Billy Wilder directs Gloria Swanson, William Holden and Erich Von Stroheim in this dark Hollywood drama about a failing screenwriter who becomes a kept playpet by a forgotten silent movie star losing her grip on reality.

This feels palpably revolutionary for its time and still bitter as a rotten black lemon even today. Wilder plunges us into the dark recesses of the homes and lives that surround the studios and orange groves of Hollywood both visually and with the characters’ warped hearts and detestable actions. No one gets away clean, the tragedy is bruising especially for Norma Desmond (Swanson excels and inadvertently gives birth to the Psycho-Biddy sub genre a decade early). Yet a keen sense of humour pervades the spiral out of control. Whether it be in the pretentious writerly narration of events from Holden or the whip smart potential happy ending personified in Nancy Olsen’s romantic alternate’s charming repartee (and personified well). Quite frankly something else, entertaining to the very core but artful in its recreation of failure and neediness. A gorgeous yet repellent Lynchian moment of rats in a drained pool feels cinematically like an echo from our future.

10