Sunset Boulevard





Director - Billy Wilder

Genre - Drama/Romance


Billy Wilder's sardonic mauling of youth-obsessed Hollywood with the infamous line, "I'm ready for my close-up now, Mr. DeMille". The acid-tongued script takes ahold of you right from the get-go and by the time you realize that you've stumbled onto a piece of cinematic history more precious than any of the hokey artefacts Indy Jones risks life and limb for, you're already helplessly undone by its wily, serpentine plot. William Holden is a down on his luck screenwriter hired by aging and diminished silent star, Norma Desmond to play script doctor and so much more.

4.5 STARS!

All about Sunset Boulevard

Comments

Shubhajit said…
This is one of my favourite movie, one of the greatest masterpieces ever, the benchmark template for noirs and undoubtedly the finest movie made on the dream factory called cinema.

For Miss Goody Two-Shoes, the black and nearly nihilistic cynicism drenched plot might be too much to bear, but i loved every moment of it. Every aspect is memorable - narration, script, direction, cinematography, acting, and of course the bizarre irony of Erich von Stroheim, a famous former director himself, playing the role of a cuckolded butler to his former muse. Hard-boiled in feel, and deeply disturbing in content.
Joel Bocko said…
A great movie, definitely - but the .5 star reduction from masterpiece status?
Thanks for the comments guys.

Shubhajit - And you're the one who recommended this to us. Your review of 'Sunset' is one of our favorites ever written by you and we HAD to watch the movie after reading it. We even hesitated for a long while in coming up with our own review for the film. How do we write an equally good piece when you have done such a perfect one? It is to us one of your best works. It really showed your love of the film.

MovieMan0283 - A masterpiece to us has to be flawless in direction and execution. The 'Godfather' movies we could not find a single bone to pick with. 'Pulp Fiction' is another example. 'Sunset' may be a classic but that doesn't mean that it is automatically a masterpiece. Some scenes were a tad too contrived. Although it didn't mar the overall film, this factor was enough for us to take half a star away from it. :)
Shubhajit said…
Its always a pleasure to be able to recommend movies to fellow cinephiles. In fact, this goes both ways since your blog too has introduced me to quite a few good ones; case in point - movies of Kim Ki-Duk. In fact, I've just put up a review of his The Bow.