Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard. 1950 Paramount Pictures.
Starring: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, Jack Webb
Also Starring: Cecil B. DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B. Warner, Ray Evans, Jack Livingston
Director: Billy Wilder
Available at Amazon.

A true Hollywood classic that won three Academy Awards (Best Art Director, Best Music, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay).

An unsuccessful screenwriter is found floating face down in a swimming pool behind a Hollywood mansion. Fading into a flashback, a narrator, who turns out to be Joe Gillis (Holden), describes his own problems raising some quick cash to keep his car from being repossessed. Gillis is also trying to peddle a baseball script he wrote called Bases Loaded, which attracts some interest from Paramount Pictures at first, but is dismissed for being "mediocre". Gillis storms off the studio property and his agent does nothing to ease his money problems. Another run-in with the repossession agents sees Joe swerve into a residential driveway to what he assumes is a deserted mansion, but he is started to hear a woman's voice coming from upstairs, asking him to come inside.

Joe meets Max the stoic butler (von Stroheim), and discovers that the great silent film star Norma Desmond (Swanson) still occupies the dilapidated mansion. Norma has simply assumed that Joe is an undertaker dropping by to handle the funeral for her recently dead pet chimpanzee. After that misconception is cleared up, Norma is told that Joe is a screenwriter, so she offers him a job reading a script she has prepared for her planned comeback. Joe instantly accepts, and soon, working out of Norma's mansion, finds himself completely financially dependent on the actress, who buys him whatever he needs, but makes little effort to change the situation. Pretty soon, Norma reveals on New Year's Eve that she is in love with Joe.

Briefly leaving the mansion, Joe reconnects with Betty Schaefer (Olson), who is the Paramount employee that had rejected the script for Bases Loaded earlier. Betty has read some of Joe's other scripts, and says one in particular shows promise. His creativity rejuvenated with this news, Joe tries to move out of Norma's mansion, but Max tells him that the actress has attemped suicide. Joe stays as Norma continues her "comeback", sending off a finished script to Cecil B. DeMille (who appears as himself), who requests a meeting with her, but Joe and Max discovers that the director only wants to hire one of Norma's vintage cars for a film, and has no use for Norma's comeback script. The two keep this secret from Norma, and we learn that Max was Norma's first husband, and a former film director who had discovered her.

Joe and Betty are secretly working on a screenplay together, and they fall in love. Norma finds out and tries to derail the budding new romance by telling Betty what kind of person he is. Joe manages to diffuse the situation, and while Norma is grateful for turning Betty away, he still makes it clear that he is leaving the mansion. Norma threatens to shoot herself, which Joe simply disregards and walks away. Instead, Joe gets shot three times, and he falls into the pool, dead. Back in the present day, Norma is completely lost in her fantasy world, and as the media arrives, she thinks she is on the set of her new movie. Oh, Mr. DeMille, she's ready for her closeup.

Paramount embarked on a complete restoration project for Sunset Boulevard, digitally restoring the film after much of the original negative had deteriorated. The finished product looks GREAT. Highly, highly, highly recommended.