The Miraculous Manu Memorial Movie Month, Mmmmm!

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Musical Accompaniment: David Bowie — Fame

There’s a moment early in Sunset Boulevard where our hero, his struggles now well-established, pulls into a decrepit old mansion’s garage (the third in a string of unfortunate coincidences) and simply lingers there for a bit, musing. It feels as though the bottom has dropped out of the film. We’re floating, adrift and bereft of plot. An extremely fluid tracking shot (already a staple of the movie, though that’ll come to an end along with the daytime scenes soon) invites us to absorb this architecture. Suddenly, a voice cries out from the presumed-abandoned mansion: “You there! Why are you so late?” And at this point, anything is possible. That’s intrigue. The movie could turn on a dime into a farce of mistaken identity, a slasher flick, a love story, a time travel story — perhaps, Field of Dreams style, the mansion can transport the main character back in time to its heyday — a Dracula knockoff, a ghost story.

Rats feeding on one of their own in the swimming pool.

Well, it is a ghost story, of sorts. It’s narrated (over-narrated) to us by a ghost. Norma is the living dead, possessed by her past, haunting her mansion. Stars from days past flit through like ships in the foggy night. There is no future for these people, there’s hardly even a present. The advent of sound pictures meant that the stars of the silent films were abandoned like so much used tissue paper, en masse. People talk about the accelerating cycle of fame these days, the internet this and the Kardashians that, but — well, put it in perspective, this is 1950. Sound was hardly a thing 22 years previously. Groundhog Day was released 22 years ago. Bill Murray had had a career in the limelight for 16 years already. And he’s still a cherished national figure today, at 64. Now granted, that’s one incredibly charismatic and savvy guy. But more importantly, the endless reruns on TV, the vast, hyper-indexed easily-accessed library we call the Internet, and even “classic rock” radio stations all work to ensure there’s a certain level of cultural continuity.

Norma Desmond, 50 in 1950, has been washed-up for at least two decades, with not a wrinkle on her face. She is, in a way, our Dracula knockoff — although this one becomes utterly absorbed in her own mirrored images, and if she invites you into her house, you can never leave. She’s Bad News in the Noir mold, where, as the hero goes in for the first kiss, there are no overtones of romance. It is replaced with profound dread at the trap the protagonist has now irrevocably ensnared himself in — the sort of feeling you might get if they had walked into an old shack in the middle of nowhere you knew an ax murderer hid out in. Joe, of course, can’t run away, couldn’t, not from the moment he locks eyes with her dead monkey. He is self-destructive, again in the archetypical Noir way, though through his passivity. The brief sense of free-floating possibility is swiftly replaced with one of crushing inevitability (underscored, of course, by the movie actually beginning with his dead body and flashing back for most the rest.) The smooch is scored with scare chords.

Rats feeding on one of their own in the swimming pool.