Sunset Boulevard Revisited :: Essays Papers

old Boulevard Revisited When the film Sunset Boulevard premiered in Hollywood in 1950, the picture caused a riot in the theatre by and by the feature finished. Director Billy Wilder commented, Ive never seen so many prominent people at erstwhile the word was come to the fore that this was a stunner, you see. After the picture ended there were violent reactions, from ferment to pure horror(May 570). Wilder did whatever he could to keep the game of Sunset Boulevard a secret outside of the walls of Paramount Studios because of its polemical subject matter. Today, Sunset Boulevard is hailed as one of the best films in motion picture history, so what was so controversial virtually it that do Hollywood so scared? The answer is that the film dealt with the truth roughly Hollywood and its stars. It scared people because it portrayed the life of a melt movie star in a realistic way, making members of Hollywood evaluate their careers and life later on stardom. Howeve r, it was not only the plot that panic-struck Hollywood, but also Wilders casting of Gloria Swanson and Erich Von Stroheim in ii of the leading roles. Both had been film stars of the silent era back in the roaring twenties, but had fallen on hard times after their careers had fizzled. Therefore, the stunner that Wilder talks about is not the plot of Sunset Boulevard, but the terrifying realism demonstrated by the actors lives molding the characters they play in the film. The protagonist of the film is Norma Desmond, a washed-up actress who has delusions about reclaiming her fame again. At the end of the film, her sanity snaps when she loses her lover, Joe Gillis, and realizes that she will never return to the stardom that she once knew in her youth. On casting the role of Norma, Wilder knew that enlisting an actress from the early(a) years of cinema would be ideal for the story he cute to tell, rather than hiring a popular actress from the current Hollywood roster. Wilder discussed Mae watt and Mary Pickford for the role, but finally decided on Gloria Swanson. Gloria Swanson had been very famed in the twenties, acting for such names as Sam woodland and Cecil B.