Sunset Boulevard Movie Essay

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.

John Ford built a standard that many future directors would follow with his classic 1939 film “Stagecoach”. Although there were a plethora of western films made before 1939, the film “Stagecoach” revolutionized the western genre by elevating the genre from a “B” film into a more serious genre. The film challenged not only western stereotypes but also class divisions in society. Utilizing specific aspects of mise-en-scène and cinematography, John Ford displays his views of society.

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

As the audience knows well already since the very first scene, Sunset Boulevard does not have what one would call a “happy ending.” In this sense, the movie gives itself away as film noir considering the fact that all such works of cinema which fall in this style category are known to have dark themes predominantly sending a message of hopelessness and meaningless existence. With Joe’s lifeless body floating around in a swimming pool in mind throughout the entire movie, audiences of this motion picture are filled with a sense of pointlessness for Joe’s life, since his personal resolutions and growth as a

The effect of the low angles that Burton portrays potential antagonists contrasts with the effect of the front and back lighting that he uses to characterize his protagonists. The cinematic elements’ effects often used in Burton’s films are always clearly transferred to the viewer and are impressionable, and the style in which Burton

The debate over Casablanca and Citizen Kane has been a classic argument between film critics and historians alike, and this is because both of these pieces are timeless pictures that have managed to captivate audiences well after their era. On a broad spectrum analysis this is an apples and oranges debate as the two films both have great cinematographic value but for different reasons. However, the real question at hand is which film is the greatest? Which film transformed the future of American film making? It is these questions that I as many others have, will attempt to answer in the following essay as I explain why I believe Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made.

My favorite movie is Friday Night Lights, Peter Berg is the director. It is based on a book written by H.G. Bissingers with same title Friday Night Lights. The book was originally published in 1990. This story is about the 1988 Permian Panthers High School football team in Odessa Texas. Bissingers followed the team for the entire football season. The coaches and football players faced many obstacles during that particular season. They endured racial tensions from the opposing teams and opposing fans. The Panthers had to form a brotherhood and bond that no outsider could break.

In the period, the newly implemented technological elements and unique stylistic choices present “the context of moviegoing as [a] special event,” which contributed to the cultivation of an “aggressive relationship” with the spectator. Wilder also spectacularizes his film through its genre subversion and bawdy humor. However, in his references to more serious themes, such as gender, he engages the newly developing “sophisticated spectator,” capable of distinguishing and appreciating the technological features of films, the issues tackled within narratives, and the implied breeches of the Production Code, such as when Osgood “pinche[s]” Jerry/Daphne (Jack Lemmon) behind the closed doors of an elevator.

Mulholland Drive, directed by David Lynch, is a film that plays heavily on the idea of disillusionment. Lynch incinerates the viewers expectations for this storyline by revealing to us that the everything we have seen was part of some elaborate fantasy, three quarters into movie. The film uses editing to generate emotions and ideas through the construction of patterns and seeing, hinting towards the film’s unconventionality. The “casting couch” scene in the film in which Betty has her first audition made me feel uncomfortable and off-gaurs, as this character who is presented as innocent suddenly sexualizes herself in order to get a role in Hollywood. The overall acting up until this point is overdone and almost artificial but it isn’t until

On this surface, director Robert Lieberman’s film Breakaway seems like a simple comedy about an Indo-Canadian hockey team in Toronto, trying to get into a sport that is dominated by Caucasians. Rajvinder Singh, the protagonist of the film, comes from a traditional Sikh family but decides at a young age that he will no longer wear a turban, and will not embrace his culture as much as his parents, especially father, would like. Darvesh (the father) represents traditional values and Sikh culture, and highlights the generational differences between diasporic families in Canada. Throughout the film he is fighting to have Raj follow in the family business and focus on things he deems important; hockey is not one of them.

Sunset Boulevard is in no way, shape or form an adjusted story of Hollywood, past or present. Be that as it may it is such a cunning compound of truth and legend—and is so lavishly fragrant of the past, yet so contemporaneous—that it apparently talks with extraordinary power. Sunset Boulevard is that uncommon mix of impactful composition, master acting, excellent course, and inconspicuously aesthetic photography which rapidly does magic over a crowd of people and holds it excited to a shattering peak.

Chinatown movie digs into the depth on a number of planning issues and issues that are related to planning. Firstly, the issue of politics is brought out and its effects in planning. Bad politics and leadership which includes vices like corruption and greed interferes with planning. Secondly, the significance of water is also explored in the movie. Water is such a fundamental resource is life and from the movie water can be portrayed as a source of life. Hence good planning must provide clean water which should also be sustainable. In the movie also, societal ignorance is also exposed and how it affects planning. Leaders take advantage of ignorance from the society in order to pursue their self interests. Another issue that surfaces in the

5) Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” was an operatic work of art as he came up with many blistering images without sounding awkward and orthodox and formed characters with complication, an enthralling idea, and an influential theme. The actual images in his film are supplementary to the ‘facts’ of dialogue and narration. His choice can be seen in the act when Norma comes to visit Paramount in which Wilder completes his scene by focusing the camera on his polished riding boots.

Billy Wilder's famous and well known film called Sunset Boulevard is a masterpiece for the ages. Even though it is in black and white, don't think it isn't good. This film has so many twist and turns, the audience doesn't know what's going to happen next (even though you know the Writer in the movie is going to die because of the flash back). I thought the movie was interesting with the beginning of the film when they start out with the dead man floating motionless in the pool as police officers rush to the senses to understand what had happened to the dead movie writer. Also, later in the film that really interested me that was never answered in the film was the funeral for the dead ape and how it had anything to do with the plot of the movie.

Everyone life has been affected by a movie. Walt Disney said that “Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood”. According to Google a movie is “a story or event recorded by a camera as a set of moving images and shown in a theater or on television; a motion picture”. All this is good, but what is a good movie. I say that a good movie has a good script, acting, and keeps you interested.