Drama
American
1950 · Directed by Billy Wilder · 110 min
A struggling screenwriter, short of money and options, ends up inside a decaying mansion on Sunset Boulevard, in the orbit of a once-great silent film star. Billy Wilder's film is a dark, witty portrait of Hollywood looking at its own past.
Why it matters in cinema history
A defining film of the Hollywood-on-Hollywood tradition and a late peak of film noir, it showed the studio system examining its own silent-era past at the moment that past was being forgotten.
Watch with intention
Watch it as Hollywood examining its own myth-making, with a wry narrator and a mansion that feels like a set built for a performance.
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