Sunset Blvd. Pics

The lifeless body of struggling young Hollywood screenwriter Joe Gillis (Holden) floats in the swimming pool of long-forgotten silent-film star Norma Desmond's (Swanson) palatial mansion on Sunset Boulevard, as Joe narrates, in flashback style, the story of his becoming Desmond's kept man and the events leading up to his own murder.

Joe tries to persuade Paramount Pictures producer Sheldrake (Clark) to buy his most recent script, but fails to do so after script reader Betty Schaefer gives Sheldrake a harsh critique of the script in her summation. Joe then tries unsuccessfully to borrow money from his friends, as he has fallen behind on his car payments. Fleeing from repossession men in his car, one of Joe's tires blows out in front of Norma's mansion. Hiding the car in her garage, he tells her he is a writer, and she asks him to help her write a script for a film that she hopes will revive her faded acting career.

With no other options except a low-paying newspaper job in Ohio, Joe agrees to help Norma. He objects when she has Max move his belongings from his apartment to her mansion, but she has paid his overdue rent, so he accepts the situation and begins living at the mansion, first in a room over the garage, then in the mansion itself. As he works on Norma's script, he becomes financially dependent upon her. She lavishes attention on him and buys him expensive clothing, including a tailcoat for a private New Year's Eve party attended only by the two of them. Horrified to learn that she has fallen in love with him, he escapes to a party at a friend's house, where he meets Betty Schaefer again. While still unimpressed with most of his work, she believes one scene in one of his scripts has potential. However, Joe leaves the party and returns to the mansion when he hears that Norma has attempted suicide.

After Norma considers her script complete, she sends it to Cecil B. DeMille at Paramount and waits for his answer. Coincidentally, Gordon Cole, of Paramount's Props Department, begins calling. Thinking he is one of DeMille's underlings, she refuses to speak to him. Eventually, she has Max drive her and Joe to the studio in her Isotta-Fraschini, a rare vintage luxury car. While DeMille entertains Norma, Joe and Max learn that Cole had called because the studio wants to rent her car and has no interest in her script. Max insists that they hide these facts from her, as he hides the fact that he has faked her recent fan mail.

Meanwhile, Joe has secretly begun to work with Betty on a screenplay, and she falls in love with him. When Norma discovers this, she phones Betty and insinuates what sort of man Joe really is, and Joe invites Betty to the mansion to see for herself. After Betty leaves the mansion, Joe begins packing, having decided to return to Ohio. He ignores Norma's threats to shoot herself, and she shoots him as he leaves, leaving him dead in the pool as in the first scene. By the time the police arrive, she has slipped into a hallucinatory state of mind. It becomes apparent that she thinks the news cameras are film cameras set-up for a film shoot. To help the police coax her down the stairs, Max plays along with her hallucination that she is on the set of her new film. He verbally sets up the scene for her, and yells "Action!"; Norma then dramatically descends her grand staircase, makes a short speech and delivers the film's most famous line: "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."^[1]

Sunset Boulevard (also known as Sunset Blvd.) is a 1950 American film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett. It was named after the boulevard that runs through Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, California.