#16 ‘Sunset Blvd.’
Fame, Fatalism, and the Femme Fatale as Roadkill
Sunset Blvd. is Billy Wilder’s 1950 noir classic about the rot beneath Hollywood’s glittering skin—a tale of broken dreams, fading fame, and men who think they’re too clever to be consumed by the very industry they exploit. It’s acidic, stylish, and cynical. So naturally, it’s also cruelly fixated on a woman’s decay as both horror and punchline.
Enter Norma Desmond: faded silent film goddess, played with operatic madness by Gloria Swanson. She’s the heart of this film, the spectacle, the tragedy—and make no mistake, the target. A woman discarded by the Hollywood machine is served up as a grotesque parody of feminine delusion: overpainted, overdramatic, and (worst of all) unyoung. In an industry that turns actresses into icons and then into cautionary tales, Norma is the final act: alone in a crumbling mansion, reciting lines no one asked for and desperate to be seen by a camera that’s long since moved on.
And floating through this gothic fever dream is Joe Gillis (William Holden), a down-on-his-luck screenwriter with the moral compass of a shrug. He narrates from beyond the grave because of course he does—no man ever suffers in Hollywood without getting the last word. Joe shacks up with Norma, uses her money, indulges her delusions, and sneers at her all the while. The film frames him as tragic—trapped, corrupted—but let’s be honest: he’s a gigolo in a three-piece suit with a typewriter and a death wish.
What makes Sunset Blvd. so insidious is how gleefully it invites the audience to laugh at Norma even as it mourns her. The film has empathy—but it’s poisoned with judgment. Her longing to be adored isn’t pathological, it’s inevitable in a culture that sells women glamour and then punishes them for believing in it. But instead of indicting the system that chewed her up, the film makes her the monster. She’s the punchline. The cautionary tale. The madwoman in the pool.
Let’s talk about age, shall we? Norma is supposed to be 50—50!—and she’s treated like a walking corpse. Meanwhile, Joe is 32 and already worn out from the weight of not getting the respect he believes he deserves. In classic Hollywood fashion, male disillusionment is profound. Female aging is a horror story.
Yes, the film is brilliantly made. Yes, it skewers the industry that birthed it with surgical precision. But what’s left in its wake is the image of a woman destroyed not by madness, but by misogyny—and then framed by a man who dies smirking about how tragic it all was.
3 out of 5 close-ups
(One for Swanson’s legendary performance. One for Wilder’s razor-sharp writing. One for the guts to expose Hollywood’s underbelly. But the rest? Lost in Norma’s eyes—still hungry, still shining, and still unforgivably female.)
