Sunset Boulevard: Illusion and Dementia

In Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard {1950) the principal character, Norma Desmond, is driven to madness and murder because she confuses the illusion of film and the reality of life. In its two typically American stories — one involving Norma's comeback and the other focusing on Jeo Gillis' failure as a screenwriter — Wilder's film effectively employs the Hollywood setting to show that neither kindness nor honesty can save its doomed character. Sunset Boulevard incorporates elements of film noir in its essentially realistic style, inverts the established patterns of the backstage movie, and draws upon themes and character types familiar in recent American film and theater.