Summary:
During his first night at Norma’s, Joe experiences a nightmare about a chip “dancing for pennies.” When he awakens the next morning, he finds that all of his belongings—his clothes, typewriter, books—have been moved from his apartment to his room at Norma's mansion. Aghast, Joe rushes to the main house and discovers that it was organ-playing, white-glove-wearing Max who moved his possessions per Norma’s request.
Norma, on a couch surrounded by dozens of old photographs of herself during her silent era heyday, reveals that she additionally paid his overdue rent because it “seemed like a good idea if we [they] are to work together.” Joe is angry at Norma’s presumptuousness, but decides to stay in hopes of leaving there in a few weeks with a decent amount of cash.
However, quickly tightening up Norma’s sprawling screenplay proves to be difficult for Joe; putting “some coherence into that wild, scrambled melodrama she concocted” is no easy feat, and Norma watches over him like a hawk, afraid of him doing “injury to the precious brainchild of hers.” Norma is offended when Joe cuts a scene, but he insists that it would be overwhelming for audiences to see her in every scene. With her vulnerable yet enormous ego, Norma bristles and says her fans are eagerly awaiting for her return: “Then why do they still write me fan letters every day? Why do they beg me for my photographs? Why? Because they want to see me, ME, Norma Desmond. Put it back.” Joe pities Norma for her delusions and egoism; he compares her to a sleepwalker mindlessly clutching to the peak of her bygone career. He calls her “plain crazy when it came to that one subject: her celluloid self” and wonders how she manages not to feel suffocated by all the photographs in her home.
Joe soon discovers his duties extend beyond editing Norma’s script: 2 or 3 times a week, Max raises up an extravagant oil painting and screens Norma’s old silent films. She claims it is “nicer than going out,” but Joe sees through her facade and knows she would rather indulge in her old celebrity status than confront a world which has moved on without her.
During one of these screenings, Norma laments the superiority of silent films: “Still wonderful, isn't it? And no dialogue. We didn't need dialogue. We had faces. There just aren't any faces like that anymore. Maybe one. Garbo. Oh, those idiot producers! Those imbeciles! Haven't they got any eyes? Have they forgotten what a star looks like?” She then angrily rises up and steps into the projected spotlight, decrying, “I’ll show them! I’ll be up there again—so help me!”
While Norma is a recluse, she occasionally invites fellow silent-screen stars over to play cards. Joe describes them as lifeless “waxworks"; they consist of actual silent icons Buster Keaton, Anna. Q. Nilsson, and H.B. Warner. During one of these games, Norma humiliates Joe when she motions him to empty her ashtray, and while he is up, he notices the 2 repo men talking to Max. He reveals that the men found Joe’s car and are towing it away, much to Joe’s dismay. Joe pleads for some money from Norma, who refuses, and he proceeds to watch his car get cranked up. Joe realizes his last source of independence has left his life forever, and Norma approaches him and reassures him they can drive around in her old, “handmade” Isotta-Fraschini.
Max repairs and polishes the Isotta-Fraschini, and he, Joe, and Norma go on rides in the hills above Sunset. While on a drive, Norma condemns Joe’s “dreadful” sense of clothes, and they go to an exclusive, highbrow men’s clothing store. Norma buys Joe expensive clothes, including a tuxedo and tails for her forthcoming New Year’s Eve party, to lavish up his wardrobe. A salesman approaches Joe with a selection of fine topcoats. Thinking him to be a gigolo, the salesman says, with a condescending inflection, “As long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna?” and successfully persuades Joe to buy the expensive, opulent item.
Analysis:
In these scenes, the antagonistic relationship between Joe and Norma deepens. When Joe first meets Norma, he believed he had cleverly gotten himself a quick job to get his life back on track. We now see how optimistic that was, as Norma becomes more controlling and Joe grows increasingly dependent on her. At a breathtaking pace, Joe evolves from hired writer to Norma’s housemate, gigolo, and errand boy in exchange for lavish gifts and a relatively comfortable, undemanding lifestyle. He abandons his job, friends, and any contact with the outside world, thereby becoming an emblem of passivity and ambivalence.
While several moments in this chapter of the film illuminate Joe’s subservience to Norma—her paying Joe’s rent payments, him emptying her ashtray—none of these are as mortifying as the removal of Joe’s car from his life. Joe’s car is a crucial asset for sustaining his own career as a screenwriter in the car-dependent Los Angeles. His car symbolizes his independence; it give him mobility and access to the basic necessities of his life, and it also functions as his only means of escape. This is why he goes great lengths to attempt to hustle enough money to keep his car and why he explains to Norma that its loss is a matter of life and death - “That’s why I came to this house. That’s why I took this job—ghostwriting!” Now that his car— by extension his agency—is stripped from him, Joe has reached the point of no return. He is stuck with Norma, who justifies this by reassuring him that the two of them can go on rides in her Isotta-Fraschini. However, Norma’s words act less of a comforting assertion and more of an exertion of her ascending control over Joe, who now doesn’t have a justifiable reason—or feasible means—to do anything without her by his side, much less leave her. Thus, as Joe’s agency diminishes, he depends more and more on Norma to provide for him.
It is also important to note Joe’s ambivalence during the deprivation of his independence. He does maintain some principles in these scenes: he protests Norma’s purchase of his expensive clothes, asks her to deduct her rent payment from his salary, and becomes outraged when his car is taken away. Joe may be outspoken and callous, but he is not nearly assertive enough to prevent Norma’s impending authority over all aspects of his life, whether it be leisurely, professional, or romantic pursuits. His ambivalence surfaces once he becomes persuaded to buy a Vicuna topcoat, refuses to press Norma to pay him less when she tells him not to worry about it, and passively watches his car—the aforementioned symbol of his independence—get taken away. It is becoming clear that Joe is not entirely unhappy as Norma’s gigolo and errand boy. This new life offers more security and stability than his previous one, which underlines why he did not leave Norma’s estate immediately after she pulled the cloak off of her dead monkey. No longer does Joe have to get into chases and ask for personal loans from studio executives to simply keep his car; now he can instead ride around the hills above Sunset in Norma’s leopard-skin padded Isotta-Fraschini. The allure of the latter seems preferential to the grueling burdens of the former, which allows us to still empathize with Joe even when he succumbs to Norma’s opulence and narcissism.
The grotesque number of older photographs in Norma’s house illuminates her unparalleled narcissism, but also her desperation to preserve her former stardom. Because these photographs are snapshots of the face that made her career, they perpetually recall Norma’s celebrity and represent an era where show business and the public idolized her beauty and youth. Now, the film industry—and its preoccupation with youthful charm and sex appeal—wants nothing to do with her, an aging former actress. Norma refuses to confront this reality. Instead, she firmly lives in the past insofar as she visions her glorious return to film as a simple rehash of her old career.
The viewing of her older silent films also showcases Norma’s infatuation with her bygone career. Private screenings often show movies inaccessible to the public, whether it be pornography or pre-theatrical releases. Because Norma privately screens her older movies—movies no longer seen outside her own house—the film comments on the paradox of film immortality. Norma clutches onto her youthful image when watching these films; however, in the day before streaming services, movies were predominantly an ephemeral phenomena, popular during their brief runs in theaters but quickly forgotten by the public thereafter. In other words, Norma memorializes her past—a past remembered by few. Barely anyone has access to actively remember and celebrate Norma’s celebrity, thereby rendering her attempted preservation of her former fame frivolous and insubstantial.
When watching one of her older films, Norma speaks proudly of silent film acting, saying, “Still wonderful, isn't it? And no dialogue. We didn't need dialogue. We had faces.” Silent film acting relied more on acting with the face—with dramatic closeups and grandiose gestures—than contemporary talkie films. As mentioned in Part 2, Norma believes the introduction of dialogue and sound decimated the power of the face in films. Upon looking at the glory of her own youthful face, Norma stands in the projected spotlight and curses the “idiot producers” and promises “I’ll be up there again—so help me!” Norma pauses in a dramatically outrageous pose, with the melodramatic background music and the flickering high-contrast lighting giving us a glimpse of Norma’s tortured mind and impending madness.
Perhaps Sunset Boulevard’s biggest strength lies in its numerous allusions to real-life figures in Hollywood, which often blurs the fine lines between reality and fiction. During the private screening scene, the film displayed is Queen Kelly (1929), directed by Erich von Stroheim—who plays Max—and starring Gloria Swanson—who plays Norma. Stroheim was a highly respected and visionary filmmaker, and the uncompleted and unreleased Queen Kelly was the last film he directed. Not unlike the careers of Norma and Swanson, Stroheim did not make a seamless transition to talkies. His directing career is nonetheless rigidly associated with the silent era, which further blurs Sunset Boulevard’s powerful parallels between art and life.
Notably, Wilder also cast silent-screen legends Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson as Norma’s bridge-playing “waxworks.” Keaton was a beloved comedic actor and director, Nilsson was deemed the first Swedish movie star, and Warner was celebrated for his performance as Jesus Christ in Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings. Keaton has a particularly potent moment in his brief appearance in Sunset Boulevard—playing cards, he simply utters the word “pass” twice, with an anxious and melancholic inflection. “Pass” signifies the passage of time, which has made the career of these once-adored stars gravely decline. The scene’s tone is simultaneously heart-melting, tragic, and darkly comedic, and Keaton's monosyllabic "pass" reinforces Norma’s assertion that “we didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!”
