For Year 12 students studying the film ‘Sunset Boulevard’ in the Victorian Curriculum VCE this Resource is an Analysis of the Opening Titles Sequence up to Joe Gillis’s Dead Body in the Pool Scene.
The opening titles sequence of the film ‘Sunset Boulevard’ sets the scene for the rest of the narrative and takes the audience into a film noir world of danger, pessimism, and threat. Director Billy Wilder incorporates elements of gothic horror with a high angle shot panning down to the bleak curb stencilling of ‘SUNSET BLVD’ beneath a gutter filled with cigarette butts and dead leaves, in order to cynically establish notions of decay and seediness, whilst proposing an unconventional and grim perception of the glamorous Hollywood allure.
By juxtaposing the dramatic non-diegetic flourish of music by Franz Waxman with a close-up of a grimy urban gutter, foreshadows how the stories of the characters will not be glamorous, but much more sinister, potentially ending in ruin, along a winding and tumultuous road. The camera further pans across and down the boulevard, revealing cracked and broken pavement to contrast the “golden avenue to paradise” with its reality as a “road to death”. The mere fact the film begins in the gutter is an early symbol of the damaging effects of celebrity and the pursuit of fame, immediately warning viewers of the ephemerality of stardom in the capitalist American society of the 1950’s.
As the opening credits finish the camera tilts up as in dollies backwards to reveal, at a distance, Police cars blaring their sirens into view. The sirens join with blasts of trumpet and drums from the original soundtrack. The camera then pans to the Homicide Squad revealing Police cars and detectives, and it is from this moment that Joe Gillis’s narration explains to the audience a murder has been committed at a mansion nearby, setting the stage for the non-linear narrative.
A low-angle shot is used as the narrator reflects on his life, the camera shows his floating, dead body at the bottom of a swimming pool, using a low-angle shot to highlight the grim tragedy and underscore the high cost of the Hollywood dream. Furthermore, in harnessing a submerged camera perspective, complemented by dramatic backdrop lighting to artistically capture Joe’s lifeless body, Wilder immerses his audience into a realm of fantasy and illusion. Moreover, the pool which Joe “always wanted” ironically becomes his own grave, highlighting the fatal consequences of his pursuit of fame.
Thus, Wilder’s deliberate juxtaposition of violence and privilege alludes to the dark and malevolent forces which lurk beneath Hollywood’s glamorous façade. In this sense, Joe’s tragic demise serves as a stark warning of the inherent dangers rooted in the relentless chase for celebrity, where dreams of success can instantaneously turn into a nightmare of disillusionment and death.