Close-up on Sunset Boulevard by Sam Staggs

Joe visits his friend Artie Green and again meets Betty, who thinks a scene in one of Joe's scripts has potential. Joe tries to let her down gently, but Norma slaps him and retreats to her room. At her New Year's Eve party, he realizes she has fallen in love with him. Moved into Norma's mansion at her insistence, Joe sees that Norma refuses to accept that her fame has evaporated, and he learns that her butler Max secretly writes the fan letters she receives.

Joe finds her script abysmal but flatters her into hiring him as a script doctor. She plans to play the role herself in her return to the screen. Learning that Joe is a writer, Norma asks his opinion of a script she has written for a film about Salome. Later, while fleeing from repossession men seeking his car, Joe turns into the driveway of a seemingly deserted mansion inhabited by forgotten silent film star Norma Desmond. Script reader Betty Schaefer harshly critiques it, unaware that Joe is listening.

Six months earlier, Joe was a down-on-his-luck screenwriter trying to interest Paramount Pictures in a story he submitted. In a flashback, Joe relates the events leading to his death. In 1998, it was ranked number 12 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 best American films of the 20th century, and in 2007, it was 16th on their 10th Anniversary list.Īt a mansion on Sunset Boulevard, a group of police officers and photographers discover the body of Joe Gillis floating face down in the swimming pool. Library of Congress in 1989, Sunset Boulevard was included in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. As it was deemed 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant' by the U.S. It is often ranked among the greatest movies ever made. Praised by many critics when first released, Sunset Boulevard was nominated for 11 Academy Awards (including nominations in all four acting categories) and won three. DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper play themselves, and the film includes cameo appearances by leading silent-film actors Buster Keaton, H. Erich von Stroheim plays Max von Mayerling, her devoted butler, and Nancy Olson, Jack Webb, Lloyd Gough, and Fred Clark appear in supporting roles. The film stars William Holden as Joe Gillis, a struggling screenwriter, and Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a former silent-film star who draws him into her deranged fantasy world, where she dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen. It was named after a major street that runs through Hollywood, the center of the American film industry.

Sunset Boulevard (styled in the main title on-screen as SUNSET BLVD.) is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett.

Close-up on Sunset Boulevard by Sam Staggs