Sunset Boulevard (1950)

 

Sunset Boulevard is such a wonderful masterpiece of a movie and one of my favorite films of all time. It was released as Hollywood was experiencing yet another one of its many transitional moments. After the end of World War II, the movie business focused more on darker themes and more downbeat subject matter. This is the period of film noir, after all, and Sunset Boulevard certainly does demonstrate some of the key traits of film noir. The year of its release was also about twenty-two years or so since "talking pictures" had taken over as the dominant approach to filmmaking, and Sunset Boulevard takes on the subject of what happened to the stars of that era who didn't (or couldn't or weren't allowed to) make the transition from silent films to talkies. It's quite the tale of what happens when Old Hollywood clashes with New Hollywood.

Normal Desmond (played by Gloria Swanson in one of the most famous and magnificent performances ever committed to film) was a huge star in the silent era. However, she never made the transition to talking pictures, and she resents how the industry has left her behind. She lives alone in a huge mansion on Sunset Boulevard, which was, incidentally, the street for the location of the first film studio in Hollywood, with just her one servant, Max (famed director Erich von Stroheim showing he has acting chops too). A failed or failing Hollywood screenwriter named Joe Gillis (William Holden in a breakout role) accidentally interrupts their years-long solitude and becomes intertwined in Norma's plans for a return to movies. (Don't you dare call it a comeback. In the words of L.L. Cool J, she's been here for years.) 

What follows is certainly film noir, but it’s also a rather bitter indictment of the film industry. It’s also a drama and a crime film and, at times, a very dark comedy. The performances are all top-notch. You have to wonder how anyone could mix genres so smoothly, but director and co-writer Billy Wilder was certainly capable. He even managed to take the oddest approach to voice-over narrative – having a corpse tell the story of what happened to him during the previous six months that led to his murder – and make it somehow make sense.

There's so much wonderful movie trivia associated with this film. Both von Stroheim and Cecil B. DeMille (who appears as himself in the film) really did direct Swanson during the silent era. In fact, the film that Norma and Joe watch is Queen Kelly (1928-29), a Stroheim-helmed film that was considered a box office flop upon its initial release. DeMille actually did call Swanson "young fellow" as a term of endearment back when they were making their earlier films, and she was prone to calling him "chief." Wilder did film on the actual Paramount Studios, and yes, that's the gate that you would enter from Melrose Avenue (although there's a much bigger gate now that you have to go through first). Schwab's is still in Hollywood (albeit in a somewhat different location), and many an aspiring actor tried their best to be discovered there the way that Lana Turner allegedly was. The mansion itself is the old Jenkins-Getty mansion – yes, THAT Getty – and the pool was to appear on film again a few years later in a pivotal scene in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).

The film pays homage to the silent era with lots of references and appearances by stars of that period in Hollywood. The so-called Waxworks who play bridge with Norma are all famous silent screen performers: Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B. Warner, and the great Buster Keaton, none of whom were particularly active in filmmaking at the time, certainly not at the level of their fame during the silent era. The film also features lots of references to other actors from the era, such as Rudolph Valentino and Wallace Reid. They even manage to get references to such contemporary stars as Tyrone Power, Alan Ladd, and Betty Hutton into a scene involving a pitch meeting. Hedda Hopper, who also plays herself in the film, was a failed actress herself (just don't say that to her face) who became one of the most famous gossip columnists in Hollywood. 

Sunset Boulevard also features some of the most famous and most quoted lines in movie history:

•  "Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along."
• "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!"
• “They’ll love it in Pomona.” “They’ll love it everywhere.”
• “No one ever leaves a star. That’s what makes one a star.”
• "The stars are ageless, aren't they?"
• "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

I know that this film is a particular favorite of gay viewers, and those lines are at the ready for almost any occasion, but what movie lover doesn’t know these lines? It’s not restricted to those who view the film for its camp elements (although it certainly has those as well).

I have always found it interesting that the film reveals how much the transition to sound pictures affected performers, but not really anyone else. DeMille is still directing, the security guard at the Paramount gate is still the same, and the crew and supporting players seem to all be still active, don't they? It's a nice touch that during the scene in the movie studio, Norma's nemesis, the microphone, hits the feathers on her hat as it sails by. It's also quite intriguing that Wilder and co-writers Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr. chose to have the central performer be an actress rather than an actor. Perhaps they were commenting on the way that Hollywood treated/treats women as they age in the film industry. The montage showing Norma going through her beauty treatment preparations for a return to film would directly support that idea. Would a male actor need or want to undergo such scrutiny?

The film also comments upon issues of love and devotion. Max, Norma’s faithful servant, was a promising young director who gave up his career to be with the woman he married (before she divorced him for a second husband) and now keeps her distracted with fan mail that he sends to her. Joe begins to fall in love with Betty (Nancy Olson), the script reader who has aspirations to become a screenwriter herself, but he breaks her heart by telling her that he’s devoted to Norma and to being a kept man. There’s a lot of pain in these characters, and even with the darkness associated with their often-selfish behavior, it’s tough not to sympathize with them.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of my favorite aspects of the film, its production design. Norma Desmond’s mansion is spectacular. It’s filled with just what you’d expect someone from the silent era to include, like a tile dance floor because Valentino said that was better than using wood for the floor. Norma is also surrounded by pictures and portraits of herself, indications of just how narcissistic she is as well as how big a star she was, and watching her own films on her very own movie screen just cements that impression. Many years ago, I saw the stage production of the musical version of Sunset Boulevard (in Los Angeles before it made it to New York for its Broadway premiere), and the set received a standing ovation when it was revealed. It just perfectly recreated what we had seen in the film. The Oscar for art direction that the film received was well deserved.

Sunset Boulevard was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning three (Best Story and Screenplay, Best Black-and-White Art Direction, and Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture). All four of the principal actors were nominated for their performances, but sadly, none of them won. It was quite the year for Hollywood, what with All About Eve, Born Yesterday, Father of the Bride, King Solomon’s Mines, Caged, and so many more classics up for awards consideration. The three awards for Sunset Boulevard was second only to the six won by All About Eve. The film was among the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress' National Film Preservation Board. It's regularly cited as one of the greatest films of all time and deservedly so.

Oscar Wins: Best Story and Screenplay, Best Black-and-White Art Direction, and Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Billy Wilder), Best Actress (Gloria Swanson), Best Actor (William Holden), Best Supporting Actress (Nancy Olson), Best Supporting Actor (Erich von Stroheim), Best Black-and-White Cinematography, and Best Film Editing

Born Yesterday (1950)

The greatest pleasure in watching Born Yesterday, one of the nominees for Best Picture of 1950, is seeing the performance of Judy Holliday as Billie Dawn. So good is Holliday in the role that she won the Oscar for Best Actress over two of the most acclaimed and influential performances by women in the history of movies: Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All about Eve and Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Perhaps Holliday won because the votes were split between Davis and Swanson and she snuck in, but I suspect that voters saw just how remarkably nuanced and subtle Holliday's comedic performance is. It, too, has become a classic, and it's the main reason that Born Yesterday is still an enjoyable, entertaining film.

Broderick Crawford plays Harry Brock, a millionaire who's made his fortune buying and selling junk. He's quite proud, even boastful, of his humble beginnings, but he wants to make even more money. To do so, he needs to get some legislation passed by Congress. So he comes to Washington, with his lawyer and his assistant in tow, to see how many Congressmen he has to buy in order to get his way. In Harry's eyes, everyone has a price; you just have to find out what it is. He plans to take his money and spread it around until he achieves his goal (which is to make it easier for him to earn even more money).

Along for the trip is his girlfriend or fiancee, depending upon whose perspective you want to take, Billie Dawn. Billie isn't a smart woman, but she doesn't feel a particular need to become smart. A former show girl whom Harry rescued from the chorus, she gets whatever she wants: clothes, jewels, trips, furs, anything. All she has to do in return is sign some papers. She actually has to sign a lot of papers, but she never truly understands what she's signing. The truth is Harry and his lawyer have put quite a lot of Harry's holdings in Billie's name--she's one of his corporate officers, little more than a figurehead, really--so as to avoid having to declare the income from them. Billie, in fact, seems to own more of Harry's various interests than he does. She just doesn't know it.

After a disastrous first meeting with a Congressman and his wife where Billie makes some very off-the-wall comments and plays loud music on her radio instead of making conversation, Harry decides that Billie needs to be "smartened up" a bit. He enlists the help of a journalist with whom he earlier had an interview, Paul Verall (William Holden), and once he determines the price, $200 a week, everything is set for Billie's lessons to begin. The trouble is Billie doesn't want to learn; she wants to have a fling with Paul instead. Knowing what the Supreme Court is has little interest to her; getting to romance someone who looks like William Holden seems far more intriguing.

Nevertheless, Paul tries to stay dedicated to the task for which he's being paid. He brings her some books to read and some newspapers to go over. He tells her that she should not just read the funnies, as she is more accustomed to doing, but to take a look at the items in the front of the paper, "the not-so-funnies." He tells her to circle anything she doesn't understand in the newspaper, and when he returns the next day, the front page is covered with marks. He takes things slowly and explains concepts to Billie in easy-to-understand language, and she begins a process of becoming interested in learning. She even puts what appears to be an unabridged dictionary to frequent use, especially when she has to come up with insults for Harry. And it's a lovely touch having Billie put on glasses like the ones Paul is wearing; she must think it's a sign of intelligence.

The film features some lovely footage of Washington as Paul takes Billie on a tour of significant landmarks. They visit the Capitol, the Jefferson Memorial, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Archives at the Library of Congress, where Billie is impressed by the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Gettysburg Address. He even takes her to a performance of the National Symphony Orchestra in order to broaden her cultural horizons. After the performance, she tells him a bit about her upbringing, including some tender reminiscences about her father. It's clear by this point that Paul has fallen in love with Billie, and she says to him, "I go for you too."

Of course, a crisis occurs when Billie is asked to sign some more papers, ones involving a merger with French and Italian companies, and she asks for time to read them over first. Harry becomes furious and hits her. He then belittles her by calling her "dumb" and "cheap," and she leaves the hotel in order to figure out what she should do. She's really in love with Paul by now, but she fears they may no longer have a chance for a romantic relationship, given how much time they've devoted just to her self-improvement. When Paul proposes to her and then Harry tells her she's getting married to him, Billie has to decide what kind of future she wishes. The solution she comes up with is quite clever and shows just how far she's grown in the time she's been Paul's pupil.

Holliday gets some great lines in the film, thanks to the original play by Garson Kanin and the screenplay by Albert Mannheimer. She must have been one of the first people to say, "Pardon me for living," and one of her most famous lines is "Would you do me a favor, Harry?... Drop dead." But Holliday could make almost any humorous line sting. Just hearing her yell "Whaaat?" in that distinctive tone of hers is a delight. She's just as great at making her physical actions the source of comedy. I always laugh when I see her trying to walk the way she thinks someone classy might walk. I also can't help but laugh when I watch Billie and Harry playing a game of gin rummy, perhaps the most well known scene in the film. She has her little rituals like shuffling the cards around and singing music that sounds like it should accompany a striptease, and I love how she deals the cards when she's made at Harry. It's quite a masterful performance overall. I don't know that I would have chosen it over the performances by Davis and Swanson, but it's the reason why Born Yesterday is still an engaging film.

Oscar Win: Actress (Holliday)

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Costume Design (Black and White)

Father of the Bride (1950)

Compared to some of the other nominees for Best Picture of 1950, Father of the Bride is pretty inconsequential material. When you consider that the competition included such masterpieces as All about Eve, the winner, and Sunset Boulevard, what chance could a charming little domestic comedy have at winning the big prize? As enjoyable as Father of the Bride is, and it certainly has its entertaining moments, it just doesn't hold up as an award-worthy accomplishment. Even Born Yesterday and King Solomon's Mines, the two other nominees for Best Picture that year, have more to recommend them to a viewer nowadays in terms of contributions to film history.

Spencer Tracy plays Stanley Banks, a respectable middle-class lawyer whose daughter Kay (played by Elizabeth Taylor) is his favorite child. He has two other children, Ben and Tommy, two sons, but it's Kay on whom he dotes. At dinner one night, he and his wife Ellie (Joan Bennett) learn that Kay has gotten engaged to her boyfriend Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor) without even knowing that the two kids had gotten that serious about each other. In fact, Stanley has to flip through a montage of her boyfriends to try to determine which one she's discussing. If I recall correctly, it turns out Buckley's the one he describes as "the musclebound ham with the shoulders," a not altogether inaccurate description of the actor who plays him either.

What follows are a series of events that, at times, border on the slapstick. Stanley tries to have a conversation about finances with young Buckley, but it fails, of course, because he's really in love with Kay and nothing can dissuade him from marrying her. When Mr. and Mrs. Banks meet Buckley's parents, Stanley gets drunk and spends the entire evening talking non-stop about Kay, finally falling asleep to the relief of everyone involved. At the engagement party, he never even makes it out of the kitchen because everyone wants something different to drink, leaving all of his martinis untouched. Each of these moments is played rather broadly by Tracy and the others, and each is a funny vignette.

Planning for the event itself becomes one headache after another. Kay's mother keeps buying her daughter expensive clothes for her trousseau, and they cannot seem to whittle the guest list down to a manageable size. It stands at 572 for the wedding and 280 for the reception, far more than they could reasonably expect to invite. It gets so exasperating for Stanley that he offers Kay money if she and Buckley will just elope. And the visit to the wedding planner played by Leo G. Carroll is, as you might expect, hilarious. Every suggestion gets shot down, and the expense and complexity of the reception keep increasing. When the film was remade in 1991 with Steve Martin in the Tracy role, Martin Short took over for Carroll, and, frankly, he made the character into a caricature, something the understated Carroll himself never does.

You know, don't you, that there has to be a complication that almost causes the wedding's cancellation? It's over the honeymoon. The groom wants to go fishing in Nova Scotia, an odd choice for a honeymoon destination, certainly, but just seeing him again makes Kay change her mind and take him back. Once again, Tracy's Stanley is disappointed. Perhaps that's what leads to the film's most unusual sequence, a dream Stanley has about sinking into the floor as he tries to walk down the aisle. His clothes get ripped, and the guests are all appalled, as you might expect them to be. It's quite a nightmare, and it stands out in the film for the cleverness with which it is depicted and for its rather surrealistic nature.

The film has a framing device of tracking the devastation of the Banks family's home after the party. It's quite a mess with glasses and bottles and food and confetti and destruction everywhere. Tracy tells the story of what has led to this disaster in a voice-over throughout the movie. Apparently, all of the events took place in just three months, which has to qualify this wedding as being one of the fastest to be planned and executed in history. It's hard to believe that, after all of the problems the bride and groom and their families have faced, all goes well. The reception is another disaster for Stanley personally, but in the end, he and Ellie are able to dance among the wreckage of their home, happy that it has all ended (and perhaps grateful that they have only one daughter).

This was Taylor's first adult role as an actress, and she's beautiful here. She would use her looks and talent to greater effect a year later in A Place in the Sun, but she's competent here in what is truly a supporting role, after all. Bennett and the two actors who play the Banks sons (Russ Tamblyn in an early role for him and Tom Irish) really have little to do here except react to whatever moments Tracy's character presents. Carroll steals the few minutes that he has on screen, making the most of our own preconceived ideas about what weddings and receptions and their planners entail. But it's Tracy to whom we owe the overall success of the film. I never really would have pegged Tracy as an actor grounded in physical comedy, but he manages to do some deft work here. He was nominated for Best Actor for this role, but really, it's not that much of a stretch for someone with a natural gift like his.

Father of the Bride was directed by Vincente Minnelli, who would achieve greater fame for directing classic musicals like An American in Paris, The Band Wagon, and Gigi (and for being married to Judy Garland and fathering Liza Minnelli). His direction here is assured, classical Hollywood film making, perhaps the reason he and several of the cast returned a year later to make a sequel, Father's Little Dividend, about what happens after the birth of Stanley's first grandchild. Thankfully, that one wasn't nominated for Best Picture, so I can skip seeing it again.

Oscar Nominations: Picture, Actor (Tracy), and Screenplay

King Solomon's Mines (1950)

I don't recall exactly the first time I saw King Solomon's Mines, a nominee for Best Picture of 1950. I must have been a boy. However, I've seen it several times in my life and always enjoyed it. The beauty of Africa is captured so magnificently on film here. This is one of the most gloriously photographed movies of the last century and deservedly won the Oscar for Best Cinematography.

Stewart Granger plays Allan Quatermain, one of those Great White Hunter types in Africa during the latter part of the 19th century. He is enlisted by an Englishwoman, Elizabeth Curtis (played by Deborah Kerr), to search for her husband, who has gone in search of the legendary diamond mines of King Solomon. Along for the trip is her brother, John Goode, played by the always reliable Richard Carlson (one of the best things about The Creature from the Black Lagoon, just as an aside). There are also several African tribesmen who help (initially) in the journey into territory that has not yet been explored by whites. Quatermain takes the job because of the amount of money he's offered, but he also seems to want to bolster his ego by being the first white man to make his way through the middle part of the continent.

Along the way, the various travelers encounter a variety of animals: elephants and giraffes and lions and crocodiles and...well, you name it. I suspect many of the animals in the film are not actually native to the specific region of Africa in which the film is set, but no matter. It's a thrill to see them all and to watch Kerr's reaction to them. She seems to be a magnet for wild animals. The cheetah that strolls into camp late at night attacks only her tent. The giant snake (a constrictor?) also attacks only her. Even a giant spider finds only Kerr appealing enough to attach itself to her clothing. As the party makes it way through several of the different terrains of Africa, they keep encountering an ever-widening variety of animals.

There is, of course, a growing sexual tension between Quatermaine and Elizabeth as they get closer to finding out what happened to her husband (and deeper into the heart of Africa). What was it about traveling through Africa that made white people so horny in those days? I suppose it's about returning to a more allegedly primitive land, where people act more on instinct than intellect. Nevertheless, Granger and Kerr are a very appealing and attractive couple, and you'll see his interest in her long before she does.

There's a subplot involving an African prince who is returning to claim his throne from an usurping relative. He joins the party and leads them to his village. It's there that the film reaches its climactic moments, and we find out the fate of Mr. Curtis (you won't be that surprised, will you?) and we see how the battle for leadership of the tribe plays itself out. If I have any quibbles with the film, it would be the very short amount of time devoted to this portion of the plot. I do understand that overall this movie is more of a travelogue than an action adventure film (although it does offer lots of action and adventure), but I was curious to see more about how these African villagers lived.

Still, this remains one of my favorite movies from the 1950s. It's often forgotten, probably because we've had so many films set in Africa since then, but this was one of the first actually to be shot on location. There probably wasn't much chance of this film winning Best Picture of 1950--it was up against All about Eve and Sunset Boulevard, after all--but it certainly deserves its spot among the top five.