This Resource on Key Themes and Quotes in the film ‘Sunset Boulevard’ by Billy Wilder is for Year 12 Students studying in the Victorian VCE Curriculum.
The Superficial Celebrity Image & Hollywood
Above all else, Sunset Boulevard a cautionary warning about the artifice [pretence] of Hollywood. Wilder reviews contemporary Hollywood unravelling the nightmares behind the curtains of the dream machine, particularly the vanity that the star system perpetuates. Sunset Boulevard makes the case that the star system has something cruel and inhuman at its centre that exploits youth and beauty treating stars as commodities.
Artie’s NYE party = “Hollywood for us ain’t been so good. Got no swimming pool. Very few clothes. All we earn are buttons and bows”.
DeMille = “You know, some crazy things happen in this business, Norma”.
Norma Desmond = “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small”.
Joe Gillis = “Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along”.
Betty Schaefer = “I had ten years of dramatic lessons, diction, dancing. Then, the studio made a test. Well, they didn’t like my nose – slanted, this way a little. So, I went to a doctor and had it fixed. They made more tests and they were crazy about my nose. Only, they didn’t like my acting”.
Max = “She was the greatest. You wouldn’t know. You are too young. In one week she got seventeen thousand fan letters”.
Control / Manipulation & Deceit
The film highlights that all characters adopt manipulative schemes in order to deceive others for their own personal success. Wilder illustrates that not only do characters manipulate and deceive but it is endemic [rife] to the entire film industry in Hollywood. Hollywood itself manipulates and deceives an array of talented and not so talented people who want to be part of the movie industry as the quintessential [typical] dream factor. The reality is that not all dreams come true as Hollywood is full of narcissistic personalities, inflated expectations, and aggressive rivalries. Everyone is competitive and about the relentless pursuit of fame and money that challenges personal integrity.
Gillis = “Wait a minute, haven’t I seen you before? I know your face”.
Gillis = “I sure turned into an interesting driveway”.
Gillis = “I started concocting a little plot of my own”.
Gillis = “You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big”
Desmond “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small”
Gillis = “There’s nothing tragic about being fifty—not unless you try to be twenty-five”.
Gillis = “Look sweetie be practical. I’ve got a good deal here. A long-term contract with no options”.
Norma Desmond = “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up”.
Schaefer = ‘Look at this street – all cardboard, all hollow, all phoney, all done with mirrors’.
Stardom Fame and Vanity
Sunset Boulevard also offers a heavy critique of contemporary Hollywood, unravelling the nightmares behind the curtains of the dream machine, particularly the vanity that the star system perpetuates. Norma Desmond is a silent film star whose glory days are behind her; she is played by Gloria Swanson, a famous silent-era actor herself. Norma has a toxic characterization of Hollywood and its obsession of image has rubbed off on her. The film predominantly shows Norma in front of mirrors, snapshots of her old photographs, and her “celluloid self”. These details put an emphasis on Desmond’s refusal to accept her fading stardom, and by extension, the dangerous appeal of intoxicating fame.
Gillis = “You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big”.
Desmond = “There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world!”
Desmond = “The stars are ageless, aren’t they?”
Desmond = “Great stars have great pride!”
Gillis= “Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along”.
Love & Relationships
For a story so bleak, Sunset Boulevard is not completely devoid of sentiment, and love informs the relationships between several characters. However, those who love and profess to feel it are mercilessly scrutinised. Love can be destructive and ego-driven like Norma’s love for Joe and this is juxtaposed with genuinely unselfish love of Betty for Joe. Love can also be bound up with betrayal and good people can deliberately hurt those to whom they are closest.
Norma Desmond = “I’m in love with you. Don’t you know that? I’ve been in love with you all along”.
Joe Gillis = “You want a Valentino, somebody with polo ponies, a big shot!”
Norma Desmond = “What you’re trying to say is that you don’t want me to love you. Say it. Say it!” [then she slaps Joe hard across the face].
Artie = “Hey Joe, I said you could have my couch. I didn’t say you could have my girl”.
Max = “I discovered her when she was sixteen”. He refuses to “let her be destroyed”.
Schaefer = “Of course I love him. I always Will. I’m just not in love with him any more”.
Death
Death, both literally and figuratively, casts a looming presence in nearly every scene of the film. Sunset Boulevard begins with Joe’s corpse in the pool, immediately introducing audiences to the film’s bleak, cynical tone. Norma’s dead monkey signifies the emptiness of her existence and the opening for a new companion in her life—a role soon fulfilled by Joe. At the same time, Norma’s career is figuratively dead; she is no longer wanted in Hollywood due to her age and her associated with outmoded silent films. A sense of death also permeates her rotting, decaying mansion—it is a type of house “crazy movie people built in the crazy 20s,” thereby belonging to the forgotten era of Hollywood silent film. Death is narratively and symbolically integral to Sunset Boulevard, which renders a film noir, unflinching portrait of Hollywood. Norma like other actors who have been left stranded by changes in Hollywood as the silent era transitions to a ‘talkie’ industry are literally the living dead.
Man’s voice = “You see, the body of a young man was found floating in the pool of her mansion, with two shots in his back and one in his stomach”.
Gillis = “They beached me, like a harpooned baby whale”.
Gillis = “This is where you came in. Back at that pool again, the one I always wanted”.
Gillis = “As if she were laying to rest an only child. Was her life really as empty as that?”
Gillis = The only company Norma tolerates at the palazzo are the living dead “the waxworks” who are “dim figures you may still remember from the silent days”.
Reality & Self-delusion
The film blurs the distinctions between fantasy and reality. The film industry relies on its ability to create illusions, and Norma—herself a product of this toxic system—can no longer detach her real self from her former onscreen persona. Her grandiose gestures and dramatic expressions evoke the physicality of a silent film actress, but, more importantly, she, with Max’s help, has fooled herself into believing she is still a massively adored star. By the time Joe finally gets up the courage and reveals the truth of her obsolesce, Norma’s delusions have become so entrenched that she refuses to believe the truth and murders him in revenge.
Gillis = “You don’t yell at a sleepwalker. She was sleepwalking along the giddy heights of a lost career”.
Desmond = “I am a star … the greatest star of them all”.
Desmond = “No one leaves a star. That’s what makes one a star.”
Gillis = “… still waving proudly to a parade which had long since passed her by”.
Discontent with Hollywood
Discontent underlies both Norma and Joe’s demeanours in the film. Norma is unsatisfied because of the neglectful film industry and public who have forgotten her and left her to rot in her dilapidated mansion with her ex-husband—another dim figure from the silent era. Joe is a fundamentally dissatisfied person, something that is evident in the first sequences in the film where he expresses frustration in his career and crippling financial status. Joe’s fate underscores the dubious line between fame and notoriety. Like so many others, he came to Hollywood to make a success of his writing career. He initially dreamed of fame and success when arriving in Hollywood. After a lacklustre screenwriting career, Joe is discontent, jaded, and ambivalent, which explains why he endures his relationship with Norma—a clearly manipulative and unstable person—for so long. With Norma, Joe no longer has to put forth any legitimate effort in his life: by succumbing to her opulence and narcissism, he gets a home and lavish belongings, which is preferable to getting into car chases and asking for personal loans from studio executives out of sheer desperation. The pervasiveness of discontent in the film illuminates the predatory, vicious nature of Hollywood; the industry constantly rejects aspiring filmmakers and destroys their ambitions, resulting in a multitude of tormented, troubled souls.
Prologue = “He always wanted a pool”.
Gillis = “Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along”.
Desmond = “I hate that word. It’s a return, a return to the millions of people who have never forgiven me for deserting the screen”.
Desmond = “There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world!”.
Desmond = “They took the idols and smashed them, the Fairbanks’s, the Gilberts, the Valentinos!”.
Gender Roles
At face value, Hollywood is an atypical milieu [environment], unique due to its glamour and creativity. At the same time, it is also a microcosm [miniature] that mirrors the conservative values of the wider community. In particular, the roles assumed by the men in the text signal the dominant patriarchal ethos of postwar American society. It is men who hold positions of authority and influence – producers, directors, screenwriters, and agents are male. Film actresses – even the most successful – are strictly contracted to the studio system that is controlled and headed by men. The gender divide in Hollywood is not only evident in its power structures but shows in the types of work that men and women do that reflect a traditional gender bias that underlines the established dichotomy between an active masculine role and a more passive feminine role.
Significantly, the film both subverts and adheres to classic gender norms in American society along with the film noir traditions. Joe, as leading man, in his relationship with Norma he does not embody normative masculinity, which is often synonymous with strength, domination and aggression. Here, he becomes submissive and subservient to Norma and her many wishes and desires and is threatened by her. She also holds command over Max, her former husband and turned into a butler. It is when Joe tries to reclaim his masculinity and integrity by leaving Norma, he is shot dead by the femme fatale in revenge.
Schaefer = “It’s not your career — it’s mine. I kind of hoped to get in on this deal. I don’t want to be a reader all my life. I want to write”.
Gillis = Calls Betty “One of those message kids”.
Schaefer = “Now I’m a Reader”.
Ageing for women in Hollywood & Youth & Beauty
The film also addresses the issue of gender and ageing for women in Hollywood. It is youth and beauty that have currency. This has a negative implication for women in particular, whose credibility in leading parts is seen to be limited by age. In 1950’s Hollywood there was a clear double standard, skewed firmly in favour of men. Male stars were still playing romantic leads well into their 60’s but actresses of 40+ struggled to secure roles. This issue impacts Norma as she has not been able to transition from the silent screen to talkies and the harsh reality is that by Hollywood standards, she has passed her use-by date at the age of 50. This is shown in Norma’s obsession with her image and the need to undergo many procedures of beauty treatments to conform to Hollywood’s patriarchal expectations of her as a celebrity actress, especially if she is to make her return to the screen in the ‘Salome’ film.
Similarly, Betty Schaefer was turned down in a role she auditioned for due to her unattractive nose. When she had it changed, people could not stop talking about her nose instead of paying attention to her acting skills. Betty decides after being rejected, to become a screen writer, signalling her escape from the superficiality of traditional feminine notions that are subjected upon women by a toxic Hollywood, one that fetishises [obsesses over] physical beauty and youth.
Gillis = “Norma, you’re a woman of 50, now grow up. There’s nothing tragic about being 50, not unless you try to be 25”.
Gillis = After that, an army of beauty experts invaded her house on Sunset Boulevard. She went through a merciless series of treatments, massages … She was determined to be ready – ready for those cameras that would never turn”.
Schaefer = “Well, they didn’t like my nose – slanted, this way a little. So, I went to a doctor and had it fixed”.