List Price: $9.98You Pay Only: $6.99 You Save: $2.99 (30%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 9 to 12 days
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: HOLDEN,WILLIAM
EAN: 0097360492743
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Region Code: 1
Release Date: November 26, 2002
Running Time: 110 minutes
Sales Rank: 823
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: August 04, 1950
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Swanson stars as fading film star Norma Desmond and Holden plays the struggling writer who is held in thrall by her madness. Von Stroheim plays Desmond's discoverer, ex-husband, and butler.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 8-AUG-2006
Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com essential video:
Billy Wilder's noir-comic classic about death and decay in Hollywood remains as pungent as ever in its power to provoke shock, laughter, and gasps of astonishment. Joe Gillis (William Holden), a broke and cynical young screenwriter, is attempting to ditch a pair of repo men late one afternoon when he pulls off L.A.'s storied Sunset Boulevard and into the driveway of a seedy mansion belonging to Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a forgotten silent movie luminary whose brilliant acting career withered with the coming of talkies. The demented old movie queen lives in the past, assisted by her devoted (but intimidating) butler, Max (played by Erich von Stroheim, the legendary director of Greed and Swanson's own lost epic, Queen Kelly). Norma dreams of making a comeback in a remake of Salome to be directed by her old colleague Cecil B. DeMille (as himself), and Joe becomes her literary and romantic gigolo. Sunset Blvd. is one of those great movies that has become a part of popular culture (the line 'All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up,' has entered the language)--but it's no relic. Wow, does it ever hold up. --Jim Emerson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Is Sunset Boulevard Film Noir?
Film Noir is juxtaposed against a post-war optimism (Film Noir 1994, Sklar 269-285). As if Hollywood and its audience were not convinced that everything was peaches and cream, Hollywood would revert to a darker mood culminating, for our discussion, in a form of self-reflexivity and foreboding about the coming of television and nostalgia for the golden age of silent movies in a film like Sunset Boulevard (1950). According to the writers of the documentary Film Noir (1994), movies such as Samuel Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and the musical Ziegfeld Follies (1946) where released alongside Film Noir seminal piece Detour (1945). Unlike the two big budget films, Film Noir offerings such as Detour were "B" movies made on the cheap allowing them break all the rules. Film Noir, it could be argued is an example of the Production Code forcing directors to be creative vis-à-vis sex, violence, and even subversive themes.
Film noir in general and Sunset Boulevard (1950) in particular inhabit that liminal time and space of a pre-television era (as we see with the final scene of Sunset Boulevard). Hollywood as self-reflective is evidence in the movie-within-a-movie scene where Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and Joe Gillis (William Holden) watch one of Swanson's old silent movies: Queen Kelly (1929) a movie directed by Erich Von Stroheim - who plays Max Von Mayerling. Details of this change in subjectivity, which outlines one of many moves that display Billy Wilder's range, complexity, ... Read More
Rating: - The Single Greatest Film About Hollywood
I watched it again today-for about the 50th time-and again it grabbed me and held me.
And again I was struck by the fact that of all the lines quoted from it the very best isn't quoted much and isn't delivered by Norma or Joe. It's delivered by C.B. de Mille when Norma visits him on the set of Sampson And Delilah, "A dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit."
It just gets more true every year.
Phil Brown
Rating: - "A Dead Man's Hand"
The eerie opening of the movie, sets the tone. William Holden is speaking, telling of his experince and you realize that he is the dead man floating in the pool and it is a post-mortem spiel. This is the one film that I remember Gloria Swanson for--her playing of the dusty movie relic who has an over-exaggerated sense of self-importance in Hollywood. In fact she is long forgotten. William Holden had the unfortunate luck to get mixed up with her, and as the authorities are coming to take her away, she delivers her classic line, "Mr. DeMille, I am ready for my close-up." Thinking that the members of the press are the production company of a new movie that she will star in. Dementia rears its ugly head. What a great classic movie. Swanson and Holden are fabulous.
Rating: - Another great film by Billy Wilder~~~
Billy Wilder gives us another great film, combining an interesting if not weird story. More great screenwritting, and brilliant acting. Guaranteed to keep to rivited to your seat..
Rating: - DONT GET NO BETTER!! SWANSON AN HOLDEN DID THIS!!
WHEN I WAS A CHILD I USE TO LAUGH AT THE ANTICS OF HARVEY CARMEN AND CAROL BURNETTS VERSION OF GLORIA AND HOLDENS MOVIE NOT KNOWING IT WAS AN ACTUAL MOVIE,WHEN I LEARNED BY MY AUNT WHO ALWAYS WATCHED THE OLD MOVIE CHANNEL THAT IT WAS A REAL MOVIE I HAD TO WATCH,MAN IT WAS A BRILLIANT WRITTEN MOVIE,THESE TWO BROUGHT THE CURTAINS DOWN IF U ASK ME AND I PLAN TO BUY IT SOON FOR MY AUNT WHO LOVES TO WATCH AN OL GOOD BLACK AND WHITE AND SHE WILL MARVEL OVER THIS ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1000 STARS ,GET POP CORN,A DRING,HOT DOG AND SIT STILL UR IN FOR A TREAT!!!!
Browse for similar items by category:
|
