Sunset Boulevard: Seamlessly Integrating Opening Credits into Thematic Narrative Anonymous College

Among the history of the greatest opening title sequences in film history, Sunset Boulevard is rarely even mentioned. Certainly it lacks the panache of L.A. Confidential, the understated elegance of Raging Bull, the typographical aesthetics of Seven or just the sheer visual joy of North by Northwest. What the almost shamefully simplistic first minute and a half of Sunset Boulevard does offer that is missing from perhaps as much as 99% of all the other movies ever made is foreshadowing of literally everything to come in the next 108 minutes.

The establishing shot which opens the film is its title in the form of a stenciled painting of the name of one of the most famous streets in America on a curb. This shot immediately undercuts the glamour associated with the name of that boulevard of Hollywood dreams by reducing it to its most element level: it is just another street. Even worse, however, is the condition of the curb chosen for this shot: a dirty, stained sidewalk above and a leaf-filled gutter entrance to the sewer below. Every possible expectation with which one enters a film named after a street synonymous with the high glamour of Hollywood is subverted. This is not where movies about Hollywood—even ones destined for...