Plot Summary for
Sunset Blvd. (1950) More at IMDbPro »

The story, set in '50s Hollywood, focuses on Norma Desmond, a silent-screen goddess whose pathetic belief in her own indestructibility has turned her into a demented recluse. The crumbling Sunset Boulevard mansion where she lives with only her butler, Max who was once her director and husband has become her self-contained world. Norma dreams of a comeback to pictures and she begins a relationship with Joe Gillis, a small-time writer who becomes her lover, that will soon end with murder and total madness. Written by alfiehitchie

In Hollywood of the 50's, the obscure screenplay writer Joe Gillis is not able to sell his work to the studios, is full of debts and is thinking in returning to his hometown to work in an office. While trying to escape from his creditors, he has a flat tire and parks his car in a decadent mansion in Sunset Boulevard. He meets the owner and former silent-movie star Norma Desmond, who lives alone wit her butler and driver Max von Mayerling. Norma is demented and believes she will return to the cinema industry, and is protected and isolated from the world by Max, who was his director and husband in the past and still loves her. Norma proposes Joe to move to the mansion and help her in writing a screenplay for her comeback to the cinema, and the small-time writer becomes her lover and gigolo. When Joe falls in love for the young aspirant writer Betty Schaefer, Norma becomes jealous and completely insane and her madness leads to a tragic end. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Norma Desmond, a great star from Hollywood's "golden silent era," now lives as an ungracefully aging eccentric and narcissistic recluse in an eerie and moldering mansion on Sunset Boulevard that is stuck in time: "the Hollywood of thousands of nights ago..." In there, she shuts out the world - and time - and watches her own movies over and over again... Her sole companion is Max, who was also a great director in Hollywood's silent era and, more significantly, was also her first husband... For reasons which are initially unclear, he has allowed himself to be reduced to the pathetic status of her valet who must endure the humiliation of observing, and also serving, a successive procession of husbands and lovers. Norma arrogantly - and dementedly - refuses to acknowledge her own aging and the reality that "her time has passed..." and keeps planning her "grand comeback" - or "return" as she prefers to call it - to the silver screen. To this end, she hires a struggling young screen writer, Joe Gilles, to edit a hopelessly hackneyed script she has written as the vehicle for this "return." It soon becomes evident that she expects more from the young "hunk" than just some "blue penciling." And it soon becomes evident to him how vain and out-of-touch with reality she has become - his quip upon first meeting her, "hey, you're Norma Desmond - you were big!" is "corrected" immediately with "I AM big..." Norma also expects that no less a personage than Cecil B. DeMille will direct the movie that will be based upon her script. This preposterous expectation of hers results in her now famous line, "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille..." Despite his own ominous misgivings, Joe is unable to resist the "life of luxury and leisure" Norma offers him and allows himself to become her "kept man" resulting in great discontent, and eventually, horrifying tragedy, for all concerned. Written by spacemandc

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