Ruthless ‘Sunset Boulevard’ shines on Blu-ray

“SUNSET BOULEVARD”

Blu-ray full-frame, 1950, unrated

Best extra: “‘Sunset Boulevard’: The Beginning” documentary

THE CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD movie to end all, “Sunset Boulevard” is always worth another look ‒ and Paramount (naturally) now offers the Blu-ray version with loads of extras. If you’re too young to know about it or have been living on Mars for the past 60 years, this Billy Wilder (“Some Like it Hot,” “The Apartment”) masterpiece is a cynical film noir about two Hollywood types: the struggling writer and the aging star. William Holden plays Joe Gillis, stone broke because he can’t sell a script, whose tire blows out in the driveway of a spooky old Spanish colonial mansion. Turns out the house belongs to Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a former silent movie queen, who lives in a grotesquely delusional fantasyland with her German butler (Eric von Stroheim). Desmond is obsessed with the idea of a return (not a comeback!) to the silver screen. The young, handsome Gillis, thanks to his desperation for money, agrees to work for Desmond on the script she’s been writing. But before long, he becomes her kept man, and then a virtual prisoner … with disastrous results.

This black and white Blu-ray version looks terrific, with shimmering creamy whites and velvety grays and blacks. Period details are sharp and the close-ups, especially of the increasingly bizarre Desmond, are luscious. The HD mono soundtrack is perfectly balanced, with Franz Waxman’s ominous score working in excellent conjunction with the totally comprehensible (and brilliant) Wilder dialogue.

Among the two-and-a-half hours plus of special features, there are several that are holdovers from the 2002 DVD, such as the documentary on costume designer Edith Head; the commentary by Wilder biographer Ed Sikov; photo galleries; Hollywood map and the script for an unused prologue. All the video extras are in standard-def and many of them repeat elements from the 2008 feature, “The Beginning.” Others include separate documentaries on Swanson, Holden, Waxman and Paramount Studios; and a deleted scene. “The Beginning” contains interviews with Stefanie Powers (Holden’s former companion), longtime Paramount producer A.C. Lyles, filmmaker Nicholas Meyer, critic Andrew Sarris and Nancy Olson, nominated for an Oscar for her role as a Hollywood script reader and Gillis’ love interest in the film. Meyer recognizes Wilder as having made the “greatest film of every genre,” and Olson comments on Swanson’s professionalism and pleasant personality on the set (i.e., nothing like Norma Desmond). Meyer notes the irony of using a clip of an actual Swanson silent film in “Sunset Boulevard.” It was from a flop called “Queen Kelly,” the final feature directed by none other than Eric von Stroheim.

― Peggy Earle
 

The Paramount Studio set for “Sunset Boulevard” with Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond a former silent movie queen

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