Sunset Howard Character Traits
n discussing Citizen Kane, Charles Higham mentioned "artistic cheats," flaws in credibility whereby characters in scenes gave information about which they couldn't possibly have full detailed knowledge. Sunset Boulevard's entire point of view is based on a gimmick. Whether one considers it an "artistic cheat" or a valid and audacious device depends up his ability and desire to suspend his disbelief. The problem of point of view in Sunset Boulevard is especially germane.
Sunset Boulevard begins outlandishly. A homicide squad with motorcycle escort rides along Sunset Boulevard to an old mansion where a body lies floating in a pool. We find out that the story is being related by that dead man. It is a shock that takes some acclimation. Can one really accept a dead man (whose corpse we see) telling us the story? One quality that jars against the seeming fantasy is the realistic emphasis in the film's composition. The shots seem like news photos from the front page of a tabloid newspaper. There are several arresting shots, especially those apparently from under the pool up through the water,1 whereby we see the body floating arms spread, beyond it the police and photographers and the sporadic flashes of flashbulbs. The audacity of the shot may …show more content…
compensate for some of its eccentricity. The opening suggests the marriage of technique that will follow -- the realistic and the bizarre. Every time matters start to become too fantastic, we are jarred back into a reality by details from actuality that often delight us.
Sunset Boulevard is the story of Joe Gilles, an unemployed screenwriter, and Norma Desmond, a former movie queen of the silent screen.
When Joe, trying to elude two men who are trying to repossess his car, hides in a garage on her dilapidated estate, Norma mistakes him for an undertaker who is to bury her dead pet chimpanzee. Norma finds that he is a writer, and she insists he help her with her script for Salome, a film in which she plans to make her triumphant "return." Her writing is pathetic, but because he thinks he will be safe there he agrees. The haughty, grasping Norma is cared for by her butler Max, her former director and ex-husband, who forges fan letters for the forgotten star and who is fiercely
protective.
Eventually Joe's belongings are moved into Norma's house, she buys him clothes, and keeps him. When Joe and Norma visit the Paramount lot for Norma's hopeless meeting with Cecil B. DeMille about her hapless Salome, Joe resumes his acquaintance with Betty Schaefer who wants him to write a serious script with her. After he finally does begin to sneak out at night to work with Betty, Norma finds out. She phones Betty to expose Joe's tawdry life; Joe intrudes and tells Betty to come to Norma's house to see for herself. When she does so, Joe sends her back to her fiance Artie and walks out on Norma who shoots him. He plunges into her swimming pool dead. At the end Norma, her sanity gone, believes she is making Salome as she faces the newsreel cameras.
The casting is not always persuasive, but it is deft. Nancy Olson is suitably sweet as Betty Schaefer, the manuscript reader; and Jack Webb smiles a lot and expends energy as Artie Green, the simple assistant director. Olson and Webb have thankless roles and add little. Fred Clark is a bit coy as the glib producer, another bland role. But these three simple characters act merely as pawns to set off the grotesques. Gloria Swanson is appropriately larger than life as Norma Desmond. Her use of her dramatic hands as they sculpt and sweep provides a considerable lesson in acting. Billy Wilder has spoken about the selection of Miss Swanson: "... I had planned to do the picture with Mae West, on the burlesque side, but later it evolved into a tragic story." He concludes, "... but Swanson was a lucky choice, I think" (The Celluloid Muse).
Erich von Stroheim plays Norma's ex-director, ex-husband, and devoted protector.2 With his odd erect carriage, his kid gloves, and his calculated subservience, he adds to the grotesquerie. Sunset Boulevard also possesses a famous card game. Its players are silent comic Buster Keaton; Anna Q. Nilsson, who was a popular actress in silent films; and H.B. Warner, who played Christ in DeMille's 1924 version of King of Kings. William Holden has the role of Joe Gilles, a part originally scheduled for Montgomery Clift. Holden's cool, descriptive narration is an effective means for bridging the bizarre and the realistic.
Sunset Boulevard begins outlandishly. A homicide squad with motorcycle escort rides along Sunset Boulevard to an old mansion where a body lies floating in a pool. We find out that the story is being related by that dead man. It is a shock that takes some acclimation. Can one really accept a dead man (whose corpse we see) telling us the story? One quality that jars against the seeming fantasy is the realistic emphasis in the film's composition. The shots seem like news photos from the front page of a tabloid newspaper. There are several arresting shots, especially those apparently from under the pool up through the water,1 whereby we see the body floating arms spread, beyond it the police and photographers and the sporadic flashes of flashbulbs. The audacity of the shot may …show more content…
compensate for some of its eccentricity. The opening suggests the marriage of technique that will follow -- the realistic and the bizarre. Every time matters start to become too fantastic, we are jarred back into a reality by details from actuality that often delight us.
Sunset Boulevard is the story of Joe Gilles, an unemployed screenwriter, and Norma Desmond, a former movie queen of the silent screen.
When Joe, trying to elude two men who are trying to repossess his car, hides in a garage on her dilapidated estate, Norma mistakes him for an undertaker who is to bury her dead pet chimpanzee. Norma finds that he is a writer, and she insists he help her with her script for Salome, a film in which she plans to make her triumphant "return." Her writing is pathetic, but because he thinks he will be safe there he agrees. The haughty, grasping Norma is cared for by her butler Max, her former director and ex-husband, who forges fan letters for the forgotten star and who is fiercely
protective.
Eventually Joe's belongings are moved into Norma's house, she buys him clothes, and keeps him. When Joe and Norma visit the Paramount lot for Norma's hopeless meeting with Cecil B. DeMille about her hapless Salome, Joe resumes his acquaintance with Betty Schaefer who wants him to write a serious script with her. After he finally does begin to sneak out at night to work with Betty, Norma finds out. She phones Betty to expose Joe's tawdry life; Joe intrudes and tells Betty to come to Norma's house to see for herself. When she does so, Joe sends her back to her fiance Artie and walks out on Norma who shoots him. He plunges into her swimming pool dead. At the end Norma, her sanity gone, believes she is making Salome as she faces the newsreel cameras.
The casting is not always persuasive, but it is deft. Nancy Olson is suitably sweet as Betty Schaefer, the manuscript reader; and Jack Webb smiles a lot and expends energy as Artie Green, the simple assistant director. Olson and Webb have thankless roles and add little. Fred Clark is a bit coy as the glib producer, another bland role. But these three simple characters act merely as pawns to set off the grotesques. Gloria Swanson is appropriately larger than life as Norma Desmond. Her use of her dramatic hands as they sculpt and sweep provides a considerable lesson in acting. Billy Wilder has spoken about the selection of Miss Swanson: "... I had planned to do the picture with Mae West, on the burlesque side, but later it evolved into a tragic story." He concludes, "... but Swanson was a lucky choice, I think" (The Celluloid Muse).
Erich von Stroheim plays Norma's ex-director, ex-husband, and devoted protector.2 With his odd erect carriage, his kid gloves, and his calculated subservience, he adds to the grotesquerie. Sunset Boulevard also possesses a famous card game. Its players are silent comic Buster Keaton; Anna Q. Nilsson, who was a popular actress in silent films; and H.B. Warner, who played Christ in DeMille's 1924 version of King of Kings. William Holden has the role of Joe Gilles, a part originally scheduled for Montgomery Clift. Holden's cool, descriptive narration is an effective means for bridging the bizarre and the realistic.