Film Noir is arguably Hollywood’s most stylistic and prosperous time period, although it is the least known period out of Hollywood’s history. Many critics and historians have a hard time defining film noir into one single definition that encapsulates the essence and spirit of this time period. But Paul Schrader did a very well attempt to define this period in his 1972 article “Notes on Film Noir,”published in “Film Noir Reader by Alain Silver and James Ursini, where he describes the basic elements necessary to categorize a film under this time era. While reviewing the 1950 Billy Wilder movie “Sunset Blvd.,” the following elements are recurring through the entire film, making it known that this movie falls into the middle of this epic category.
One of the typical film noir styles that appear throughout “Sunset Blvd.” is that this movie is mostly lit for the evening. When Joe Gillis sneaks out of Norma Desmond’s house to go write his screenplay with Betty Schaefer, it is always in the middle of the night. He waits until Norma is asleep, and then he steals her car to go to the studio lot and write. Never does he meet her during the day. Another example would be on New Years, when Gillis and Desmond are having their intimate party at night, and then Gillis leaves to go to his friend Artie Green’s party across town. Another recurring stylistic approach that makes this film classified as a film noir is that the lighting is equal between the actors and the sets. Desmond’s house is so darkly lit that, most of the time, the viewer cannot see what is around the corner, or what is happening right there on the screen. Whether the time of day be early morning or late evening, the actors are rarely lit brighter then the sets. On rare occasions, Desmond will be lit painfully brighter then the rest of the scene, making her the center of attention in that particular scene and taking the notice off of the rest of the action around her. That is extremely compatible with her portrayal as an elderly actress who is used to having the world revolve around her. Despite this, “Sunset Blvd.” is usually lit with no distinction between the actors and the sets.
The tension and action that happens throughout most of the movie is compositional, rather than physical. Gillis and Desmond argue throughout the movie about whether he should stay at her house or where he leaves to go to at night or whether he is seeing another woman. Gillis and Schaefer disagree about Gillis’ writing style of some of his scripts, about writing together on the script they are working on, and about her falling in love with him at the end of the film. For the majority of the movie, the stress and tension is strictly verbal between characters. There is also a “love of romantic narration” (57) through this movie. As Schrader states, “the narration creates a mood of temps perdu: an irretrievable past, a predetermined fate and an all-enveloping hopelessness” (58). Desmond falls in love with Gillis and somewhat forces him to try and lover her back. She becomes so obsessive and psychotic in her love for him, that she becomes jealous of Schaefer and tries to stop him from meeting with her at night. Desmond even goes to suicidal lengths to try and prove her love for him by slitting her wrists and ending her life. Jealousy overwhelms her at the end of the movie that he has picked Schaefer over her, that she murders him as he is walking out on her. The romantic narration is the underlying theme of the entire movie.
Even more stylistic approaches to this movie that make it classified as a film noir is the attachment to water and the complex chronological order. Throughout this film, water is used to showcase the feeling of despair and pain. When Gillis is trying to find a cab ride to Artie’s New Year’s party after leaving Desmond, he is walking down a wet street in the middle of the night. As the movie takes place in Hollywood, this is a rare occasion to take place as it barely rains that much in Los Angeles. Even the murder scene at the end of the movie has a water attachment to it, as he ends up drowning in a pool that she filled up for him to swim in. The complex chronological order has the movie starting out with the finding of a dead man in a pool, then it flashes back six months to tell the story of how he got to that point in his life. Then it catches up to that exact moment, and then proceeds to what happened directly following that moment in time.
These film noir elements help depict a silent film star’s decline by the fact that the majority of these elements are dark in nature. They have deeper meanings and issues behind them that showcase deterioration and death. A silent film star may have been prosperous and successful without using her words, but rather her facial expressions to tell a story on screen. But once the movie started to let people talk, stars were losing their jobs based on their voices and their lack of ability to act with their words. Things changed in Hollywood that caused many people to become unemployed. Norma Desmond being one of these famous stars. She will not grasp the idea that she will not make a comeback or a return to the industry. She still believes millions of her fans are out in the world waiting for her next film, when in reality, it is her butler that is sending the letters just to make her happy. She lives in a darkly lit house, falls in love too easily and tries to force Gillis to love her back, and is lit on camera the way silent film stars would require to be lit.
This movie takes a look into the decline of Hollywood in such a way that it starts to make fun of the people in the movies as well as the industry itself. The entire performance from Gloria Swanson, who played Norma Desmond, is comical, although she is supposed to be portrayed as a dramatic character. Her habits as a silent film star can be seen with every grand gesture and over exaggerated facial expression she makes. This pokes fun at the actors on screen, showing that they believe they are better than everyone else and that they emphasize too much on every little thing. They are constantly vying for the spotlight, even as Desmond did at the end when the lights and cameras are what draw her downstairs after the murder. She believes she is making a movie and interrupts the “scene” to give a speech to the cast and crew of the film.
Another way this movie depicts the decline of Hollywood is how much media attention the washed up actress-turned-murderer got. After the incident, swarms of media rushed to Desmond’s house to check out the murder and get statements from the actress. Studios even packed up their heavy cameras and equipment to film the chaos. This could have been a foreshadowing event into the real life chaos media would soon become. Nowadays, there is always a swarm of news reporters and cameras readily available at the smallest of scenes. It is to the point where it has become a joke and plain nonsense that so much coverage must be aired on television. “Sunset Blvd.” shows this decline happening, and predicts what the media industry would soon become.
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