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Themes present within sunset boulevard
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The domain is the knowledge and info in the narrative fiction, which includes film, books, websites, newspaper articles, etc. The domain is also the best practice, the good stories, which should be financially viable, and the domain takes shape in response with historical, cultural, and artistic tendencies that gain traction at a particular point in time. It is as if writers strive to change the domain; develop their own ‘voice’ by attempting to make significant changes in film according to culture rather than mastering a craft. The individual, includes screenwriter(s), producer(s), director(s), literary agent(s), etc. While the field is the screen writers’ guild, audience, critics, academics, filmmakers, etc. The individual of “Sunset Boulevard” are the screenwriters: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D. …show more content…
Marshman, Jr. The domain of “Sunset Boulevard” is that it was one of the first films to talk about the raw and cruel realities of Hollywood. Norma Desmond is a nuance character that spoke about how cruel the movie industry is to actresses after they turn forty years-old. The repercussions were that actresses no longer had luck in finding a leading role in a film and were downgraded to play supporting, often, unimportant characters. Norma, the character, changed the way women were portrayed in Hollywood during the 50s. In fact, Gloria Swanton was fifty years-old when she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress, which was rare for an actress to get a nomination in a leading category at her age. The film also talks about the difficult that it is to get into the film industry, which was something no other film mention during the time of this film’s
Sunset boulevard was to show the legendary silent film star Norma Desmond's deluded, and declined career that came with the sound. Which leads into the
The film Sunset Boulevard, presented in 1950 is a black and white film. The film is about Norma Desmond an old actress, who has issues accepting that she is becoming old. The main actor in the film is Gloria Swanson, who plays Norma Desmond, an older woman who believes she is still young. Desmond is not content with the fact that Hollywood has replaced her with younger actresses. The next actor Nancy Olson, plays Betty Schaffer who falls in love with Gillis despite being engaged to his friend. The third actor is William Holden who plays as Joe Gillis, who has financial problems and decides to turn himself into a gigolo to earn money. The dilemma with Joe is he does not want Betty to know about his job because he knows he might lose Betty as
Sunset Boulevard directed by Billy Wilder in 1950 is based on how Norma Desmond, a huge Hollywood star, deals with her fall from fame. The film explores the fantasy world in which Norma is living in and the complex relationship between her and small time writer Joe Gillis, which leads to his death. Sunset Boulevard is seen as lifting the ‘face’ of the Hollywood Studio System to reveal the truth behind the organisation. During the time the film was released in the 1950s and 60s, audiences started to see the demise of Hollywood as cinema going began to decline and the fierce competition of television almost proved too much for the well established system. Throughout this essay I will discuss how Sunset Boulevard represents the Hollywood Studio System, as well as exploring post war literature giving reasons as to why the system began to crumble.
“There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world! But that wasn't good enough for them, oh no! They had to have the ears of the whole world too. So they opened their big mouths and out came talk. Talk! TALK!” (Sunset Boulevard). The film Sunset Boulevard directed by Billy Wilder focuses on a struggling screen writer who is hired to rewrite a silent film star’s script leading to a dysfunctional and fatal relationship. Sunset Boulevard is heavily influenced by the history of cinema starting from the 1930s to 1950 when the film was released.
The change from differing mediums, novel and film, reveal characteristics and possibilities of narratives. Through the advancement of technology, modern writers
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.
For this essay I will briefly describe what film noir is and I will also be critically analysing the film noir “Sunset Boulevard” by Billy Wilder. I will be exploring character themes, thematic concerns and visual style. Film noir originally comes from the French language, it means black film/dark film, this could be referring to the fact that film noir are traditionally black and white as they are from the 1940s to around the late 1950s or because film noir has a dark story line and generally have dark shadowy scenes and shady characters. The story in a film noir is almost always an American crime involving a very stereotypical, average man who lives a boring, routine life and seems to be becoming bored of his 9 to 5 job who stumbles upon
“A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory” argues that the application of film and literary genre theory do not fully translate when analyzing television, because of “the specific industry and audience practices unique to television, or for the mixture of fictional and nonfictional programming that constitutes the lineup on nearly every TV channel. 2” The goal of media genre studies, Mittell asserts, is to understand how media is arranged within the contexts of production and reception, and how media work to create our vision of the world.
The complex web of half-truths and false impressions that give the diegesis of Sunset Boulevard its convolution manifests in the visual imagery and physical attributes of a house at once lavish and decaying. The home of Norma Desmond embodies the actress’s own mental disassociation and emotional fragility, displaying an outward dilapidation held separate from the intimate glamour within. The two faces of Desmond’s estate exist in a visual disparity that mirrors the former star’s own dissociation and the private delusion of celebrity and high regard in which she wraps herself. Desmond’s belief in her own significan...
Noted in Yvonne Tasker’s Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema, Goldie Hawn says this about women's role in the film business “There are only thee ages for women in Hollywood: Babe, District Attorney and Driving Miss Daisy” (1998, p. 3). While Haw...
Film Noir, a term coined by the French to describe a style of film characterized by dark themes, storylines, and visuals, has been influencing cinematic industries since the 1940’s. With roots in German expressionistic films and Italian postwar documentaries, film noir has made its way into American film as well, particularly identified in mob and crime pictures. However, such settings are not exclusive to American film noir. One noteworthy example is Billy Wilder’s film Sunset Boulevard, which follows the foreboding tale of Joe Gillis, the desperate-for-success protagonist, who finds himself in the fatal grips of the disillusioned femme fatale Norma Desmond. Not only does the storyline’s heavy subject matter and typical character structure suggest the film noir style, but also Wilder’s techniques of photography and empty, worn-down settings make for a perfect backdrop for this dark approach at filmmaking.
Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. 3rd Ed. Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 2007.
The film’s story does not simply shines forth, but is also the foundation of the plot. The film’s plot makes the traditional guidelines applicable...
“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine, some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything’s okay. I don’t make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything’s not okay.” - David Fincher. David Fincher is the director that I am choosing to homage for a number of reasons. I personally find his movies to be some of the deepest, most well made, and beautiful films in recent memory. However it is Fincher’s take on story telling and filmmaking in general that causes me to admire his films so much. This quote exemplifies that, and is something that I whole-heartedly agree with. I am and have always been extremely opinionated and open about my views on the world and I believe that artists have a responsibility to do what they can with their art to help improve the culture that they are helping to create. In this paper I will try to outline exactly how Fincher creates the masterpieces that he does and what I can take from that and apply to my films.