She was still “America’s Sweetheart” and used it. Other actor/actresses could work after the people heard their voices. Some retired, some killed themselves. Sunset Boulevard is a story of someone who didn’t handle the transition very well. And yes, owning a monkey was prestigious. Only the eclectic actors, the ones that can have anything they want, have something similar to show their significance. You rarely saw the true Norma Desmond. Back then, she was always on camera, always on cue. Waking in the morning is scripted and they must live each moment on set. There’s a lot of people today that live like that now.
After several viewings of this amazing film, it seems pretty clear that Joe was sleeping with Norma...not because he loved her, or even felt sorry for her, but because he had basically turned into a high-priced gigolo for the money...he was a "kept" man who pretty much had lost all his self-respect. That's what he was telling Betty when he invited her there...and she got it right away but didn't want it spelled out for her. She was willing to forget it if he walked out with her at that point, but he know that by then he was a "man with a past" and no good for her or her reputation...she would be better off with his friend. He rejected her harshly to make it easier for her to leave, but it was difficult because he really did love her.
Indeed. This was a film noir movie about Hollywood, specifically about a kept man, a subject that rarely, if not at all, was handled in movies of the time.
With respect, I disagree- just the embarrassment & shame of being a failure at his career, & being a 'kept man'- a gigolo- essentially male arm candy- would have been sufficient for Norma, w/o sex, & would have been too shameful to admit to Betty. IMHO, Norma only yearned for recognition, & fame, & a rebirth of her career... I think she'd have considered sex as 'tawdry', 'messy', & unbecoming! Just my opinion.
@@redcaddiedaddie I have to disagree with you & I agree with the original post. Billy Wilder always liked to bring out what people were really like, true to what Hollywood or any big business really operated. Norma & Joe were definitely having sex. The way she grabbed him in the New Year scene with the typical we're-about-to-have-sex fade out says it all. This was filmed 1949-50 and that's how sex scenes were implied. If that's not enough of a clue, Norma can't get her hands off of Joe when he comes out of the pool. Frankly, I don't blame her - Bill Holden was gorgeous back them.
You were talking at the very beginning of the movie, but the Narrator said he was the body in the pool. So since the start we know things will not end well for him. Interesting point of view for the storytelling! Another very unique detail, I guess you missed, is when she’s mad in the final monologue, she adresses a line to the audience. She says that what she loves in movies is that is just the actors on a screen and “those wonderful people out there in the dark”. When I saw this in a theater for the first time, all the audience got this sort of eerie mad moment of her. Goosebumps ‘till today! Masterpiece movie! 🌟✌️
I’ve not seen a single reaction to this film in which the reactor doesn’t suddenly realise at some point in the film (often right at the end) that it is indeed Joe dead in the pool at the start. I just don’t get it: to me it’s made plain as day. 🤦♂️
I love this movie! It won three Academy Awards. Gloria Swanson was nominated for and should have won for best actress. This movie is about "Hollywood" and the sacrifices people make for the "Hollywood dream" and it's about the cost of fame. Whether you want to be an actor, a writer, a director, or someone who is desperate to do whatever job just to be a part of the action, Hollywood is a machine that lures you in with the promise of fame and fortune, uses you up, and then tosses you away like last season's fashions. Both Joe and Norma were victims of the machine and broken in different ways. The streets of Hollywood are littered with broken dreams and broken people.
SUNSET BOULEVARD is definitely a FILM NOIR and Norma Desmond is the quintessential femme fatale, maybe the greatest. And Joe did the right thing for sure with Betty. If he hadn’t she would’ve ended up dead too.
It's so cool that 1950 featured this about Hollywood and "All About Eve" (Bette Davis) about Broadway. This one is more complex, but the latter does have great perofrmances and dialogue (and somehow nipped the former to win Best Picture). Hope you watch it.
It's so wild that Judy Holliday actually won the Oscar the next year for best actress when you had two powerhouses like Bette and Gloria as contenders that year also. It seems they canceled each other out and Judy --- who was very good in Born Yesterday but didn't compare to the other two --- ended up taking home the statuette.
Billy Wilder writes scripts that delve deep and this one about a film writer is a subject that Wilder knows very well. And he never wants a word of his scripts to be changed by the actors. Watch again and listen carefully to Wilder’s carefully crafted script so you can really enjoy and appreciate the details. 3 other masterpieces by Wilder with scripts that are always being studied and copied are: Double Indemnity, Some Like it Hot and The Apartment.
Maybe if you guys weren't so busy chatting away, you'd actually hear some of the dialogue and then you wouldn't be so blind-sided by every other scene in the movie. Also, DeMille didn't make the remark about buying 5 old cars because he wanted to avoid dealing with her, he was trying to save her from the humiliation and embarrassment of finding out they only wanted her car.
Yes, you guys yakked over so many good lines and missed what was happening. And when you would say, "This reminds me of that other movie". No. THIS movie was better and you were missing the point.
Yes! The card players are all silent movie stars. There's Buster Keaton, Anna Q Nilsson and HB Warner, who played Jesus for Cecil B DeMille (who also appears as himself.)
How many people realize that in the men's clothing shop when the salesman says "as long as the ladys paying for IT" he wasn't talking about the coat but sex
Man those newsreel guys at the end didn't even bat an eye at being directed by an old forgotten director. Also weird seeing Sgt. Friday as a fun loving young man instead of the no-nonsense detective on "Drag Net".
OMG Billy Wilder directed about 10 all time classics in a row in a career of many more and had a very contemporary sensibility, please watch Double Indemnity, Ace in the Whole, Sabrina, Witness for the Prosecution etc etc
I LOVE that you are watching these movies, but they are dialogue driven. Please try to listen when the actors are speaking. You almost missed the information about Max, and you are guessing about important points in the story that are being divulged right then!
One of the best lines in Cinema: “I am big! It's the pictures that got small.” the irony is Gloria Swanson playing Norma Desmond was actually a former Silent Movie BID Star and did some sound pictures, was rich, and hadn't sone much acting is years. it was like she was playing a caricature of herself, or more like a spoof on herself.
The Hays Code ruled Hollywood with an iron fist from the early '30's until 1968, when the current letter code rating system was adopted. It was incredibly strict. Stuff couldn't be too gory which is why Joe floating in the pool is not surrounded by a cloud of blood. Even married couples had to be shown sleeping only in twin beds - which is why they had to hint that Joe was sleeping with her. (However, the audiences at the time pretty much knew how to "watch in code" and knew they were actually having a full affair.) It was a big studio dilemma to have Rhett Butler utter "damn" in Gone With the Wind. I can't think of ANYTHING before '68 which would come even close to moving up to a PG rating when they finally were rated. All the other moves like Airplane were post Hays, when movies celebrated their censorship freedom by veering to the other line.
I would say that one movie did help to break the Hays Code, and that was "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1966), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, for which Elizabeth won her 2nd Oscar. When the adult language in the movie stayed put, it opened the door for the ratings system we know today.
Yes, the card-playing actors are legit: Buster Keaton, who you may not have recognized, Anna Q. Nilsson, and H. B. Warner. If you have or if you will watch "It's A Wonderful Life", Warner plays Gower the druggist. Nilsson was once called the most beautiful woman in America: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Q._Nilsson
Everyone - well, every man back then wore suits along with hats, even when relaxing around the house. Poor men might ONLY own a suit and a couple of shirts, if they could only afford one piece of clothing. Service workers like gas station attendants and delivery men wore a modified suit, particularly the tie, which was made into a bow tie to eliminate anything dangling down to get entangled in machinery. President Kennedy set the standard for no hat, which had become the universal fedora. When I entered college in 1968, we were not allowed to enter the freshmen dining hall for dinner without a suit coat and tie. Over the course of that year, dress codes went to hell. Guys would put a coat and tie over a t-shirt and shorts to technically meet the dress code. This requirement ended that year.
Norma was played by silent film star Gloria Swanson who didn’t make it into sound films. This was meant to be her comeback film but she died without making any further successful films.
I believe it was the second Raiders movie, Temple of Doom that takes more of the blame regarding the necessity of a PG-13 rating. Children being enslaved, Indy drinks the blood of Kali and turns evil, human sacrifice, including plucking a man’s heart from his chest while still alive and having the heart catch fire as the man in a cage is lowered into a pit of lava screaming. Yep, that kinda thing.
It's interesting, and disconcerting, to witness the reaction of two young guys watching a profound movie created in an entirely different world. They see it through their own references. They don't truly understand it.
Billy Wilder is a fantastic writer and director with a variety of genres from comedy to film noir. I would suggest Some Like it Hot, then Double Indemnity.
I would like to request "The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Kathryn Hepburn. Filmed on location. It was nominated for many Academy Awards, and won a few. It is a true classic that must be seen.
I think the way he brutally kicks his girl to the curb in the end isn't simply because he thinks he's better off with his sugar-mama. It's because he's loathing himself, and wants to steer her away from him. He feels gross, and doesn't want to contaminate her.
I also see that too. At the end he is saying to Betty, "Don't fall in love with me. Look how far I have sunk. Look how I have compromised every moral that I ever had. Get as far away from me as you can because I am nothing." But like a girl who recognizes an abusive situation, Betty does what she would do for any friend. "I don't care what has happened to you. I care about YOU. Let me help you escape now". A girl might have left with Betty, but a man can't allow himself to be rescued by a girl. He has to pull himself together and walk out like a man.
The earliest cameras used flash powder but by this time, they had advanced to flashbulbs, where each bulb produced the same light. The powder also gave off smoke which when used in a room, made it impossible to keep shooting after just a few shots, until the smoke cleared the roof. The flashbulbs became red hot from being set off, and were one use only, so normally after each shot, they were rejected, untouched.
She was so wealthy, she could have surrounded herself with as many boytoys, or elegant gigolos as she wanted. I think Joe, being connected to the film industry as a writer, represented a potential return of her career. But just think if she had contacted the studio and offered room and board for any number of budding young screen writers, in return for their company and for them to actually work on scripts for her comeback.
Billy Wilder wrote this film always intending to use Mae West...however he included too much of her life...Norma was to be a "Theda Bara" type... In real life Max would be both Jim Timony( West's effeminate live in companion and later companion Paul Novak... William Holden would be Mickey Hagartay..Betty in real life was Jayne Mansfield..West kept monkeys as pets as she was childless and show business was her world..West saved Paramount studios in the thirties from going bankrupt and was the highest paid actress at the time...When Wilder pitched "Sunset Boulevard" West said:" What?!! I'm paying him? He should be paying me"!! Wilder would have been given more money for technicolor and actor Montgomery Clift if West said yes ... Salome was made in the twenties by then forty year old actress Allah Nazimova...Godmother to Ronald Reagan... Nazimova's mansion was on SUNSET BOULEVARD directly across the street from Schwab's drugstore...When Nazimova's career ended she added guest houses to her. estate and made it a "No tell motel" called :" The garden of Allah" When someone suggested Swanson Wilder balked... "Vat?!! Svansun?! Whit da har und da teeth"?!!!! In the 20s Swanson made one million dollars per picture ( before there was income tax) She was the queen of Paramount...when Norma visits the studio we see the real Cecil B. Demiile..He was shooting "Samson and Delilah"( get it?) During the New Years eve sequence... We see an over head shot looking down on the dancers( she had the floor changed to tile for Valentino...Who in real life was on the Paramount lot at the same time as Swanson)... But... The tile is octagons... It's a HONEY COMB...she is the queen bee..she has her breeder and every other male is a neutered worker .( The band is blindfolded)...That house was a real house on Wiltshire Blvd. built by that wealthy family that has the art museums..they lived there for a moment and abandoned it... Betty's boyfriend would later become "Joe Friday" in "Drag net"...In real life Gloria Swanson had had seven husbands some royalty..and a fling with Joseph Kennedy who was trying to emulate his friend William Randolph Hearst who wouldn't divorce because if Catholicism but had actress Marion Davies as his life long adulterous mistress...She was the basis for the wannabe opera singer in "Citizen Kane"...all these prices and tid bits woven around in this film...the gossip columnist with the big hat was former silent screen actress Hedda Hopper..real life gossip columnist who competed with Louella Parsons...they could make make and destroy or careers...to film Holden in the swimming pool they laid a mirror on the bottom of the pool and filmed his reflection. Wilder had a filthy mouth and kept goading Swanson during early filming :" Remember Gloria, before Bill Holden you and da monkey were lovers" He finally used the F word to drive Swanson nuts...
When she says she was never in this house, she is giving him the chance to leave. Letting him know that she doesn't care about what he had to do to survive.
Sunset Boulevard, the best film about Hollywood, is in my top 10 films ever. Gloria Swanson (Norma Desmond) was nominated Best Actress and should have won in one of the best performances in film history. In addition to Swanson's Best Actress nomination, the film was also nominated for an additional 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, Billy Wilder for Best Director, William Holden (Joe Gillis) for Best Actor, Erich Von Stroheim (Max) for Best Supporting Actor, Nancy Olson (Betty) for Best Supporting Actress. I agree on Joe's reasoning for breaking things off with Betty. In general, it was about finally doing the right and moral thing, a combination of realizing it was wrong to steal his friend's fiancée and also that because of how much he had demoralized himself with Norma, he wasn't good enough for Betty. Also fun fact: One of the guests that Norma was playing with cards with was played by the great silent film star Buster Keaton.
The film outdoes its own meta quality. The silent film they watch was a a silent film Gloria Swanson starred in as a teenager and Erich von Stroheim (Max) directed!
The two repro men simply meant by "fireworks" that there were be lots of trouble, particularly legal trouble, but also could mean a physical altercation.
Loved your reaction. There is a deleted scene that starts the movie with the Narrator laid out on a slab with other corpses in the Morgue. You should search for it. I have the DVD and I think it's part of the Extras.
before ratings anyone any age could go into any movie. some excellent films that year I am convinced you two would enjoy "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950) - excellent crime caper
You loved the silent comedy City Lights - you really should try the dramatic silent Sunrise, which got a special academy award for artistic achievement at the first Oscars in the late 20s and Janet Gaynor won Best Actress for her role in it (as well as another film). Amazing use of sets and even inter-titles. Give it a look please.
You guys missed it at the beginning. The body floating in the pool is him. A dead man is narrating this movie. You guys figured that out later but knowing that at the beginning makes what happens when he first gets to Norma's mansion a lot creepier.
32:50 Man, they almost talked over _the_ big reveal… not long after they realised Joe was the guy floating in the pool at the start, which isn’t meant to be the big reveal, yet I’ve not seen a single reaction in which they’ve immediately made that connection. 🤦♂️
You're correct, Jay Gatsby was shot dead in his pool at the end. I prefer Leonardo over Redford as Gatsby but i like the old version best, especially Bruce Dern & Karen Black as Daisy's philandering husband & his mistress.
And now for something completely different... I'd love to see you guys react to the 1995 BBC Pride And Prejudice mini series, and the British 1975 Faulty Towers.
Love for you two fine gents to go back 21 years and have a look at MGM’s “The Wizard of Oz.” Judy Garland was the mother of Liza Minnelli (from “Cabaret”).
I love how you say 'You don't even have to change the script'. He's a writer. I think he says he's a scriptwriter. It would be almost impossible for a real writer not to want to improve a script if it can be improved.
all the framed photos of swanson were supplied by swanson herself from her own collection. all were professional studio photos that she had saved. also, notice that norma's insanity is complete when joe tells her that paramount only wanted to rent her car. the information that she's not wanted anymore is more than she can handle. finally, after joe's murder the reporter dictating the story over the phone is hedda hopper playing herself. she began as an actress then became one of two hollywood reporters, so she was used to giving a story directly by phone.
I truly enjoyed watching and experiencing this with these two...seeing it through fresh eyes...Billy Wilder wanted Mae West..but it was a little too close to her life...Norma is a bit like Miss Haversham in "Great Expectations"...and yes..all the elderly were HUGE stars in the silents...Max is obsessed with Norma and keeps her sick to keep her....notice the floor in the dance ? Tiles were like a honeycomb.. she's the queen bee surrounded by neutered drones with only one mating male ...and Max knew to get Joes stuff because there's ALWAYS a Joe Gillis...he wasn't the first..in real life actress Allah Nazimova DID play Saline when she was 40... Her house was across the street from Schwab's... She made it a hotel "the garden of Allah"
I never appreciated Billy Wilder and just how many films he directed and in so many different genres. My two favorites of his are the 1957 Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution - I defy you to guess the ending - and the frantic comedy One, Two, Three.
Great reaction to this classic & glad you liked it! Now you should watch 1950's "All About Eve" and how it skewers Broadway theater people and an aging (at40) diva, Margo Channing, and whether she should continue playing 20 somethings on stage.
The ratings system was instituted in 1969. Before then they had the Hollywood Production Code, which prohibited a lot of content from being included. Some of the rules were pretty extreme, but at the same time it was comforting for audiences who could be assured that certain kinds of offensive content just wouldn’t be there. Some movies originally released before the ratings system now have ratings due to rereleases.
Billy Wilder based Norma Desmond on some of the silent stars who were still around at the time, unable to move on from their glory days and clinging to the past. One in particular, Mary Miles Minter, career had been destroyed by a scandal when the much older director she was involved with-William Desmond Taylor was murdered in a case that has never been definitely solved but which she was implicated in. Wilder took his lead character’s last name from the director as a sort of in joke for those in the know. Ironically the woman he cast as Norma-Gloria Swanson-who became most associated with that idea was someone who was miles from that in reality. She had been one of the biggest stars of the silent period but once talkies came in, even though she made a successful transition, she realized her time at the top was ending and she left films for new challenges. She was a quite successful businesswoman and inventor afterward remaining active in many endeavors throughout the rest of her life. Her autobiography “Swanson on Swanson” is one of the best at capturing life during the silent era. A couple of other points. It’s not that DeMille doesn’t want to deal with Norma again, he wants to protect her from the knowledge it is only the car they want knowing how much it would hurt her. He more than most understood who she had been, what that had done to her and how tenuous her grasp on reality was despite her bluster. Yes, you are correct her “waxworks” friends were all former stars-Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B. Warner (who after his leading man days in silents ended became a respected character actor-he played Mr. Gower in “It’s a Wonderful Life” among many other roles) and of course Buster Keaton. Nancy Olson who played Betty is the only cast member who is still with us. Her career wasn’t a huge one, but she has had quite a life. Her first husband was the famous lyricist Alan J. Lerner who with various collaborators wrote the musicals Gigi, Camelot, An American in Paris and My Fair Lady (which he adapted during their marriage and sited her as the inspiration for many of the songs therein). Her second husband Alan Livingston built Capitol Records into the industry giant it became.
u guys cool.1stwas Mae West,thenjean halo,gloria swanson,marylyn monroe,ect. Joe Kennedy of Boston was hired to straighten out her finances(spending too much$). they had an affair. aND her butler use to direct her and was her husband for a while. gloria and director,husbond,butler(in that order) traveled to Africa to film CLEPATRA. which did not come to fruition. scenes of Cleopatra are on the TV in Swansons bedroom. it is black and white on purpose. notice extremes of light and dark. it is an art film.film noir ..you involved with a woman, could be on death row this time next year. thanks
Great movie, cool reaction thanks guys, I really enjoyed seeing it again through fresh eyes. 20 Years ago I bought a script for this film at a shop here in Sydney back then called The Cinestore. Weird thing was in the version of the script I bought the beginning was differed from the final film in that it started with Joes body being brought into the morgue and the voice over we hear is him telling another dead body laying prone near him how he came to be there. I guess someone decided this earlier version was just too grim for the audience. I felt This creepy earlier version had a Twilightzone like vibe even though I think it pre-dates Twilight zone.
I know how the story goes. The guy in the orange shirt says "get out of there" and the guy with the long hair says "play along". I know which one of you will live and which one will die. Our protagonist is her new pet monkey. Norma Desmond is not a "broken, depressed, sad, dysfunctional" person. She is a power-hungry, dangerous, narcissist. Nothing matters but what she wants. She never cares about what our protagonist wants: all he is to her is "supply": attention, sex, boy-toy, fan, ego-boosting, and whatever else she can extort from him. I don't know why you believe ANYTHING she says or does. She is an ACTRESS. Everything she says is merely acting to manipulate our hero. He's trapped.
DeMille didn't decide not to use her car not to avoid her, but rather to avoid embarrassing her more
And that's from a guy who has killed a lot of people.
What do you mean?
@@chasse123b9 biblical epics - think about it.
@@chasse123b9 Moviesets used to be deadly places. Safety was not a priority.
This is my all-time favorite movie. Gloria Swanson was amazing.
@randywhite3947 Off the top of my head:
Casablanca. The Year of Living Dangerously. A Clockwork Orange. The Red River. The Maltese Falcon. A Single Man. Pride And Prejudice. Casino Royale and Skyfall. Snatch. 12 Monkeys. Mad Max: The Road Warrior and Fury Road. Rocky 4. Desperately Seeking Susan. Basic Instinct. The Quick and the Dead. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (either one). 2001: A Space Odyssey. American Gigolo. Showgirls. Witness. The Right Stuff. Pink Flamingos. Andy Warhol’s Bad. The Matrix. Das Boot. The Talented Mr Ripley. Brokeback Mountain. Domino. Mario. Three Kings. Gia. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Nosferatu. The Hunger.
There are others that never let me down, but I can’t think of them at the moment.
One of the most brilliant things about this film is its score, by Franz Waxman. Waxman employs a "leitmotif" for each of the principal characters, a theme which plays whenever each is having a particular scene. Norma's theme, which can subtley be heard during her scenes, becomes distorted and dissonant upon her insane, final descent down the staircase and into the cameras at the end. It's sheer genius.
I think Gloria nails this performance I don’t think there’s ever been another like it. Her voice ,her face , every move was so perfect! She was still gorgeous too
You are absolutely right. Very impressive actor and acting.
You are correct: her friends are all actual silent movie stars, like Buster Keaton. And the butler is played by Erich Von Stroheim, one of THE very first "genius" artists in Hollywood/cinema. Notorious director! His character is quite accurate: there was Griffith, De Mille and Von Stroheim, as far as giants of the at early Hollywood era of the 1915-1925 period. Gloria Swanson also, huge star in the 20s, first in Cecil B. DeMille films. Later Stroheim directed Swanson in "Queen Kelly", one of the biggest bombs in Hollywood history, ended his career. When you see them watching her old films, that's what they're showing: "Queen Kelly". And the idea of glamorous Gloria Swanson doing Chaplin (her friend and contemporary) is definitely another "meta" thing. There had NEVER been "celebrity" as we know it until the early movie stars. People didn't know what to do with all this love and affection they had for these people on the screens. So these early movie stars really got so much intense adulation, some of them for 20 years like Mary Pickford, the original Queen of Hollywood (and who was originally offered this part. Mary Pickford really did "build" Paramount, as Norma Desmond boasts about herself. It was built on Mary Pickford movies). And then overnight: all gone. All that fame, all that love from millions.....gone. And these people went on and lived long lives, often in obscurity, and the medium that they pioneered and invented totally forgot them. Gloria Swanson INVENTED Hollywood glamour as we know it. She is THE original glamorous movie star, the archetype. The more I learn about the silent era - which has become a real passion of mine over the last bunch of years - the more I see in this movie! It really is brilliant. "Singin' In The Rain" from 1952 is the flip side of this: a SUPER entertaining, dazzling, fun movie that also uses the silent era transitioning into sound as the backdrop. Highly recommend that one!
Great reaction video, by the way! Thanks! You guys totally got it. It's totally a comment on Hollywood, no question about it. This is definitely a major classic! Billy Wilder, one of the great directors, he's got lots of classics under his belt! Congrats for scratching this one off your list!
Perfect summary of the relevant and fascinating background information that, once you know it, makes this film even more of a brilliant gem!
Nice background! I believe Mary Pickford was such a big star, she was the first actor to get $1 million for a film, and was the richest woman in America. Yes, celebrity as we know it started with them, famous worldwide.
And let's not forget the cameo real life gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. (Oh, and all of the "waxworks" were Buster Keaton, etc.)
Mary Pickford was one of the leaders of the group who started the Academy Awards. When sound came along, people had a preconceived notion of what their voices sounded like. The audiences heard them for the first time and were shocked. Mary Pickford’s voice was high, squeaky and was said to sound like a mouse. So instead of quitting, she continued behind the camera. She may sound like a mouse, but she had as much power as any man and used it to get ASCAP started with Fairbanks and others, along with getting movies made. She was still “America’s Sweetheart” and used it. Other actor/actresses could work after the people heard their voices. Some retired, some killed themselves. Sunset Boulevard is a story of someone who didn’t handle the transition very well. And yes, owning a monkey was prestigious. Only the eclectic actors, the ones that can have anything they want, have something similar to show their significance.
You rarely saw the true Norma Desmond. Back then, she was always on camera, always on cue. Waking in the morning is scripted and they must live each moment on set. There’s a lot of people today that live like that now.
After several viewings of this amazing film, it seems pretty clear that Joe was sleeping with Norma...not because he loved her, or even felt sorry for her, but because he had basically turned into a high-priced gigolo for the money...he was a "kept" man who pretty much had lost all his self-respect. That's what he was telling Betty when he invited her there...and she got it right away but didn't want it spelled out for her. She was willing to forget it if he walked out with her at that point, but he know that by then he was a "man with a past" and no good for her or her reputation...she would be better off with his friend. He rejected her harshly to make it easier for her to leave, but it was difficult because he really did love her.
Indeed. This was a film noir movie about Hollywood, specifically about a kept man, a subject that rarely, if not at all, was handled in movies of the time.
With respect, I disagree- just the embarrassment & shame of being a failure at his career, & being a 'kept man'- a gigolo- essentially male arm candy- would have been sufficient for Norma, w/o sex, & would have been too shameful to admit to Betty. IMHO, Norma only yearned for recognition, & fame, & a rebirth of her career... I think she'd have considered sex as 'tawdry', 'messy', & unbecoming! Just my opinion.
@@redcaddiedaddie I have to disagree with you & I agree with the original post. Billy Wilder always liked to bring out what people were really like, true to what Hollywood or any big business really operated. Norma & Joe were definitely having sex. The way she grabbed him in the New Year scene with the typical we're-about-to-have-sex fade out says it all. This was filmed 1949-50 and that's how sex scenes were implied. If that's not enough of a clue, Norma can't get her hands off of Joe when he comes out of the pool. Frankly, I don't blame her - Bill Holden was gorgeous back them.
The film being filmed at Paramount Studios was Sampson and Delilah. It was the actual film being filmed in that scene.
Samson.
You were talking at the very beginning of the movie, but the Narrator said he was the body in the pool. So since the start we know things will not end well for him. Interesting point of view for the storytelling! Another very unique detail, I guess you missed, is when she’s mad in the final monologue, she adresses a line to the audience. She says that what she loves in movies is that is just the actors on a screen and “those wonderful people out there in the dark”. When I saw this in a theater for the first time, all the audience got this sort of eerie mad moment of her. Goosebumps ‘till today! Masterpiece movie! 🌟✌️
I’ve not seen a single reaction to this film in which the reactor doesn’t suddenly realise at some point in the film (often right at the end) that it is indeed Joe dead in the pool at the start. I just don’t get it: to me it’s made plain as day. 🤦♂️
I love this movie! It won three Academy Awards. Gloria Swanson was nominated for and should have won for best actress. This movie is about "Hollywood" and the sacrifices people make for the "Hollywood dream" and it's about the cost of fame. Whether you want to be an actor, a writer, a director, or someone who is desperate to do whatever job just to be a part of the action, Hollywood is a machine that lures you in with the promise of fame and fortune, uses you up, and then tosses you away like last season's fashions. Both Joe and Norma were victims of the machine and broken in different ways. The streets of Hollywood are littered with broken dreams and broken people.
Gloria was ripped by the Academy.
SUNSET BOULEVARD is definitely a FILM NOIR and Norma Desmond is the quintessential femme fatale, maybe the greatest. And Joe did the right thing for sure with Betty. If he hadn’t she would’ve ended up dead too.
It's so cool that 1950 featured this about Hollywood and "All About Eve" (Bette Davis) about Broadway. This one is more complex, but the latter does have great perofrmances and dialogue (and somehow nipped the former to win Best Picture). Hope you watch it.
It's so wild that Judy Holliday actually won the Oscar the next year for best actress when you had two powerhouses like Bette and Gloria as contenders that year also. It seems they canceled each other out and Judy --- who was very good in Born Yesterday but didn't compare to the other two --- ended up taking home the statuette.
Billy Wilder writes scripts that delve deep and this one about a film writer is a subject that Wilder knows very well. And he never wants a word of his scripts to be changed by the actors. Watch again and listen carefully to Wilder’s carefully crafted script so you can really enjoy and appreciate the details. 3 other masterpieces by Wilder with scripts that are always being studied and copied are: Double Indemnity, Some Like it Hot and The Apartment.
Maybe if you guys weren't so busy chatting away, you'd actually hear some of the dialogue and then you wouldn't be so blind-sided by every other scene in the movie. Also, DeMille didn't make the remark about buying 5 old cars because he wanted to avoid dealing with her, he was trying to save her from the humiliation and embarrassment of finding out they only wanted her car.
Yes, you guys yakked over so many good lines and missed what was happening. And when you would say, "This reminds me of that other movie". No. THIS movie was better and you were missing the point.
Yes! The card players are all silent movie stars. There's Buster Keaton, Anna Q Nilsson and HB Warner, who played Jesus for Cecil B DeMille (who also appears as himself.)
This is an incredible movie. The crap released today doesn't compare. In my opinion.
How many people realize that in the men's clothing shop when the salesman says "as long as the ladys paying for IT" he wasn't talking about the coat but sex
Man those newsreel guys at the end didn't even bat an eye at being directed by an old forgotten director. Also weird seeing Sgt. Friday as a fun loving young man instead of the no-nonsense detective on "Drag Net".
The Wax Works …the other card players ……playing Bridge were huge silent screen stars.
The only people at the studio that cared about Norma Desmond were people who had worked with her. She drew nobody young to that chair.
OMG Billy Wilder directed about 10 all time classics in a row in a career of many more and had a very contemporary sensibility, please watch Double Indemnity, Ace in the Whole, Sabrina, Witness for the Prosecution etc etc
I LOVE that you are watching these movies, but they are dialogue driven. Please try to listen when the actors are speaking. You almost missed the information about Max, and you are guessing about important points in the story that are being divulged right then!
Exactly, they ran their mouths too much.
Yes. I want a reaction: "Wow!" "Yikes!" "Dude!" Not a dialogue about things you don't understand because you are too busy talking.
I thought the same thing. The dialogue is too good to talk over.
@@janedoe5229 Or at least, put the movie on "pause".
I like how I'm not the only one that finds 1920s photos so creepy
One of the best lines in Cinema: “I am big! It's the pictures that got small.” the irony is Gloria Swanson playing Norma Desmond was actually a former Silent Movie BID Star and did some sound pictures, was rich, and hadn't sone much acting is years. it was like she was playing a caricature of herself, or more like a spoof on herself.
The Hays Code ruled Hollywood with an iron fist from the early '30's until 1968, when the current letter code rating system was adopted. It was incredibly strict. Stuff couldn't be too gory which is why Joe floating in the pool is not surrounded by a cloud of blood. Even married couples had to be shown sleeping only in twin beds - which is why they had to hint that Joe was sleeping with her. (However, the audiences at the time pretty much knew how to "watch in code" and knew they were actually having a full affair.) It was a big studio dilemma to have Rhett Butler utter "damn" in Gone With the Wind.
I can't think of ANYTHING before '68 which would come even close to moving up to a PG rating when they finally were rated. All the other moves like Airplane were post Hays, when movies celebrated their censorship freedom by veering to the other line.
I would say that one movie did help to break the Hays Code, and that was "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1966), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, for which Elizabeth won her 2nd Oscar. When the adult language in the movie stayed put, it opened the door for the ratings system we know today.
@@wfoster-graham6363 Hadn't even considered this. Thanks!
Yes, the card-playing actors are legit: Buster Keaton, who you may not have recognized, Anna Q. Nilsson, and H. B. Warner. If you have or if you will watch "It's A Wonderful Life", Warner plays Gower the druggist. Nilsson was once called the most beautiful woman in America: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Q._Nilsson
Everyone - well, every man back then wore suits along with hats, even when relaxing around the house. Poor men might ONLY own a suit and a couple of shirts, if they could only afford one piece of clothing.
Service workers like gas station attendants and delivery men wore a modified suit, particularly the tie, which was made into a bow tie to eliminate anything dangling down to get entangled in machinery.
President Kennedy set the standard for no hat, which had become the universal fedora.
When I entered college in 1968, we were not allowed to enter the freshmen dining hall for dinner without a suit coat and tie. Over the course of that year, dress codes went to hell. Guys would put a coat and tie over a t-shirt and shorts to technically meet the dress code. This requirement ended that year.
Max was Erich Von Stroheim a very famous silent era director and actor. He was an epic character all in his own right.
I read his biography. Ha! What a con artist who ended up directing great films!
My second favourite film of 1950. The best imo is 'All about Eve' who won the Oscar for Best Film.
Norma was played by silent film star Gloria Swanson who didn’t make it into sound films. This was meant to be her comeback film but she died without making any further successful films.
it is always a trip to see young people using their comtemorary influences to analize a movie done so long ago before they were born .
I believe it was the second Raiders movie, Temple of Doom that takes more of the blame regarding the necessity of a PG-13 rating.
Children being enslaved, Indy drinks the blood of Kali and turns evil, human sacrifice, including plucking a man’s heart from his chest while still alive and having the heart catch fire as the man in a cage is lowered into a pit of lava screaming. Yep, that kinda thing.
It's interesting, and disconcerting, to witness the reaction of two young guys watching a profound movie created in an entirely different world. They see it through their own references. They don't truly understand it.
William Holden was one of the biggest stars back then, Bridge On The River Kwai, Born Yesterday, Stalag 17 (Oscar for best actor) to name a few.
Sunset Boulevard is the movie that made him a star.
Catherine O'Hara would play a fantastic Norma Desmond...very much like her character Moira from Schitt's Creek
It’s a brilliant film with a brilliant cast and cinematography.
Billy Wilder is a fantastic writer and director with a variety of genres from comedy to film noir. I would suggest Some Like it Hot, then Double Indemnity.
I would like to request "The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Kathryn Hepburn. Filmed on location. It was nominated for many Academy Awards, and won a few. It is a true classic that must be seen.
A true classic ! Glenn Close as Norma Desmond in the musical Sunset Boulevard is just as awesome as Gloria Swanson’s.
I think the way he brutally kicks his girl to the curb in the end isn't simply because he thinks he's better off with his sugar-mama. It's because he's loathing himself, and wants to steer her away from him.
He feels gross, and doesn't want to contaminate her.
I also see that too. At the end he is saying to Betty, "Don't fall in love with me. Look how far I have sunk. Look how I have compromised every moral that I ever had. Get as far away from me as you can because I am nothing." But like a girl who recognizes an abusive situation, Betty does what she would do for any friend. "I don't care what has happened to you. I care about YOU. Let me help you escape now". A girl might have left with Betty, but a man can't allow himself to be rescued by a girl. He has to pull himself together and walk out like a man.
The earliest cameras used flash powder but by this time, they had advanced to flashbulbs, where each bulb produced the same light. The powder also gave off smoke which when used in a room, made it impossible to keep shooting after just a few shots, until the smoke cleared the roof. The flashbulbs became red hot from being set off, and were one use only, so normally after each shot, they were rejected, untouched.
The director just didn't want to hurt her feelings 🌹❤️🌹
She was so wealthy, she could have surrounded herself with as many boytoys, or elegant gigolos as she wanted. I think Joe, being connected to the film industry as a writer, represented a potential return of her career.
But just think if she had contacted the studio and offered room and board for any number of budding young screen writers, in return for their company and for them to actually work on scripts for her comeback.
Billy Wilder wrote this film always intending to use Mae West...however he included too much of her life...Norma was to be a "Theda Bara" type... In real life Max would be both Jim Timony( West's effeminate live in companion and later companion Paul Novak... William Holden would be Mickey Hagartay..Betty in real life was Jayne Mansfield..West kept monkeys as pets as she was childless and show business was her world..West saved Paramount studios in the thirties from going bankrupt and was the highest paid actress at the time...When Wilder pitched "Sunset Boulevard" West said:" What?!! I'm paying him? He should be paying me"!! Wilder would have been given more money for technicolor and actor Montgomery Clift if West said yes ... Salome was made in the twenties by then forty year old actress Allah Nazimova...Godmother to Ronald Reagan... Nazimova's mansion was on SUNSET BOULEVARD directly across the street from Schwab's drugstore...When Nazimova's career ended she added guest houses to her. estate and made it a "No tell motel" called :" The garden of Allah" When someone suggested Swanson Wilder balked... "Vat?!! Svansun?! Whit da har und da teeth"?!!!! In the 20s Swanson made one million dollars per picture ( before there was income tax) She was the queen of Paramount...when Norma visits the studio we see the real Cecil B. Demiile..He was shooting "Samson and Delilah"( get it?) During the New Years eve sequence... We see an over head shot looking down on the dancers( she had the floor changed to tile for Valentino...Who in real life was on the Paramount lot at the same time as Swanson)... But... The tile is octagons... It's a HONEY COMB...she is the queen bee..she has her breeder and every other male is a neutered worker .( The band is blindfolded)...That house was a real house on Wiltshire Blvd. built by that wealthy family that has the art museums..they lived there for a moment and abandoned it... Betty's boyfriend would later become "Joe Friday" in "Drag net"...In real life Gloria Swanson had had seven husbands some royalty..and a fling with Joseph Kennedy who was trying to emulate his friend William Randolph Hearst who wouldn't divorce because if Catholicism but had actress Marion Davies as his life long adulterous mistress...She was the basis for the wannabe opera singer in "Citizen Kane"...all these prices and tid bits woven around in this film...the gossip columnist with the big hat was former silent screen actress Hedda Hopper..real life gossip columnist who competed with Louella Parsons...they could make make and destroy or careers...to film Holden in the swimming pool they laid a mirror on the bottom of the pool and filmed his reflection. Wilder had a filthy mouth and kept goading Swanson during early filming :" Remember Gloria, before Bill Holden you and da monkey were lovers" He finally used the F word to drive Swanson nuts...
“fireworks” meant the guy would be in serious trouble if the car wasn’t there when the repo man came back to pick it up. He wasn’t going to be shot.
When she says she was never in this house, she is giving him the chance to leave. Letting him know that she doesn't care about what he had to do to survive.
Sunset Boulevard, the best film about Hollywood, is in my top 10 films ever. Gloria Swanson (Norma Desmond) was nominated Best Actress and should have won in one of the best performances in film history. In addition to Swanson's Best Actress nomination, the film was also nominated for an additional 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, Billy Wilder for Best Director, William Holden (Joe Gillis) for Best Actor, Erich Von Stroheim (Max) for Best Supporting Actor, Nancy Olson (Betty) for Best Supporting Actress.
I agree on Joe's reasoning for breaking things off with Betty. In general, it was about finally doing the right and moral thing, a combination of realizing it was wrong to steal his friend's fiancée and also that because of how much he had demoralized himself with Norma, he wasn't good enough for Betty. Also fun fact: One of the guests that Norma was playing with cards with was played by the great silent film star Buster Keaton.
The film outdoes its own meta quality. The silent film they watch was a a silent film Gloria Swanson starred in as a teenager and Erich von Stroheim (Max) directed!
The two repro men simply meant by "fireworks" that there were be lots of trouble, particularly legal trouble, but also could mean a physical altercation.
I wrote a paper on this for my film history class. This film is filled with in references and Easter eggs.
Fantastic reaction! Thanks, guys!
Loved your reaction. There is a deleted scene that starts the movie with the Narrator laid out on a slab with other corpses in the Morgue. You should search for it. I have the DVD and I think it's part of the Extras.
before ratings anyone any age could go into any movie.
some excellent films that year
I am convinced you two would enjoy
"The Asphalt Jungle" (1950) - excellent crime caper
Great movie.
You loved the silent comedy City Lights - you really should try the dramatic silent Sunrise, which got a special academy award for artistic achievement at the first Oscars in the late 20s and Janet Gaynor won Best Actress for her role in it (as well as another film). Amazing use of sets and even inter-titles. Give it a look please.
After watching this, watch some of Carol Burnett doing spoofs of Norma Desmond. Pretty funny.
I'm watching from India. I like this film 😄
This movie is quintessential film noir
You guys missed it at the beginning. The body floating in the pool is him. A dead man is narrating this movie. You guys figured that out later but knowing that at the beginning makes what happens when he first gets to Norma's mansion a lot creepier.
One of my *favorite* movies!!!
So pleased that you watched it.
such a great film showing how women are overlooked and thrown away after a certain age
Gloria Swanson was 50 when this was made.
32:50 Man, they almost talked over _the_ big reveal… not long after they realised Joe was the guy floating in the pool at the start, which isn’t meant to be the big reveal, yet I’ve not seen a single reaction in which they’ve immediately made that connection. 🤦♂️
Loved seeing y'all react to this! I got out after 6 years of extra work and standin and small 5 and under parts. Never been happier
Gloria Swanson was the longtime mistress of Joe Kennedy, the father of John & Robert.
the thing about Betty Is that she stepped over the line and in 1950 there has to be a punishment of some kine.
Wow! What a surprise! I'm dropping everything to watch this reaction! :D (Thanks!)
You're correct, Jay Gatsby was shot dead in his pool at the end. I prefer Leonardo over Redford as Gatsby but i like the old version best, especially Bruce Dern & Karen Black as Daisy's philandering husband & his mistress.
Was that "phantom of the opera" Max was playing on the organ?☮️
i highly recommend reading "close-up on sunset boulevard" by sam stagg, about the making of the film.
Yes, The Great Gatsby does end with a body floating in the pool.
And now for something completely different... I'd love to see you guys react to the 1995 BBC Pride And Prejudice mini series, and the British 1975 Faulty Towers.
Love for you two fine gents to go back 21 years and have a look at MGM’s “The Wizard of Oz.” Judy Garland was the mother of Liza Minnelli (from “Cabaret”).
I love how you say 'You don't even have to change the script'. He's a writer. I think he says he's a scriptwriter. It would be almost impossible for a real writer not to want to improve a script if it can be improved.
all the framed photos of swanson were supplied by swanson herself from her own collection. all were professional studio photos that she had saved.
also, notice that norma's insanity is complete when joe tells her that paramount only wanted to rent her car. the information that she's not wanted anymore is more than she can handle.
finally, after joe's murder the reporter dictating the story over the phone is hedda hopper playing herself. she began as an actress then became one of two hollywood reporters, so she was used to giving a story directly by phone.
I truly enjoyed watching and experiencing this with these two...seeing it through fresh eyes...Billy Wilder wanted Mae West..but it was a little too close to her life...Norma is a bit like Miss Haversham in "Great Expectations"...and yes..all the elderly were HUGE stars in the silents...Max is obsessed with Norma and keeps her sick to keep her....notice the floor in the dance ? Tiles were like a honeycomb.. she's the queen bee surrounded by neutered drones with only one mating male ...and Max knew to get Joes stuff because there's ALWAYS a Joe Gillis...he wasn't the first..in real life actress Allah Nazimova DID play Saline when she was 40... Her house was across the street from Schwab's... She made it a hotel "the garden of Allah"
To see another side of the traumatic switch in Hollywood from silent movies to "talkies," (but much happier), watch Singing In The Rain.
Can i recommend "All About Eve" from the same year. I think people have already commented how good that is
Completely brilliant film 👍
"This narration is old fashioned" A dead man is narrating.
Ahem, 50 is *not* "old." 🙂
It was then.
@@a.t.c.3862for being in Hollywood, it is unfortunately
I never appreciated Billy Wilder and just how many films he directed and in so many different genres.
My two favorites of his are the 1957 Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution - I defy you to guess the ending - and the frantic comedy One, Two, Three.
Great reaction! You guys illuminated the nuances well.
Great reaction to this classic & glad you liked it! Now you should watch 1950's "All About Eve" and how it skewers Broadway theater people and an aging (at40) diva, Margo Channing, and whether she should continue playing 20 somethings on stage.
Great movie.
It was GREMLINS that prompted the PG-13 rating to be created.
The ratings system was instituted in 1969. Before then they had the Hollywood Production Code, which prohibited a lot of content from being included. Some of the rules were pretty extreme, but at the same time it was comforting for audiences who could be assured that certain kinds of offensive content just wouldn’t be there.
Some movies originally released before the ratings system now have ratings due to rereleases.
guys
she is an actor/like everyone .
she is delusional /like everyone
he is a prop, needed for the script
One of my favorites
14:51 … he asks as Buster Keaton appears. 🤦♂️
Love this Movie and want to see Nicole Scherzinger in the stripped back bare version in Londons West End now !!!!
Billy Wilder based Norma Desmond on some of the silent stars who were still around at the time, unable to move on from their glory days and clinging to the past. One in particular, Mary Miles Minter, career had been destroyed by a scandal when the much older director she was involved with-William Desmond Taylor was murdered in a case that has never been definitely solved but which she was implicated in. Wilder took his lead character’s last name from the director as a sort of in joke for those in the know.
Ironically the woman he cast as Norma-Gloria Swanson-who became most associated with that idea was someone who was miles from that in reality. She had been one of the biggest stars of the silent period but once talkies came in, even though she made a successful transition, she realized her time at the top was ending and she left films for new challenges. She was a quite successful businesswoman and inventor afterward remaining active in many endeavors throughout the rest of her life. Her autobiography “Swanson on Swanson” is one of the best at capturing life during the silent era.
A couple of other points. It’s not that DeMille doesn’t want to deal with Norma again, he wants to protect her from the knowledge it is only the car they want knowing how much it would hurt her. He more than most understood who she had been, what that had done to her and how tenuous her grasp on reality was despite her bluster.
Yes, you are correct her “waxworks” friends were all former stars-Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B. Warner (who after his leading man days in silents ended became a respected character actor-he played Mr. Gower in “It’s a Wonderful Life” among many other roles) and of course Buster Keaton.
Nancy Olson who played Betty is the only cast member who is still with us. Her career wasn’t a huge one, but she has had quite a life. Her first husband was the famous lyricist Alan J. Lerner who with various collaborators wrote the musicals Gigi, Camelot, An American in Paris and My Fair Lady (which he adapted during their marriage and sited her as the inspiration for many of the songs therein). Her second husband Alan Livingston built Capitol Records into the industry giant it became.
u guys cool.1stwas Mae West,thenjean halo,gloria swanson,marylyn monroe,ect.
Joe Kennedy of Boston was hired to straighten out her finances(spending too much$). they had an affair.
aND her butler use to direct her and was her husband for a while. gloria and director,husbond,butler(in that order) traveled to Africa to film CLEPATRA. which did not come to fruition. scenes of Cleopatra are on the TV in Swansons bedroom.
it is black and white on purpose. notice extremes of light and dark. it is an art film.film noir ..you involved with a woman, could be on death row this time next year.
thanks
Great movie, cool reaction thanks guys, I really enjoyed seeing it again through fresh eyes. 20 Years ago I bought a script for this film at a shop here in Sydney back then called The Cinestore. Weird thing was in the version of the script I bought the beginning was differed from the final film in that it started with Joes body being brought into the morgue and the voice over we hear is him telling another dead body laying prone near him how he came to be there. I guess someone decided this earlier version was just too grim for the audience. I felt This creepy earlier version had a Twilightzone like vibe even though I think it pre-dates Twilight zone.
Good one!
I know how the story goes. The guy in the orange shirt says "get out of there" and the guy with the long hair says "play along". I know which one of you will live and which one will die. Our protagonist is her new pet monkey. Norma Desmond is not a "broken, depressed, sad, dysfunctional" person. She is a power-hungry, dangerous, narcissist. Nothing matters but what she wants. She never cares about what our protagonist wants: all he is to her is "supply": attention, sex, boy-toy, fan, ego-boosting, and whatever else she can extort from him. I don't know why you believe ANYTHING she says or does. She is an ACTRESS. Everything she says is merely acting to manipulate our hero. He's trapped.
He gave up Betty even though he loved her
you missed the dialog where he said to Betty, you and Artie can be honorable. Dialog driven old movies can't be talked through too much
You really shouldn't talk over important dialogue with these old films. You miss so much.
Especially when EVERY WORD of the script counts. Not like today's throw-away movies.
I felt bad for Betty, until she proved herself just as manipulative as Norma when she said "If you love me...." then I was like "BYE!"
FEDORA ..1977... Billy Wilder...WATCH IT!!!
Intelligence is this movies’ greatest threat to you.
(Fast Forward)
Yep. You talked right over it. You missed it. Wow.
Sad.
There's too much "commentary" in this. I quit watching after about ten minutes because I hardly heard any of the movie. 😡