Film Review : Sunset Boulevard

On February 26th, 2017 I watched the Neil Young “Heart of Gold” concert with my dad. It was a DVD recording containing 20 tracks of his live performance. We watched the concert in our home theatre room through a sound system that captured the quality of the concert.

The film’s main focus largely represents the Hollywood star system to which Norma Desmond is a victim of. The film particularly highlights the fantasy world in which Norma lives in, the world where she is the ‘greatest star’ (Norma Desmond, Sunset Boulevard, 1950). Sunset Boulevard steps into Norma’s mixed up world where hundreds of photos of herself clutter her crumbling mansion and where she watches herself on screen on a weekly basis. The crumbling and deteriorating mansion could be seen as a metaphor for Norma’s fall from stardom, the collapse of her career.

Sunset Boulevard (Wilder 1950) explores the intermingling of public and private realms, puncturing the illusion of the former and unveiling the grim and often disturbing reality of the latter. By delving into the personal delusions of its characters and showing the devastation caused by disrupting those fantasies, the film provides not only a commentary on the industry of which it is a product but also a shared anxiety about the corrupting influence of external perception. Narrated by a dead man, centering on a recluse tortured by her own former stardom, and concerning a once-promising director who refuses to believe his greatest star could ever be forgotten, the work dissects a multitude of illusory folds to reveal an ultimately

Sunset Boulevard follows an unsuccessful screenwriter, Joe Gillis (William Holden), whom a past movie star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), hires to help her return to the big screen. Police find the body of Joe Gillis in a swimming pool. In a flashback, Joe explains events that happen prior to his death. Joe tries selling a script to Paramount Studios to pay for his car but they refuse his script. When a group of men try to repossess Joes car, Joe escapes by hiding the car in a deserted mansion. Norma hires Joe to rewrite a script that she wants to star in and accepts his situation by moving into the mansion. Joe learns that Norma use to be a silent film star who believes that she’s still famous. Norma’s butler, Max Von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim), explains that he writes Norma fan letters and that Norma has made suicide attempts. Later, Joe wants to leave the mansion but returns since Norma cuts her wrists. At nights, Joe sneaks out to work on a script with Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson) and the two fall in love. Joe informs Norma that no one remembers her and that there will be no comeback causing Norma to shoot Joe who falls in the pool. Policemen and reporters appear at the

The camerawork emphasizes the sense of detachment between the characters, and Billy’s inability with connecting with others. In addition, the film has a contrasty, bleak look to it, like a faded photograph. Gallo shot the movie on reversal film stock to capture that contrast and grain, in attempt to reproduce the same look of football games from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

Besides being at the brink of madness caused by her self-denial of the passing of her fame, Norma Desmond had also become rather sexual-transgressive. Some male traits shown in Norma consist of her dominance - she demands over Max, financial independence - owns factories which constantly makes profits and her assertive nature - she fearlessly confronts her passion for Joe. The way Norma is ridiculously insane to a degree of dark humour brings sympathy, entertainment and a corrupted depiction of celebrity to audiences.

Stirring and innovative, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest is a meticulous and mysterious tale of mistaken identity. Starring one of the most prominent and suave leading actors in classic Hollywood, North by Northwest depicts Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill – a New York hot shot mistaken for the enigmatic ‘George Kaplan’. Furthermore, the film follows his quest to clear his name and intercept the devious plan of a secret consortium that aims to discredit the US Government. The shot from 14:25 to 14:45 makes use of lighting and camera techniques to foreshadow Thornhill’s involvement with the law, the enigmatic Vandamm and his devious cronies. Ultimately, this evaluation proposes that the shot is one of the most pivotal and integral

During the Vietnam War in the 1970s, hard drugs, especially heroin and cocaine, became a major source of crime and, therefore, police and legal system involvement. Was this involvement always a good thing though? The 2007 movie, American Gangster, addresses this very question by looking at law enforcement agencies during the 1970s, along with the corruption involved with police departments at this point in history. The particular corrupted agency focused on in the film is the New York Police Department, of which dirty detective, Nick Trupo, is a part of. The short clip shown from this movie makes the argument that although not all cops during this time became involved in the very crime they were supposed to be stopping, a large percentage of them did, which hindered the true “good guys,” like detective Richie Roberts, from keeping cities clean.

Billy Wilder’s work today remains masterful and memorable. From his skilled screenwriting to his directing, Wilder holds a key position in cinema history. Wilder’s stylistic and thematic elements are recognizable and give off a complex reflection of his American and European cultural influences. I think that Billy Wilder should be considered an “auteur” even if he is not already considered one, for his personal film style and the mere fact that his cynical vision allowed him to create many admirable films across a number of genre boundaries throughout his career. However, film critics tend to disagree and believe that Wilder was too cynical, while also complaining about the lack of

The filmmakers of Chinatown used the visual motif of escape to guide the audience towards the film’s central theme, which is that integrity does not prevail. This message is evoked from the article “Chinatown: The Ending” where “Chinatown is a metaphor for the nightmare of urban Los Angeles where you may think you know what is happening, but really you have no idea; where the police do as little as possible because attempts to install order can only make things worse like in this movie.”

In his films, Hitchcock takes full advantage of a scene’s foreground and background to advance the audience’s understanding of the story. In the films,

Formal context is a big part of why movies are how they are. In Double Indemnity (1944) clip, by Billy Wilder, there are many formal context elements that are important as to why the choices are made during scenes. Some of these are the types of shots, camera movement, lighting, and the mise-en-scene. This paper analyzes the five shots in the two minute and thirty three second scene in depth.

Critics have called the 1941 film Citizen Kane one of the best movies of all time, and director Orson Welles’s direction is largely to thank for the work’s accolades. Citizen Kane is famous for its use of long shots, deep staging, deep focus, and, as will be considered in this paper, its lighting practices. Welles strategically lights his characters in order to develop them throughout the film; this paper will focus on three shots that show Jerry Thompson (William Alland) develop from functioning as a narrative device to directly invoking the work’s thematic meaning.

The film that made an impression on me because of its techniques was The Great Gatsby. The director, Baz Luhrmann presents certain themes and ideas for the viewers. To do this, Baz Luhrmann proficiently uses a range of techniques to demonstrate these ideas. The Great Gatsby is about a man who orders his life around one desire: to be reunited with Daisy, the love he lost five years earlier. Gatsby's quest leads him from poverty to wealth, into the arms of his beloved, and eventually to death. The techniques I write about that illustrate the themes of the film are; camera shots, setting, lighting and symbolism. The scenes I will be concentrating on are the final scenes which feature the Great Gatsby.

Art critic Robert Hughes once said, “People inscribe their histories, beliefs, attitudes, desires and dreams in the images they make.” When discussing the mediums of photography and cinema, this belief of Hughes is not very hard to process and understand. Images, whether they be still or moving, can transform their audiences to places they have either never been before or which they long to return to. Images have been transporting audiences for centuries thanks to both the mediums of photography and cinema and together they gone through many changes and developments. When careful consideration is given to these two mediums, it is acceptable to say that they will forever be intertwined, and that they have been interrelated forms of