No sight here is weirder - and more compelling - than Swanson, giving some of the most idiosyncratic line readings in the whole 1950s canon ("Cut away from ME?"); one of the enduring fascinations of this performance is trying to parse how much of it Wilder directed and how much the actress made herself undirectable, so determined to launch a real-world comeback that she shot off from this script at quite some tangent. In some respects, Swanson's choices are apt, and you understand why the savvy Wilder might have nodded them through: it's a rare example of a silent-era performance, wild-eyed and trembling, in a sound movie. One reason Norma Desmond faded away is that, like so many silent-era stars, she couldn't (and can't) move on. (And we can't take our eyes off Swanson, whether out of admiration or fear.) But then this is also an all-timer script, another from that run of Wilder miracles finding wit and wisdom in deeply unhealthy relationships: between man and bottle in The Lost Weekend, the press, public and the truth in Ace in the Hole, vulnerable hearts and cold, hard capitalism in The Apartment. The wisdom here isn't exclusively about the business, though there's plenty of that ("A dozen press officers working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit", "Funny how gentle people get with you once you're dead"); it also pertains to any feckless, nihilist, self-sabotaging man, about women deranged by vanity and insecurity, what happens after the spotlight moves on and all people want you for is your car. Exiled from a world that considers them long-dead, Joe and Norma are trapped in a mansion that seems ever more like a chintzy mausoleum: old movies, old moviestars (the bridge night is still a jolt, haunted by ghosts of Hollywood's then-recent past), old cars, old songs. What year is this? (The dangers of nostalgia in both art and life: David Lynch borrowed the minor character name Gordon Cole for Twin Peaks, and would circle back this way for Mulholland Dr.) Over subsequent decades, brand Sunset has become a whole lot less weird: a point of reference for lesser films, the basis of endless Hallowe'en costumes and drag acts, eventually even an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. In its original state, Wilder's most expressionistic film, it remains a skinprickling synthesis of horror and noir: a projector-beam Rebecca, gossip with claws, a real dream-factory nightmare.
Sunset Blvd. returns to selected cinemas today.
