Summary:
After Norma’s trip to Paramount, she misleadingly believes DeMille will direct Salome and begins rigorously preparing for her return to film with various merciless beauty treatments. Over voiceover, Joe declares, “She [Norma] was absolutely determined to be ready, ready for those cameras that would never turn.” One night, she visits Joe’s room and suspects him of leaving the house at night. Joe lies and says he want to the beach - “Norma, you don’t want me to feel I’m locked up in this house?” Norma admits she simply does not want to be left alone during this stressful period of her life and asks Joe for his patience and kindness.
Joe then reveals via voiceover that he has been sneaking out every night to work on a script with Betty at her office in Paramount. They two effectively collaborate together, and further develop their flirtatious banter. Joe admits he enjoys their relationship:“It’s fun writing with you.” Betty spots Joe’s gold cigarette cases with the inscription “Mad about the Boy - Norma” and asks, “Who’s Norma?” Joe, not wanting to disclose the atypical nature of his relationship with Norma, describes her as a “...a friend of mine, very foolish and very generous” who he gave “some advice on an idiotic script.”
When they get writers’ block, Joe and Betty wander the Paramount lot and their relationship becomes more personal. When they encounter a set of a New York street, Betty remarks, “Look at this street. All cardboard, all hollow, all phony. All done with mirrors. I like it better than any street in the world. Maybe because I used to play here when I was a kid.” She proceeds to discuss her “picture family”—her father was a head electrician at Paramount, and her grandfather did stunt work for Pearl White—and how she trained to become an actress for 10 years. During studio tests, the executives didn’t “like” Betty’s slightly slanted nose, so she paid 300 dollars in plastic surgery to fix it. After that, “They made more tests, and they were crazy about my nose—only they didn't like my acting.” Betty feels no regret for her arduous attempts at becoming a star, as it taught her sensibility and eventually led to her thriving career as a script reader. She claims it’s fun to be on the other side of the camera, and Joe affectionately kisses her nose and says she smells “real special.” Not wanting to interfere with her engagement with Artie, he restrains his romantic impulses and suggests they stay two feet away from each other when they write together.
When Joe returns from his clandestine meeting with Betty, Max confronts him in the dark shadows of the garage. Max warns Joe that Norma has begun to notice Joe’s frequent absences and he should be cautious when crossing the patio, as she may be watching him. Joe angrily laments, “...we’re not helping her [Norma] any, feeding her lies and more lies. Getting herself ready for a picture...what happens when she finds out?” Max says she will never find out the truth and it’s his job to keep her illusions alive. He also reveals that it was he who discovered Norma at 16 and directed all of her early films, making her a renowned star. It was Max, alongside filmmakers D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, who showed high promise during the silent era. Instead of continuing his flourishing film career, Max dutifully returned to Norma’s life and accepted the subservient role as her servant. He was Norma’s first husband, and life without her proved unendurable after their divorce.
Later, an unhinged Norma enters Joe’s bedroom and accuses him of having a relationship with another woman, saying, “You're here, Joe ... When did you come home? Oh Joe, where were you? Is it a woman? I know it's a woman ... Who is she? Oh Joe, why can't I ask you? I must know, I must!” while he’s asleep. She then spots his and Betty’s script (“UNTITLED LOVE STORY by JOSEPH C. GILLIS and BETTY SCHAEFER”) which affirms the threatening presence of another woman—Betty—in Joe’s life. The discovery of the script confirms Norma’s suspicions and represents Joe’s betrayal of her trust.
During another late-night writing session, Betty appears distracted and her eyes fixate on Joe. When Joe inquires about her strange behavior, she reveals that she received a telegram from Artie, who wants her to visit him in Arizona and get married for cheap there. Betty begins to cry, and Joe tells her to stop and says, “You’re getting married. That's what you've always wanted.” Betty says she fell out of love with Artie and doesn’t want want to marry him anymore. Stunned, Joe asks “What happened?” to which she replies, “You did,” and they share a passionate embrace.
Joe arrives back at his “peculiar prison”—Norma’s house—and he attempts to level-headedly process his situation. He considers himself a fool to not tell Betty about his unconventional relationship with Norma, but also justifies this because “you just can't say those things to somebody you're crazy about.” He begins to think he could get away from Norma and start life anew with Betty, but then he hears a telephone dialing from Norma’s room. He walks up to her door and overhears a conversation she has with Betty. Norma tries to break up Betty and Joe’s relationship; she insinuates that Joe is a troubled man and makes his living as her gigolo, and says she’s doing Betty a great favor by informing her of this, reasoning, “I'm trying to spare you a great deal of misery.” Joe approaches Norma and angrily grabs the phone away from her. He invites Betty to visit Norma’s house—10086 Sunset Boulevard—and see the situation for herself.
While waiting for Betty, Norma pleads for Joe to forgive her and uses the “torment” she’s endured for the past few weeks to vindicate her escalating manipulation of him. She admits she bought a revolver to commit suicide, but couldn’t bring herself to go through with the act, presumably because she’s under the impression that millions of fans are eagerly awaiting her return to film. She cries into her pillow and tells Joe she loves him, and when he leaves her room without saying a word, the revolver reveals itself hidden underneath Norma’s pillow.
Joe shows Betty around the extravagant mansion and feigns fulfillment with his life as a gigolo to upset her and extricate himself from the complicated love triangle. Betty tries to get him to pack up his belongings and leave with her, but Joe rejects this offer—“Back to a one-room apartment that I can't pay for? Back to a story that may sell and very possibly will not? … A long-term contract with no options. I like it that way. Maybe it's not very admirable. Well, you and Artie can be admirable.” Betty begins to cry, and Joe persuades her to exit the house and his life.
With his newfound intention to move back to Ohio, Joe ascends the stairs and ignores Norma, who just observed his encounter with Betty. Norma begins to follow him, pausing to examine herself in a mirror. She peels off the patches from her face, readjusts her appearance, and proceeds to enter his room. Joe packs all of his old belongings and returns the lavish jewelry and trinkets Norma gifted him. He tells Norma he’s leaving her, and a frantic Norma calls for Max and says, “I can’t face life without you. You know, I’m not afraid to die.” Joe then attempts to instill some reality into Norma, implying that nobody would care if she killed herself, as the audiences left her 20 years ago. He then brutally informs her of Paramount’s lack of interest in her return to film; the studio only wanted her Isotta-Fraschini for rental. Norma doesn’t believe him, as she still believes she receives fan letters every day. Upon Max’s entrance to the room, Joe urges him to confess how he regularly forges the fan-mail to maintain her illusions—"Tell her there isn't going to be any picture, there aren't any fan letters except the ones you write." Rather than explicitly address the fan-mail, Max loyally defends Norma as “the greatest star of them all.”
Norma, taking Max’s words to heart, again asserts herself as a star. Outraged, Joe urges Norma to act her age—"Norma, you're a woman of 50. Now, grow up! There's nothing tragic about being 50—not unless you try to be 25." Norma refuses to acknowledge Joe’s truth and further deludes herself: "I'm a star...I'm the greatest star of them all." Joe becomes apathetic, seeing no use in urging Norma to confront reality anymore. As he exits the room, Norma, who clearly cannot bear his abandonment, hisses, “No one ever leaves a star. That's what makes one a star." She calls after him, but Joe refuses to look back. As he walks toward the outdoor pool, Norma shoots him once, then two more times with the revolver she initially intended to use for her own suicide. Because of his extreme desperation to leave the mansion, Joe continues to walk after he is shot, but he becomes so mortally wounded that he eventually falls into the pool.
Max, hearing the gunshots, rushes up to Norma, who looks up into the sky and exclaims, “Stars are ageless, aren’t they?” Then, the scene dissolves into the same underwater shot of Joe from the prologue of the film. Joe’s posthumous narration elaborates on the crime scene—“It's dawn now, and they must have photographed me a thousand times. Then they got a couple of pruning hooks from the garden and fished me out, ever so gently. Funny how gentle people get with you once you're dead.” As journalists, gossip columnists, and reporters surround the crime scene, Joe again ponders how the press will sensationally refer to Norma in headlines: “Forgotten Star a Slayer,” “Aging Actress,” “Yesterday’s Glamour Queen.”
Inside the house, Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper calls in her story about Norma’s madness, saying that she was in “a state of complete shock.” The local police and homicide squad attempt to interrogate Norma, who ignores them and stares absently at her image in the mirror. She does not acknowledge the police until one of them mentions cameras, which exhilarates her. Max—realizing that cameras will persuade her to descend the stairs into police custody—tells her the cameras have arrived for her, to which Norma replies, “They have? Tell Mr. DeMille I'll be on the set at once.”
Completely deluded, Norma prepares for her “scene” thinking she’s about to film with DeMille for her victorious comeback, when in reality the cameras are only there to document the murder investigation. She emerges from her room, draped in a posh robe with shiny spangles in her hair. Max prepares the cameramen, makes up a scene for Norma—“this is the staircase of the palace”—and shouts, “cameras, action!” from the first floor. She dramatically walks down the mansion’s staircase, and the press and police all gaze at her, half mesmerized, half disturbed. Joe narrates, “So they were turning, after all—those cameras. Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her.” After this grand entrance, a delusional Norma becomes so jubilant and emotionally moved, she pauses her “scene” to address her “crew” at the bottom of the staircase. During the famous final monologue of the film, Norma expresses her gratitude to be working again, and promises to never desert film again—“...after Salome we’ll make another picture, and another picture. You see this is my life. It always will be! There's nothing else—just us—and the cameras—and those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.” The final image of Sunset Boulevard is Norma moving directly toward one of the cameras, which slowly blurs and dissolves.
Analysis:
With Sunset Boulevard’s renowned, nihilistic finale, we end where we started: the scene of Joe’s sinister murder. Despite our awareness of Joe’s doomed fate since the prologue, witnessing his murder and Norma’s complete transformation into utter delusion still shocks and disturbs us, and there are plenty of suspenseful twists and turns in the events leading up to the film’s infamous final lines—“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.”
One of the unexpected twists is Joe’s decision to renounce Betty and convince her to return to Artie, a man she doesn't love. Joe and Betty have undeniable chemistry; they clearly care for each other and have a genuine connection. Running away with Betty is Joe’s one chance at legitimate happiness, but he recognizes that it isn’t feasible. He knows he doesn’t deserve Betty, and his life has become so labyrinthine and tortuous, he realizes his only option is to return to Ohio and start anew. Joe’s decision to depart Los Angeles and persuade Betty to leave him is ultimately a responsible one: perhaps the first instance of him doing what is right, as opposed to what is easy.
Throughout the film, Joe selfishly uses linear thinking to try to solve his problems. When his car is about to get repossessed, he pitches Bases Loaded to Sheldrake and asks for personal loans from everyone he knows. When he feels suffocated by Norma’s declaration of love on New Year’s Eve, he temporarily abandons the house to attend a more lighthearted party; when offered the chance to develop a script with Betty, he sneaks out every night to collaborate and bond with her. Joe trying to convince Betty to choose Artie because he will be a better man for her is the first instance of him selflessly employing linear thinking, even though it is difficult for him to do. Through his decision to extricate himself as Norma’s gigolo, lover, and general ego-stroker, Joe continues in this noble effort, but this change in character occurs far too late, and it results in his tumultuous death. His honorable attempt to reclaim his independence is rejected by Norma, who can’t confront the idea of someone abandoning her: “No one ever leaves a star. That's what makes one a star.” To keep her illusions and dominance intact, Norma has depended on Joe's performance as her passive gigolo. She is no stranger to being subjected to unbearable neglect, as audiences and countless members of the film industry shunned her after the advent of talkies. When Joe attempts to detach himself from his subservience, Norma unsurprisingly imposes her fury onto him for abandoning her, which renders his death more inevitable than tragic.
Another shocking twist is the unveiling of Max as Norma’s ex-husband, as well as the once-celebrated filmmaker who made her a star. Up until this point, we never questioned Max’s devotion to Norm—he tends to her every need and forges fan-mail to bolster her impression of eternal stardom—but we have wondered about the motivations underlying this utmost loyalty. But once Max reveals that he voluntarily returned to Norma as her servant, his disturbing characterization transcends the ubiquitous one-note butler archetype. We know his pampering of Norma’s illusions is an act based on a genuine love and affection for her, a need to protect her fragile ego. However, Max’s method of preserving Norma’s lost fame functions as a double-edged sword. By keeping her blissfully unaware of the truth, he keeps her from committing suicide, but his lies promote her further evolution into insanity. Max is a contradictory character: his motivations are pure, but they end up destroying Norma.
During the garage scene between Max and Joe, the low-key, high contrast lighting of Max's face emphasizes his experienced inner torment of contributing to Norma’s madness. Only half of his face is illuminated, suggesting a performative duality to his character: he feeds into Norma’s illusions, while firmly aware of her obsolescence and the destructive impacts of his commitment to her. While conflicted, Max stays loyal to Norma until the grand finale. Joe attempts to shock her into reality, but Max refuses to indulge in this truth and reassures her that she is “the greatest star of them all.” When Norma makes her final descent into delusion and believes she’s filming a scene for the DeMille-directed adaptation of Salome, Max solemnly performs as DeMille behind the camera. Dutifully keeping her dreams alive one more time, he looks upon Norma with pity—a self-reflective acknowledgment of the damage he was partly responsible for causing.
Throughout Sunset Boulevard, the boundaries between fantasy and reality often blur. With the help of Max, Norma has convinced herself that she’s still a beloved star on the edge of making a triumphant career resurgence. Her loose grasp on reality culminates in the film’s final scene, where she becomes fully engrossed in her delusions and regresses into the persona from the glory days of her past. When walking past the newsreel cameras—believing she’s playing the role of Salome—she finally fulfills her preserved fantasy of revived stardom. Bleak irony saturates this "comeback": Norma is convinced the whirring, radiant cameras are capturing her return to film instead of the abhorrent crime she committed. The dramatic irony evokes the full extent of her immersion into her illusory fantasy world, and highlights the calamitous impacts of pure narcissism.
After Norma addresses “the wonderful people out there in the dark”—the moviegoers who in fact deserted her and other silent-era actors—and announces her readiness for Max, who she mistakes for DeMille, to capture her closeup, her image dissolves into a soft-focus blur. The softening of her face showcases her complete disconnect with reality. Norma has scrambled timelines, transcendently falling backward in time to her sublime heyday during the silent era. This conclusion is disturbing, albeit understandable; Norma has indulged in her own bygone celebrity image for decades. Due to the persistence of Norma’s self-deception and enablers like Max, Joe, and DeMille, it was only a matter of time before the real world became synchronous with her fantasy. All that is left of Norma is her own notion of greatness. With this tragic ending, Wilder unveils the macabre, heightened result of ephemeral celebrity idolization and absurd egoism—themes that remain all too relevant today. With the ubiquity of social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter, celebrity obsession and narcissism has only become more pervasive since the release of Sunset Boulevard. If we continue this trend, there will be thousands of Norma Desmond clones, a terrifying and unsettling—but highly likely—prospect.
