The movie ends and the lights come on. The first to stand up from the seat is MGM President LB Mayer. Although both Jews, this man of high morality and power did not leave Wilder any affection. Through his glass glasses, Mayer was furious: "We must whipping Wilder! We must drive him out of this city! He has defiled this city! This city has nurtured him, but he did it in this way. Repay it!" Everyone was stunned. No one can imagine how LB Mayer was slandered and vilified by "Sunset Boulevard" to him and all that he symbolized; what is also unpredictable is the dramatic ending of this dispute: only a year later, LB Mayer was Forced to step down, the producer who made countless classics in the Hollywood silent film era was finally eliminated by the era. The phrase "Sunset Boulevard" has become a truth. An era has passed, and "Sunset Boulevard" has become the most sad and ironic elegy of this era. This is a close-up of Wilder’s DreamWorks, which he loves and hates more and more. Perhaps, the camera is too close, everything is too real, no matter how perfect the dream is, it can’t help showing the dark side of its crude reality. .
Sunset Boulevard, the land of falling stars
Sunset Boulevard is the most famous street in Los Angeles. It extends to Silverlake in the east and the Pacific Ocean in the west. It is the most beautiful landscape in the City of Angels. In 1911, Hollywood's first studio was established here, and with the rapid growth of wages and profits, Sunset Boulevard evolved into a luxury residential area for big stars in the blink of an eye in the 1920s. In the movie "Sunset Boulevard", the heroine and silent star Norma Desmond lives in a ghastly villa on this street. Desmond plays the role of Gloria Swanson, a beauty who was once in the Hollywood silent film era; when she was all the rage, she also settled down on the Sunset Boulevard. Like Desmond in the film, she used to be a favorite, and received tens of thousands of letters from fans every week. However, when the youth is gone, the old and the dazzling, the smart Swanson chooses to retreat bravely and start her new career in New York, but Desmond in the film still stubbornly waits for her obsession with movies. The world has long forgotten her, but she still hopes that one day, she can play the poignant princess in "Salome".
Another actor in "Sunset Boulevard" is the playwright Joe Gillis. Perhaps he is a more tragic character. Compared to the once glorious Desmond, Joe didn't even have a moment of sparkle. This mediocre young man encountered obstacles at the beginning of his career. No one pays for his story, and he can't even pay the rent. In desperation, by coincidence, he became Desmond's little white face, relying on selling his youth and lies every day. The role of Joe is the Hollywood actor William Holden. Before the shooting of "Sunset Boulevard", he was going through an experience similar to the characters in the film: the only thing he is known for is his debut work "Golden Boy", which was already 11 years ago; and who will remember What about a character from 11 years ago? Hollywood is a forgotten place. This kind of forgetting is a bit cruel, but it is also the only law for the continuous development of the entire film capital industry. However, "Sunset Boulevard" aimed the camera at these two forgotten people, and invited two forgotten actors, true and false weaving a piece of Hollywood anecdotes, thus casting the film Immortality in itself.
"I am still a big star! It's just that the screen has become smaller!"
Nowadays, when the audience is used to watching color sound movies, and when the actors are used to using "methodological acting" to constantly try to figure out the characters' personalities in a realistic manner from various aspects such as posture, tone and expression, it is difficult for us to imagine "sounding." The impact of "revolution" on the entire film industry. Although we cannot fully review the impact of this revolution, watching "Sunset Boulevard" still allows us to appreciate the residual rhyme of the silent film and the pain relief brought by the great change from silent to sound. .
Norma Desmond is a symbol of the silent film era. She decorated her face with heavy makeup, and dazzled the dark screen with gold and silver jewelry; she expressed her emotions with exaggerated looks and actions in every gesture and gesture, and this was the only way for actors in the silent film era to convey the emotions of the characters. . For her, dialogue is always superfluous, and movies are always greater than life. When the close-up is aimed at her, she must express herself in a dramatic way. When Gloria Swanson plays this character, she doesn't even need to re-learn the methods that have been in full swing since the 1950s. She only needs to play back the characters she once played. However, when Wilder matched William Holden, a methodist actor with him, the sharp contrast between them formed a horrible gothic effect: in the dark projection room, they watched the silent film starring Desmond, She used to be charming and enchanting, but in a flash, although she performed in the same way, from the screen decades ago to the present reality, the thick foundation can no longer cover the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes, and her old stiff hands pass through. Darkness stretches into the dusty projection lights; movies always create immortal legends, but the price of immortality is to block the traces of the years in the forgotten corners. Helpless, Desmond does not want to freeze himself in a gloomy villa. A hollowed out zombie, pulling skin, trimming hair, and making her head. She attempts to use modern technology to iron the imprint of time. The screen and reality are drifting away, but she still rejects reality, she lives in the movie forever , Trying to use film to freeze the lost youth and glory.
"Sunset Boulevard" does not whitewash reality. Although it is a fictional work, every bit of fiction comes from the real history of the screen. The silent film rolling in the screening room is not a parody after Wilder, but the silent film "Queen Kelly" starring Gloria Swanson. The director of this silent film is the director Erich von Stroheim, who was once stunned in Hollywood. This silent film director, who is as famous as Cecil B. De Mille and Josef von Sternberg, once pushed Gloria Swanson to the top of Hollywood Vanity Fair and fell in love with him. In "Sunset Boulevard", Erich von Stroheim played Desmond's butler Max. Later, we learned that this character was once a director. He became popular with Desmond and married with him. When they were both eliminated by the film industry Later, when Desmond was on the verge of madness, only Max was left alone by Desmond, writing unnecessarily fan letters to make up for Desmond's broken movie dream. Interestingly, it was Queen Kelly, which appeared in Sunset Boulevard, that destroyed the star dreams of Swanson and Stroheim in real life. Back then, Stroheim, who was at the top of his career, wanted to use this film to push his and Swanson's artistic achievements to new heights, but the American audience did not buy it, and the excessive ambition caused "Queen Kelly" to sweep huge capital investment. The ensuing failure pushed the two of them to the border of irreversible disaster. Fiction is a footnote to the irony of reality.
The tragedy of Desmond and Max is not unique to Swanson and Stroheim, it belongs to a whole generation of Hollywood. In Desmond’s residence, we found several faces that were once so familiar, but are now so ugly, Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, HB Warner, each of them is an indelible superstar in the silent film era, and now only Can spend the rest of his life playing bridge in a dusty empty residence. In the film, Joe called them "wax figures." These characters who should be displayed in the wax museum shouldn't appear in this 1950 movie at all. Their elegance, their talk and laughter, their gestures, they As if invading this sound film like a ghost, we have never heard them say a word, and now, when the sound comes out of their mouth, it doesn’t seem to belong to them, but to the one who has died but is now being The era of soul-calling.
Desmond was sitting in her old-fashioned car and came to the gate of the long-lost Paramount Studios. Except for an old guard, no one knew her anymore. But for her, "Without me, there would be no Paramount." As in the casting process of "Sunset Boulevard," the producer forced Swanson to do an audition, but Swanson refused: "I am Paramount. Meng has made 20 films. Why do they still ask me to interview?" Whether it is Desmond or Swanson, they are both "used to be big stars", but for themselves, "I am still a big star! It's just that the screen is getting smaller." That's it!" The camera can no longer accommodate close-ups of their faces. All the studio needs are their old-fashioned luxury cars. Their costumes, the decoration of their villas, and their living habits have long been traced and recalled in period dramas, but they need to be paid for by constant repression, rather than shocking the dusty history like "Sunset Boulevard" The earth appeared in the California sunshine in the 1950s.
Hollywood film noir
There is no doubt that Wilder is one of the greatest directors of the classic Hollywood era. But for too many critics, Wilder is not Hitchcock. When Hitchcock taught us how to use images to tell stories, Wilder is still a playwright who emphasizes dialogue and neglects images. . Indeed, both "Sunset Boulevard" and Wilder's other movies have left us with many of the most classic lines, but this does not mean that Wilder is not a master of imaging. Wilder is one of the directors who established the image style of film noir, and "Sunset Boulevard" is the most popular visual style in his film noir series.
The film begins with Joe's first-person narrative, and then we discover that the narrator named Joe is actually a dead body lying in a swimming pool. Wild wanted to take a shot from the bottom of the pool to the bottom, but the camera equipment at the time could not meet the conditions for underwater photography. So he placed a piece of glass under the water and used a camera to capture the image reflected by the glass from the water. The result of this lens is even better than real underwater photography, because the double reflection of the water surface and the mirror creates a distorted image of the character. This unreality creates a dreamlike atmosphere on the one hand, and slightly Bring horror, thus laying the tone of the film's double variation.
The end of the film is one of the most classic scenes in film history. After Desmond killed Joe, various tabloid reporters and police flocked to him, and Desmond finally got his wish and became the focus of the camera again. Crazy, she thought that the film was finally started, with heavy makeup, and slowly stepped down the gothic staircase in the villa. Everyone stood motionless around the stairs to take pictures of her. In the flash, she was Salome. The luxurious and exaggerated clothes formed a strong contrast with the modern simple suits. Wilder cuts into a subjective scene. Desmond is walking towards us. She said, "I'm ready for the close-up." The camera moved forward. Desmond's silent film performance seemed to be the devil's teeth and claws. She raised her head. Such a rebellious, fierce and withered hand stretched out to the camera, as if asking for all the years the camera had captured from her body, the camera came to an abrupt end, and "Sunset Boulevard" stopped at the most horrible and most insane moment: just At this moment, the dividing line between reality and dream finally collapsed before the camera, and Hollywood as a dream factory finally showed its true background color at this moment.
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