Sunset Boulevard is typically classified as a quintessential film noir, a genre used to refer to highly-stylized 1940s and 50s crime films saturated with a fatalistic, cynical mood. Sunset Boulevard employs many elements of film noir, but its seamless fusion of genres cements the film as one of the most beloved American films ever made.
Like most film noirs, Sunset Boulevard adopts dramatic cinematography to strengthen its downbeat, pessimistic tone. Low-key, high contrast lighting permeate Norma’s excessive and ornate mansion, and it is perhaps most dramatically used in the scene where Max reveals his past to Joe in the garage. This lighting evokes a menacing, anxious presence and a fear that anything could go wrong at any moment, which is an appropriate mood for Norma’s lonely and oppressive estate. Film noirs additionally exhibit two iconic archetypes: the femme fatale and the male antihero. Norma fulfills the role as the femme fatale; she is a temptress who manipulates Joe for her own selfish means and brings him to his own demise. Joe also fits the antihero role, as he is flawed, jaded, charismatic, and oscillates between moral rightness and corruption. Joe’s anti-hero persona becomes especially evident in his deadpan, brutally honest voice-over, which is another staple of the complex narrative belonging to film noirs. Joe is completely willing to share the tabloid-friendly, lurid story of his own murder and subservience, and this sense of self-awareness pervades film noir. All these features heighten the anxious, cynical tone as we see Norma descend further and further into delusion and insanity.
While it does entail some of the genre's classical conventions, it would be inadequate to solely identify Sunset Boulevard as a film noir. The film is also a melodrama with its tragic ending, a satire with its relentless criticism of Hollywood, and a comedy, albeit a dark, sardonic comedy. Julie Kirgo notes, “From the opening, this highly unusual work announces itself as a bleak but irresistibly sardonic motion picture, a trenchant observation of Hollywood’s most bizarre human artifacts.” Wilder and Brackett’s blending of sardonic humor and traditional film noir themes make for an odd comedy, as well as an odd film noir. We likely aren’t laughing out loud at Joe’s self-deprecating retorts, the intricate pet monkey funeral, the somber “waxworks,” and Joe’s uneasy, ambivalent acceptance of Norma’s sexual advances, but we nonetheless may hesitantly smirk and giggle, as is often the case with dark comedies. Wilder and Brackett created a sharply written hybrid satirical-melodramatic-comedic-noir refusing reductive categorization into a single genre. Whatever Sunset Boulevard really is, it’s quite superb—the best self-referential Hollywood film ever made.
