The merciless Hollywood machine told by Billy Wilder is in “Twilight Boulevard”, available on Paramount+ and obviously more than recommended.
Norma Desmond, a great silent actress, lives as a recluse in her luxurious villa in Beverly Hills in the company of Max von Meyerling, her butler who was also her director and husband. Joe Gillis (admirable William Holden), a penniless screenwriter, enters the property by chance and Norma offers him work on the script for the film which will mark his return to the screen, Salomé.
Joe accepts, moves in with her, both fascinated and frightened by her extravagances and delirium, and soon becomes her lover. When her delirium turns into paranoia and she shows up in the middle of Paramount Studios to convince Cecil B. DeMille to film with her again, Gillis begins to distance herself…
“Hollywood killed me!”
Crooked producers, lawless actors and actresses, screenwriters devoured by ambition, broken careers, Hollywood and its adulterated Star System, its crooks of all kinds… American cinema has regularly looked at the cradle of Hollywood industry and its cruel predatory nature, swallowing up its talents only to spit them out later, crushed by an entire system put at the service of the king dollar and the studios which shape them as they please.
In this theme, the most famous film is undoubtedly Twilight Boulevard by Billy Wilder, available on Paramount+. An absolute masterpiece which fully deserves its immense reputation, validated by AlloCiné spectators with an average of 4.3 out of 5.
When Erich Von Stroheim returned to Europe after his painful experience as a director in the United States, where his films were regularly mutilated by a quarter, half or even three-quarters, he declared, bitterly: “Hollywood killed me.”
It is therefore not without a cruel irony to see him in his last major role in the cinema with Twilight Boulevard, for which he obtained the only Oscar nomination of his career (best supporting role). He plays the ex-director who became servant of Norma Desmond, the former glory of the silent film convinced that Hollywood still wants her. Although it has long been relegated to the antiques aisle.
Paramount Pictures
An observation all the more cruel since Billy Wilder actually summons in his film former glories of silent cinema like Buster Keaton, or stars from the golden age of Hollywood like Gloria Swanson, who plays a fabulous Norma Desmond, whose mind-blowing final sequence in the film has largely gone down in history.
But it is also a work of extraordinary lucidity: it indeed evokes the collapse of an empire, that of Hollywood, once the New Babylon, even though the 1950s are considered a new golden age. for the Majors, who will enter recession again in the 60s and 70s with the emergence of New Hollywood.
A must-see film, to see (or rewatch!) on Paramount+.