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Sunset Boulevard

Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich Von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Jack Warden, Buster Keaton and Cecil B. DeMille

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Description

Billy Wilders masterpiece a corrosive black comedy that remains the most memorable assault on the emptiness and vanity of the movie business it stars William Holden as young down-and-out screenwriter Joe Gillis. Narrated in flashbacks by the now-deceased scribe the film unwinds the series of events that left him lying face down in a pool. Unable to sell his most recent chef-doeuvre and in hock up to his eyeballs Joe stashes his car in the driveway of what appears to be an abandoned mansion on Sunset Boulevard while trying to elude some persistent repo men. Closer inspection reveals the decrepit property to be inhabited by grandiose former silent movie goddess Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and her zombie-like manservant Max (Erich von Stroheim). Upon hearing that hes a writer the lonely but still wealthy woman offers to pay him generously to stay at the house and work on her comeback script on the life of Salome. Although spooked by the people and the surroundings in desperate straits Joe takes the job little suspecting the madness of the netherworld hes entered. Wilders merciless portrait of the dangers of a profession that trades in fantasy cagily couples the cynical amorality of the never-was with the near-psychotic narcissism of the has-been to reveal the vacuity of wealth and the transience of fame.