Budapest Classic Film Marathon: Sunset Boulevard

Director: Billy Wilder

Screenplay by Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshman Jr., Charles Backett
Director of photography: John F. Seitz
Music by Franz Waxman
Cast: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark

Budapest, Vienna, Hollywood / Masters of the Big Screen

Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood’s main drag, plays an important part in this film, which is a kind of introduction into the mysteries of filmmaking: it is the earliest insight into how a Hollywood studio works, how an idea can be sold, who is the ‘reader’ and what power producers wield. Fleeing the repo men, a somewhat cynical and devastatingly humorous screenwriter ends up in an abandoned villa. An elderly lady is watching from behind an upper floor window and, thinking that he is an undertaker, she invites him in. The woman, Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson, was once one of the greatest silent movie stars. For the moment, the only corpse is that of a chimpanzee. Sunset Boulevard is a Billy Wilder classic, many of the motifs of which we see reflected in the film Fedora that is also being screened in this year’s Film Marathon programme. It is well worth watching the two films as a double bill.

Other programs of the Budapest Classic Film Marathon in Urania >>