SUNSET BOULEVARD

For the second time I’ve now seen this personal favourite at the BFI, the first time being way back in the days of the National Film Theatre. 

And even though this is a film I know intimately there’s nothing like seeing it on the big screen with a live audience. It’s the best way to appreciate both the crispness of the black-and-white photography and the crackling dialogue, especially in the early scenes where fun is being poked at Hollywood's expense. 

The BFI programme notes included a contemporary review by James Agee, in which he rightly admired its courage in portraying a sexual relationship between a rich woman of fifty and a kept man of half her age.   

In addressing some criticisms of the film, Agee defends Billy Wilder the director and Charles Brackett (the producer and Wilder's co-writer), by saying that "they are evidently much more concerned to make a character interesting, than sympathetic, and the interest itself is limited by the quality of their insight, which is intelligent end exceedingly clever, rather than profound" and that "they are beautifully equipped to do the cold, exact, adroit, sardonic job they have done".  

All very true, but despite the coldness this is a film in which I find all four of the main characters to be sympathetic to varying degrees. They are each in their own way tragic figures, and as the film builds to its climactic scenes - Gillis's rejection of Betty, and then his attempt to walk out on Norma - I do find my emotions greatly stirred.  

And I'm always wiped out by the inspired final moments, as Norma descends the staircase in a kind of slow motion sleep walk, and then delivers her last words direct to us ("those wonderful people out there in the dark").  They are the perfect riposte to those people who claim that Wilder has no visual style, or that he’s more of a writer than a director.  

This time around I really appreciated how great the score by Franz Waxman is, for which he deservedly won an Oscar.  There’s not a moment in which the music isn’t perfectly complementing what is on the screen.

All four lead actors got Oscar nominations though none of them won.  

Agee is quite right when he praises Gloria Swanson for playing a 100 per cent grotesque "right up to the armpit".  Admittedly I haven’t seen the film but quite how Judy Holliday won instead for her performance in ‘Born Yesterday’ is something of a mystery.

William Holden gives a fine and brave performance as a weak and unadmirable character but one who does redeem himself in a couple of key moments.  First, at the New Year's Eve Party he has a chance to escape Norma's clutches but he has enough humanity that he rushes back upon hearing of her suicide attempt.   And then he does the noble and decent thing (I guess) by rejecting Betty in such a savage way.   

If you like films to be messy then this Oscar-winning screenplay might seem almost too perfect in how every line and every dramatic beat does what it sets out to do.  But I'm with Agee, who was dead right in describing it as "Hollywood craftsmanship at its smartest and at just about at its best."

RATING: ✓✓✓ Absolutely Fabulous