Sunset Blvd.

The film begins with the scene of Sunset Blvd on sunset boulevard, which is full of fallen leaves on the roadside, until the camera turns up from the road, followed by voice-over and a group of police cars flying along sunset boulevard with sirens.

At this time, the audience had never thought that the voice of the words was the sound made by the corpse.

Or for the audience who are not familiar with william holden, it will not be discovered until the end of the movie that this is a dead person telling his own story.

This film 70 years ago created a strange atmosphere like Poe from the beginning. This flashback (which is not used by the director for the first time) adds to the suspense of the whole story. Why does this corpse float in this swimming pool?

And what kind of story will unfold next.

01 atmosphere

The whole film shows two opposite atmospheres.

Norma Desmond's Gothic mansion, which is dilapidated in appearance but luxurious in interior, is always full of strangeness, darkness and unpopularity. Her own clothes and the style of the whole house are eerie and magnificent.

The hall on the first floor is filled with photos of her youth, which show that her master is so morbidly narcissistic. She always indulges in the glory of the past, deceiving herself and being unable to extricate herself.

The door of every room in the mansion and even the wardrobe are not locked, but the gate of the mansion, which leads to the outside world, is a grating gate like a prison. This shining star in the silent film era not only lives in all kinds of glory in the past, but also is unwilling to accept any changes in the outside world from her heart. She doesn't want to change herself to accept changes, or even want to see the existence of such changes, so she wants to imprison herself in this "paradise" which she thinks herself is desolate in the eyes of outsiders.

Here, Joe Gillis feels gloomy and ferocious. When he finally couldn't stand the first escape from this dilapidated mansion, on New Year's Eve.

Accompanied by the band, the ballroom with only him and Norma was empty and lonely, dark and suffocating, completely blocking the atmosphere of the New Year carnival.

He escaped in the rain and hitchhiked to a friend's New Year's party. The narrow space, crowded people, singing and dancing people are in sharp contrast to the loneliness in the mansion, which is noisy and lively, cheerful and secular, crowded and positive.

The movie has been shuttling back and forth in these two completely different atmospheres, which actually implies the mood of the hero Joe Gillis, who wanders back and forth in these two different worlds.

02 details

When Joe promised Norma to read the script she wrote, she sat opposite and looked at him with sunglasses, smoking with her own pipe in her left hand, but propping her right hand like a paw, which looked like a vampire.

From the following plots, she is indeed like Joe's vampire, and Joe is a substitute for her pet orangutan.

Joe's relationship with Norma is just like Norma's relationship with the so-called star system.

When Norma, the former star, was of no value to them, she was abandoned.

When Joe wanted to break away from this relationship, he was shot and killed by Norma, who fell into madness. He had already walked outside the door, but still could not continue to go out.

This has been implied in a previous detail. Joe escaped on New Year's Eve, but his watch chain hung on the iron gate. He pulled it down before he escaped, but he finally came back, and he was doomed to be unable to escape.

Fame and fortune counter-eats those who crave fame and fortune, Norma falls into madness, and Joe rushes to death.

03 characters

Norma Desmond

Her tragedy lies in stubbornly living in the glory of the past without knowing or wanting to know that earth-shaking changes have taken place in the outside world. She is no longer needed on the screen, and people have already forgotten her.

But for Norma, who once had a halo above her head and enjoyed the benefits brought by fame and fortune, how can she not be vain and greedy for fame and fortune, and how can she think that this star system is just squeezing her like a vampire?

When she is not needed, no one wants to mention her glory again, and the studio only calls her because she wants to rent her vintage car.

If we want to talk about the similarities between her and Hao Xiangwei in Dickens' Great Expectations, it is that both of them stubbornly live in the past, Hao Xiangwei lives in hatred, and Norma lives in the glory of the past.

Joe Gillis

Joe is a down-and-out second-rate screenwriter. He can't afford to pay the rent and can't even keep his own car. He turned to the agent and the director, but no one was willing to help.

However, he desperately wanted to keep a car like his own legs, so he strayed into the mansion with dilapidated appearance, so it seems that it was an accident that he finally became the gigolo of the heroine.

But all this is inevitable.

At the beginning of the film, it was Joe Gillis who died floating in the swimming pool. The voice-over said that he always wanted to own such a swimming pool. And the car he can't let go is the fame and fortune he can't let go. He came to Hollywood for fame and fortune.

For him, Norma and the mansion are the temptations of fame and fortune. Even if he didn't enter by chance, something else would drive him to enter, because he was always wandering between the gloomy mansion and the outside world.

04 performance style

Gloria swanson and william holden are two completely different performance styles, which may be inconsistent in other story frames or other types of movies, but the contrast between the two performance styles in this movie has produced a very strange effect.

Swanson's performance style with exaggerated body language and demeanor in silent film shows Norma's morbid, arrogant, divorced from reality and self-deception.

05 ending

This is Billy Wilder's unbridled ridicule. The cruelty and ruthlessness of the star system are presented by him in such a way that it is so dark and dark that it can't find any softness from it.

In the end, Joe's death attracted journalists from all walks of life. In this way, the former star once again became the focus of the media. At the moment, she was insane, and suddenly thought that the opportunity for her comeback had finally arrived. She bared her teeth in front of the camera, thinking that she had returned to the focus and the spotlight again. In fact, she only went to destruction and died.

In the final shot, everyone stopped on the stairs like a freeze frame. Norma was the only one who walked down the stairs slowly and approached the camera slowly. "Mr. Demir, I am ready for my close-up."

Then gradually blurred in the lens.