Billy Wilder’s greatest film is his most daring aesthetic tightrope-walk. Forever threatening to spill over into Teutonic melodrama, Sunset Boulevard’s operatic performances and expressionistic lighting raise drama to its highest pitch, resulting in a film exhilarating not only for its devastating anti-Hollywood commentary but for its sheer daring. As Norma Desmond, a silent-film siren turned delusionary shut-in, Gloria Swanson might as well be acting in a silent melodrama, so high-pitched is every movement, but her pairing with the superbly understated William Holden as well as the wistfully sardonic Erich von Stroheim takes the edge off her campy vamping. (Holden, like Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity, does so much so quietly it’s easy to miss how accomplished his performance is). Though it’s undoubtedly tinged with misogyny — in the last shot, Swanson appears ready to devour the camera — Sunset Boulevard’s influences are more classical than political; Norma Desmond is an elemental power on a level with Medea. Luckily, Sunset Boulevard is one classic film that’s been kept in good shape over the years (maybe Cecil B. DeMille was fond of his performance), so this new print should sparkle as Wilder intended it to.
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