This is the moment when Norma Desmond - one-time big star - finally goes crazy. It may be said that her short and glorious life has been meaningless since the moment when silent films were withdrawn from the stage of history, and the spotlight is the whole meaning of her existence. However, the spotlight cannot stay on her forever. The world is changing, the times are changing, the rolling wheel of history will not stop for a certain individual, it ruthlessly runs over Norma Desmond, but Norma is forever addicted to the era that cheered her up, unable to extricate herself, such as The setting sun in Shenxi is still desperately giving out that pitiful peripheral light. Finally, the sun went down and darkness enveloped Norma. As brilliant as Loulan, it will eventually be annihilated by the yellow sand of the times.
"Sunset Blvd.", the masterpiece of film noir, still has a profound warning effect on men and women walking in Hollywood even today. Around the 1930s, during the transition from silent films to talkies, many silent film actors retired due to sound problems. Gloria Swanson was one of the few silent film actors who returned to the film industry with superb acting skills. One, but it was soon overshadowed by the swift wave of sound movies. About the heroine Swanson will be mentioned below, but let's put the director first. It can be said that "Sunset Blvd." is a very cruel film by Billy Wilde. The reason why he said "cruel" is because he exposed the ugliest side of Hollywood. It satirizes the evil of Hollywood by describing Hollywood itself. The evil is despairing and evil enough to make the next generation of beautiful girls give up. Star dream. It reveals an underlying Hollywood law, and a universal philosophical law: the world is ever-evolving, and new things always replace old things. When a star, or a generation of stars, loses economic value to the development of Hollywood, Hollywood will immediately abandon them and replace them with a new generation of cash cows. This has little impact on Hollywood itself. Times are developing. As long as Hollywood can always create new things that attract the attention of the audience, Hollywood will last forever. It's just the individuals who are really affected - those great actors, those Norma Desmonds, those Gloria Swansons.
It must be said that Billy Wilde asked Gloria Swanson to be the heroine of this film is also a very cruel thing. Norma Desmond in the film is Swanson's portrayal. Back then, Swanson was also a bright pearl on the Broadway stage. With the arrival of sound movies, this pearl gradually lost its dazzling light. From the scene in which Norma plays Chaplin to please Joe, it is not difficult to see Swanson's superb acting as a silent actor, making people think that Chaplin is reappearing in a trance. The room full of photos of Norma when he was young is probably the photos of Swanson's golden age, right? The movie that Max played for them was probably the movie of Swanson's youth, right? Billy Wilde really picked the right person this time, who could do better than playing himself? However, for Swanson herself, how many people can know how sad she is when she performs hard under the mask of Norma Desmond.
I remember reading the section analysis of "Sunset Blvd." in the book a year ago, and I vaguely remember that Erich von Stroheim, who played the butler Max, seems to have been a famous director and screenwriter in the silent film era, because the author knows very little about Stroheim. If I'm too lazy to read the information, I won't go into details about the actors, but let's talk about the characters themselves. Max doesn't speak much in the film, always has a poker face, waits for the hostess, and treats outsiders with cold eyes. As everyone knows, under Max's indifferent appearance, there is an amazing identity - one of the three most promising directors in the silent film era. Griffith is real, and everyone knows it; Dimille keeps up with the times and continues to be in the shadows; only Max chooses to retreat into the mountains. The reason for this choice led to his other amazing identity - Norma Desmond's first husband. From Max's mouth, we know that Norma has been married three times. It goes without saying that everyone knows the romantic past of those star men and women. So according to the author's speculation, the previous thing is probably like this: Max became popular with Norma and married him. After leaving her, who knew that Norma, who became Daming, was tired of his former partner and business partner, so he abandoned him and went to mingle with those handsome young boys in bright clothes. However, the era that belongs to her will eventually fade away, all those men will leave, and in the end, only Max will always be by her side. We don't know if Norma ever loved Max, maybe she was just grateful for him after all, but as Christine Vole said in "Witness for the Prosecution", "Gratitude can be tiresome," so she will one day to leave him voluntarily. On the contrary, Max has all true love for her. Even if she later married twice, even if she turned him into her own servant, even if she fell in love with young screenwriters, Max still had the ability to return to the film industry, but voluntarily gave up fame and fortune to accompany her, willingly become her slave. Perhaps, Max was destined to be a servant of Norma all his life. He watered her branches and leaves in her most beautiful years, but when the flowers withered, he couldn't bear to see her scattered, so he spent the rest of his life caring for this tree that would always be there at any time. Fallen flowers, although she is so haggard. When "Action!" sounded, when everyone was watching Norma like a monster, Max's heart was full of mixed feelings, and the pain was probably only borne by himself for the rest of his life.
Sometimes I wonder if Max's stubborn protection is right. We see that Norma's seclusion in an old and gorgeous palace, isolated from the world, actually means that she does not want to have any contact with this new world outside, because she knows there is no place for her there, only This mansion can give her a false sense of security. But deep down she also longs to be with people, or to be more precise, to be the center of attention—her funeral for the orangutan, her reliance on young screenwriter Joe, which she repeats every day Watching her own movie - she is so full of energy and so beautiful on the screen. "Desire" once is not enough, it should be said - "habit". Yes, Norma has become accustomed to living in flowers and applause, accustomed to the feeling of hundreds of cameras pointing at her at the same time, accustomed to shuttle between her entire row of dressing rooms, accustomed to receiving tens of thousands of emails from Letters from fans... She is so used to living in the limelight that she cannot accept that she is not the center of the world and suffers from intermittent depression. In order to protect her vanity, Max still pretends to be a fan and writes to her every day, knowing that Joe, who is an outsider, has exposed this lie that is not good or hypocritical. At this time, Norma has been knocked out by a series of sudden blows. Wandering on the brink of a mental breakdown, she didn't want to believe at all, or simply didn't believe all the "lies" of this man who "betrayed" her. Maybe Max shouldn't have been "protecting" her in this way. Without Max, Norma might wake up sooner and recognize the reality. Maybe she still can't bear the blow, maybe she would have committed suicide long ago, but from a certain perspective Looking at it—perhaps a very irresponsible way to say it—seems to be much better than living for nothing like this. We can't jump to conclusions about Max's behavior, after all, he did it out of a complete love, and there's so much complexity in it that it's ultimately hard to say.
The fate of Norma Desmond is not only a true portrayal of silent film stars before the golden age of cinema, but also a cruel presentation of the fate of all actors, and a solemn warning to Hollywood generations. The wheels of history are rolling forward, sound replaces silent, color replaces black and white, 3D replaces 2D, no matter how brilliant you were, you will one day sunset. The sun will continue to rise tomorrow, but it will not emit the brilliance of yesterday. The sun never sets in Hollywood, whether it's Sunset Boulevard or Mulholland Drive.
We will be forgotten by history. This is the darkest part of Sunset Boulevard.
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