Sunset Boulevard 4K 1950 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

A young screenwriter Joe Gillis is broke, he is pursued by creditors, he has nothing to eat, it seems to him that his life is over. The car, on which he sets off mindlessly and aimlessly to an unknown destination, suddenly because of a flat tire swerves and flies into the courtyard of the mansion of the famous in the past and fading in the present movie star Norma Desmond.

Review 4K Movie

I love people who are like old Hollywood movies. Simple. Sincere. A little naive. Appropriately pretentious. With clear and absolutely unshakeable ideas about what is “good” and what is “bad.” But I've seen many more movies like that than I've met people like that.

Sunset Boulevard is a kind of watershed for me between the old—let's call it “naive”—and the new cinema. While retaining the external attributes of a simple black-and-white film from the 1930s and 1940s, Sunset Boulevard, shot in 1950, is ideologically closer to modern cinema than to old Hollywood. There is no naivety or romance—only deception, pathology, and not a single positive character.

The plot, as old as the world itself, about a young gigolo who is torn between two women—a rich one and a young one—is immersed in the world of cinema in Sunset Boulevard. The gigolo is Joe, a failed screenwriter who accidentally falls into creative and sexual slavery to Norma Desmond, a former silent film star living out her days in her castle. The star hopes to make a triumphant return to the changed film industry with a new role and a new film. Of course, dreams don't come true, and everything ends badly for everyone.

... I don't want to fall into nostalgic lamentations about “how people used to live, how sensitive they were, how well they knew how to make movies,” but, really, films like Sunset Boulevard are practically never made anymore. Despite the simplicity of the plot, the stunning professionalism of the filmmakers makes it not just a monument frozen in bronze, but a living film that, sixty years later, is more interesting than many new releases. First and foremost, two people deserve respect. Director Billy Wilder, who is known mainly for his sparkling comedies (how can we forget Some Like Them Hot, dear to the hearts of every Soviet citizen?), created a film that was atypically ruthless for him. And Gloria Swanson, who played Norma. In general, to appreciate the film and, in particular, Swanson's creative and human courage, it is important to understand the context. Gloria essentially played herself, as she herself was a forgotten movie star of the 1920s, just like her character. Many Hollywood actresses with similar fates turned down this role (such as Mae West and Mary Pickford), but Swanson had the courage and talent to create a rather vicious and completely unfunny caricature. Norma's butler Max, her ex-husband and director, is actually the legendary Erich von Stroheim, director of films starring Marlene Dietrich. Appearing as themselves—the word “cameo” was not yet in use in 1950—were silent film stars Cecil B. DeMille and Buster Keaton. Wilder, in true postmodern fashion, mixed art and reality, the images of actors and the fates of characters.

Sunset Boulevard is more than just a legendary film, rightly considered one of the best in the history of world cinema. It also marked the beginning of the end of the “age of innocence” in cinema, with its simple, sincere, naive, and appropriately melodramatic characters who knew what was ‘good’ and what was “bad.” Of course, that same “naive Hollywood” did not end overnight after Sunset Boulevard. But it was here, and hardly for the first time, that black and white colors, while remaining on film, disappeared from the assessments of the characters and their actions. There are no unconditional heroes or unambiguous villains here. Everything is just like in real life.