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Sunset Blvd. Age: 1950 / Country: United States / Director: Billy Wilder / Starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Eric von Stroheim
Hollywood's dreams
MGM boss Meyer was furious after watching the film, pointing at Billy Wilder's nose and scolding him for being ungrateful, threatening to pluck him like a chicken and drive him out of Hollywood. Of course, Billy Wilder is not a bully, and directly chokes back the boss. In fact, the reason why Meyer is angry is because Wilder's filming is so real, so that Hollywood's world is cold and mercenary is all exposed to the world.
As a superstar of the silent film era, Norma encountered the waterloo of her career after the advent of the sound film era, but she was still immersed in the vanity of self-obsession, mistakenly thinking that the audience was still expecting her to appear, and these illusions were concocted by her housekeeper and former husband, Marx. When the idle Norma meets the playwright Joe, she uses him as a patron to get rid of the emptiness and loneliness, but in the end it is just a void, but it makes herself caught in the fire. Originally, the film was used as comedic material, but Billy Wilder adapted it into a completely black film, a mixture of tragedy and comedy, dream and reality, warmth and poignancy. The reason why it can have a profound ironic significance is because those past stars in the film are all starring in their true colors. For example, Gloria, who plays Norma, is indeed a shining star of the silent film era, and Marx is Eric von Stroheim, who shot "Greed". The film that Norma enjoys at home is "Queen Gloria" by Gloria and Stromheim. Of course, you can also see the figure of Buster Keaton, the "cold-faced joker", in a scene at the table, and the interesting correspondence between the inside and outside of these plays.
The film was screened in the unit "Peach and Black: Billy Wilder and His 'Tragic Comedy'" at the 6th Beijing International Film Festival.
bright spot
In the 2nd minute, the film begins at the scene of the murder. A man floats in a swimming pool, and the camera looks up from underwater to see the deceased still bleeding from his chest and his face strange. The voiceover is a rare review of the causes of the event in the tone of the deceased, so many later films have followed suit. In order to shoot this shot, the crew did not have much effort, they built a large water tank, put a large mirror underneath, but also had to control the water temperature at about 40 degrees Celsius to ensure the effect, the most important thing is not to wear the gang.
classic
In the 107th minute, Norma slowly walked down the stairs, and at this time she was still indulging in the dream of stardom, like the evil Salome, the arrogant queen. The camera cuts from the vista of her going downstairs to the middle of the scene, and Norma says thank you to the people around her in a desolate tone, walks exaggeratedly toward the camera, and then says to the camera: "Demir, I'm going to take a close-up." "At this point the camera blurs the focal length, allowing her to disappear into the viewer's field of vision, and we know that another person has been destroyed by desire."
Classic clips
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