It’s The Pictures That Got Small, by Tyler Smith

This blog has proven to be an interesting exercise for me. There are many films that I’ve liked for so long, that I’ve forgotten exactly what it is I like about them. Often, I’ll actually only be able to vividly remember two or three scenes. Such was the case with Rear Window, and this was the case with Sunset Blvd.

So, wait a minute? There are movies I love despite not being able to remember them very well? Apparently, yes. This realization makes me wonder if there are some movies on my list that I love simply because I feel like I should love them. It’s a tendency that most any lover of art has: the difficulty to distinguish between what you like and what you’re supposed to like.

That said, I began to wonder if Sunset Blvd. actually belongs on my list. Granted, it’s near the bottom, but I was beginning to wonder if it should be on there at all. So, since I actually own a copy, I decided to watch it again, for the first time in over five years.

Upon recent viewing, I realized that, not only should the film be on my top 100 list, it needs to be higher. How much higher, I’ll figure out later.

Some of us have seen this film, some haven’t, so I’ll quickly summarize. A young, fairly-seasoned Hollywood screenwriter, who hasn’t written a hit in a few years, encounters an rich, eccentric middle-aged woman who used to be a former silent film star. The rich woman, named Norma Desmond, recruits the writer, Joe Gillis, to help her pen the screenplay for her comeback. Gillis, despite observing that the script is pure dreck, agrees, as she is willing to pay very well. She sets him up with a room in her huge house, allows him the use of her car, and buys new clothes for him. She eventually falls in love with him, even though he has none of those feelings for her. He allows her to act on these feelings, knowing that she’s his meal ticket. Soon, though, her obsession with him gets to be too much and he threatens to leave her. She responds by shooting him three times, killing him.

No, I didn’t ruin anything for you. The film opens with a shot of his dead body in her swimming pool, as he begins to narrate the story. The idea of a deceased narrator has since been used many times, most notably in American Beauty, but it was pretty odd at the time.

I feel as though my bare-bones summary doesn’t begin to do justice to the complexity of the film. After all, I could spend paragraphs just describing Norma’s house, with its high ceilings, luxurious furniture, and picture after picture of Norma herself, taken in her glory days of youth. I could also talk about the funeral that Norma has for her pet chimp. Or the fact that Norma’s butler is a former husband. Or countless other things. The film is so rich with strange details, both of the plot and of the execution, that one short blog isn’t enough to fully capture everything.

I will talk about one aspect of the film. It’s a theme that I am instinctively drawn to, as you will see from the other films on my list. That theme is loneliness. In spite of her self-delusion and cruelty, we realize that, more than anything, Norma is essentially very lonely. Her career in tatters, Norma’s ego is too fragile to have much of a life outside her mansion. If she goes out there, she’ll have to face the fact that she is not a star anymore, but a has-been. Better to stay in a controlled environment, where she can make herself believe anything she wants.

Aided by her butler, who helps to insulate her from the rest of the world, Norma, like Charles Foster Kane before her, illustrates that, sometimes, the worst thing for a person is wealth. A lower or middle class person must engage in the outside world. If they don’t, they won’t be able to live and provide for their families. Conversely, the insanely wealthy are so rich that they don’t even have to go outside. After many years of this, rich characters often turn into children of sorts, unaccountable to anybody but themselves, unwilling to hear any opinions but their own.

As we watch these characters, we feel nothing but scorn. We hate these self-centered brats. But, usually, our hatred turns to a kind of pity that is so intense, we feel like we need to turn away from the screen. There are some movie characters that are flawed, but not so much so that they are irredeemable. Then, there are characters like Norma Desmond. She has been isolated for so long, and she is so self-deluded, that we realize that she can never become a normal, rational adult. Such can be the curse of the wealthy in film. Like Citizen Kane or the Von Bulows in Reversal of Fortune or almost every character in Gosford Park, Norma Desmond is the type of character that just makes us stare and shake our heads.

But, we don’t hate her. We just feel sorry for her, in her huge house, where she has elaborate New Year’s Eve parties for herself, where her best friend is a chimp, where she is surrounded by images of who she used to be. We become like the news reporters at the end of the film, looking at this crazy old has-been with pity and judgment, wondering what went wrong.

It reminds me of a quote from the first Batman. A character, in describing Bruce Wayne, says, “The rich. Do you know why they’re so weird? Because they can afford to be.”