Sunset Boulevard 1950 123movies

Watch: Sunset Boulevard 1950 123movies, Full Movie Online – In Hollywood of the 50’s, the obscure screenplay writer Joe Gillis is not able to sell his work to the studios, is full of debts and is thinking in returning to his hometown to work in an office. While trying to escape from his creditors, he has a flat tire and parks his car in a decadent mansion in Sunset Boulevard. He meets the owner and former silent-movie star Norma Desmond, who lives alone with her butler and driver Max Von Mayerling. Norma is demented and believes she will return to the cinema industry, and is protected and isolated from the world by Max, who was her director and husband in the past and still loves her. Norma proposes Joe to move to the mansion and help her in writing a screenplay for her comeback to the cinema, and the small-time writer becomes her lover and gigolo. When Joe falls in love for the young aspirant writer Betty Schaefer, Norma becomes jealous and completely insane and her madness leads to a tragic end..
Plot: A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
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Ratings:

	8.4/10 Votes: 221,829
	98% | RottenTomatoes
	N/A | MetaCritic
	N/A Votes: 2094 Popularity: 16.939 | TMDB

Reviews:

**One of the great films of Hollywood’s golden age.**

This movie is really special. Not only does it show us a lot about the world of Hollywood during its golden age, but it also reveals a lot about the actors’ egos, vanities and their titanic struggles to preserve their careers and stay in the limelight. Brilliantly directed by Billy Wilder, it is considered by many to be one of the great movie classics, combining entertainment, artistic value and cultural relevance. In 1951, it won three Oscars (Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction in a Black and White Film, Best Comic Film Soundtrack) and could perfectly have won one more, for Best Actress. But awards like these are never completely fair, especially in years so fertile for good films.

Starting with the iconic scene of the dead man in the pool, the film intrigues us, and curiosity grips us, as the film shows how it all happened, introducing us to an average screenwriter who struggles to write a successful script that can leverage his career. He owes money, is in serious trouble and takes advantage of the opportunity to earn some easy money at the expense of a retired silent film actress, who decides to hire him to revise and type a script, written by herself and designed to mark her return. The script is mediocre, and he knows that the film will never happen, but he is coerced into silence, becoming the privileged eyewitness of the former star’s gradual loss of lucidity. Of course, things get complicated as he loses his individual freedom and becomes more dependent on the whims and desires of his mistress.

Despite the fiction, the film is based a lot on several loose true facts: one of them, the most obvious, is the fall of several actors in the course of the transition from silent to talking films. There were great actors who looked magnificent on screen and had great physical and facial expression, but who didn’t survive this transition due to things as prosaic as a poor English fluency or a strange accent. Others, however, simply did not know how to understand and adapt to the novelty. The collapse of their careers and personal lives led to alcoholism, drugs, mental disorders. The film is able to condense almost all of this into a single character: Norma Desmond, the epitome of the fallen star.

The cast has several well-known names, three of which – William Holden, Erich Von Stroheim and, obviously, Gloria Swanson – offer us the interpretation of their lives and their work of greater value and recognition. Of course, we cannot ignore that Swanson was a great star of silent cinema and that she shone in films like “Trespasser” or “Indiscreet”, and that Holden would continue to be a highly sought actor after this, having won his Oscar for Best Actor in a film that starred two years later. But there is no doubt that this film immortalized the three of them.

Technically, the film is impeccable, and the merit lies a lot in the brilliance of the dialogues, in the excellence of the conception and development of the characters, in the extraordinary way in which Wilder managed to get the best out of Swanson and lead the actress to a magnificent performance, which has so much to brilliant and difficult as well as provocative (especially from the point of view of many Hollywood shooting stars, who saw themselves in character and felt offended by it). With an excellent pace, the film does not waste time or let the atmosphere of tension and drama fall into a standstill. The mansion, owned by the Getty family, acquires character by itself as it becomes the most obvious symbol of the disturbed personality and only of its resident. The black and white cinematography is magnificent, and accentuates, in its details and shooting angles, the dramatic feel of the film. The soundtrack isn’t memorable, but it’s effective and functional.

A classic for the must to be seen list.

Gloria Swanson is magnificent.

They Don’t Make ‘Em Like This Anymore
This is such a great film on so many levels I can’t really settle on where to begin. It is so beautifully shot (in that stark black/white that only nitrate negative could achieve), has a witty, clever and extremely well-written script, features some of the best acting in film’s history, acrobatically balances the main plot/subplots with expert precision, contains some of the best characters on celluloid, has many true-to-life parallels (Swanson’s career/real life cameos/DeMille’s involvement/etc) and is peppered with such great dialogue/narration that today’s film writers should take note. If that weren’t enough, there’s even a cameo by silent film great Buster Keaton (among others).

One of the most appealing aspects of this film is how, in the story, an aging, forgotten star is trying to recapture a bygone era (the silent film era). What’s interesting is that now, so many years later, we’re looking back at her looking back. To present day viewers, Gloria Swanson of the 1950’s is a long forgotten lost gem and to experience her own longing for the 1920’s is especially captivating (and a little chilling, I might add). I don’t think this film could have had that same effect when it debuted and maybe this added dimension holds so much more appeal for today’s audiences. We all know that nothing lasts forever, but we don’t often consider the abandoned participants; much like the veterans of a past war.

In response to the famous Swanson line (while watching one of her silent films): “…we didn’t need dialogue; we had faces”, I’d like to also add that they “didn’t need movies; they had films.”

They truly don’t make them like this anymore. 10/10

Living In The Past
The advent of the talkies created possibly the biggest-ever upheaval in the history of Hollywood and the impact it had on the careers of a large number of the industry’s popular stars at that time was enormous. Many whose voices seemed unacceptable because they were incompatible with their image or because of a heavy foreign accent, found themselves out of work as did others who were simply unable to adapt to the demands of the new era. Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” provides a fascinating insight into some of the more ruthless and unpleasant facets of the Hollywood system in a style that’s witty, cynical and realistic and also features a number of actors whose careers were profoundly affected by the arrival of the talkies.

Joe Gillis (William Holden), a struggling Hollywood screenwriter with more debts than he can handle becomes involved in a high-speed chase when he tries to avoid the attentions of a couple of guys who are intent on repossessing his car. When one of his tyres blows out, he swiftly turns into the driveway of a run down mansion and successfully evades his pursuers. After parking his vehicle in the garage, he’s surprised that the occupants of the mansion seem to be expecting him. It soon transpires that they’d assumed that he was the mortician who was due to deliver a coffin in which the lady of the house’s dead chimpanzee was to be buried. Joe recognises the lady as Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) a former silent movie star.

When Norma discovers that Joe’s a writer, she seeks his opinion of a script she’d written for her comeback movie (“Salome”) and then hires him to edit her work. In his financial circumstances the offer of this lucrative job is too good to refuse and at her request, he agrees to stay at her mansion to complete the task. Joe recognises that Norma is a delusional has-been who lives in the past and discovers that the fan mail she receives every week is actually written by her devoted butler, Max (Erich von Stroheim). The very wealthy Norma buys Joe expensive new suits and coats and together they watch her old movies a few times each week. Even more bizarrely, on New Year’s Eve, she holds a party at which there’s an orchestra but no other guests! Joe feels he needs to escape from Norma who’s obviously fallen in love with him and so goes to a friend’s party instead.

Artie Green (Jack Webb) agrees for Joe to stay over at his place and Joe soon gets into conversation with Artie’s girlfriend, Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olsen). Joe already knew Betty who worked as a script reader for Paramount and the two of them subsequently start to work together on one of Joe’s unfinished scripts. When Norma discovers what’s going on, she becomes incensed and determined to bring their association to an end.

The most striking feature of “Sunset Boulevard” is its sharp dialogue and numerous quotable lines which vary from the purely witty to the deeply sardonic. The fact that these lines are delivered by a screenwriter and a particularly flamboyant retired actress makes their exchanges seem perfectly credible as both characters would naturally have developed a way with words during their careers.

The film’s opening scene in which Joe is seen dead and face down in Norma’s swimming pool is brilliantly shot and the off-beat device of having a dead man narrating the story is typical of the cynicism and dark humour that runs through everything that follows. At this point, when objectively talking about himself, Joe in typical style remarks “the poor dope. He always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool”.

The casting of Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim who both had careers in silent movies, invests the events depicted with a great deal of realism as do the cameos in which Cecil B DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton and others are featured. Shots of Paramount studios and Schwab’s Drugstore and the inclusion of an excerpt from “Queen Kelly” (1929) in which Swanson starred and von Stroheim directed also blur the lines between fiction and reality and add greater authenticity to the whole production.

“Sunset Boulevard” focuses on some of the more unglamourous aspects of Hollywood and must’ve made uncomfortable viewing for some people in the industry at that time. Its blend of biting humour and tragedy is very effective and the performances of its exceptional cast are consistently good from start to finish.

Other Information:

Original Language en
Runtime 1 hr 50 min (110 min), 1 hr 55 min (115 min) (Argentina), 1 hr 44 min (104 min) (cut) (West Germany)
Budget 1752000
Revenue 5000000
Status Released
Rated Passed
Genre Drama, Film-Noir
Director Billy Wilder
Writer Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshman Jr.
Actors William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim
Country United States
Awards Won 3 Oscars. 19 wins & 20 nominations total
Production Company N/A
Website N/A

Technical Information:

Sound Mix Mono (Western Electric Recording)
Aspect Ratio 1.37 : 1
Camera N/A
Laboratory N/A
Film Length 3,024 m (release length), 3,353 m (copyright length)
Negative Format 35 mm (Eastman Plus-X 1231, Super-XX 1232)
Cinematographic Process Spherical
Printed Film Format 35 mm (Eastman 1302)