Watched Sunset Boulevard last night, for the first time in decades. So much of it was still fresh: the urgent story telling and the biting dialogue. There is even a car chase within the first five minutes, gripping enough if you ignore the way that today’s Fiat 500 could have outrun everything then on the road.
Only three things were really anachronistic. The first is that Norma Desmond is a hideous old wreck at the age of 50. That may be true in Hollywood terms (and in that case, the talkies had nothing to do with it). But it really wouldn’t be true today in the real world, and probably not even then, when you look at the barrage of beauty treatments she undergoes even then. Of course, she smokes.
The second is even in Hollywood, Joe takes Betty Shaeffer’s engagement to his friend Artie sufficiently seriously to abstain from an assault on her virtue. He even sets the pair up again with his dying choice.
The third is the modesty of Norma Desmond’s power and the inadequacy of her revenge. I know that this underpins the whole drama so it’s not really a fair criticism.
But when you look at the ways in which a rich person now can persecute a powerless servant, there is so much more that Norma could have done to Joe. A Musk, a Thiel, or indeed any rich person of normal vindictiveness could ruin a servant’s life with NDAs, and make their life generally so little worth living that death would appear a relief. Joe could never have got away. But then, today’s super rich are reckoned sane, and Norma Desmond mad.
With all that said, though, it’s still a great film that everyone should watch.
How is it that I've never watched this film?! But I will certainly do so.
"The first is that Norma Desmond is a hideous old wreck at the age of 50."
Bette Davis was 42 years old when she starred in All About Eve (1950). And she played, quite brilliantly and memorably, of course, the role of an aging actress who was now considered "old" and over-the-hill. I think women over the age of, say, 35 years or so, were just considered "old" in Hollywood. And once you were designated "old," it didn't matter whether you were 50 or 80: you were just "old."