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the clip joint: Sunset Boulevard (1950)”I am big… It’s the pictures’ that got small”

SUNSET BOULEVARD 1950

Joe Gillis: You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond: I ‘am’ big. It’s the ‘pictures’ that got small.

Director Billy Wilder’s gritty and gothic noir starring Gloria Swanson as the iconic faded starlet, Norma Desmond and William Holden as Joe Gillis. Co-starring Erich Von Stroheim as the faithful Max Von Mayerling.

Set in 1950s Hollywood the story surrounds the outrageously batty recluse Norma Desmond, goddess of the silent-screen living in a world of self-delusion within the walls of her decaying Sunset Boulevard mansion. Her only companion is her ex-husband turned butler Max who idolizes her, once having been her director when she was a star.

Norma’s mania creates the grand dreams of a comeback to pictures. One day Joe Gillis stumbles onto her property needing a mechanic Norma first mistakes Joe as an employee of the funeral home who’ve been sent to take care of her old chimpanzee who has just passed away. Joe a hack-writer becomes Norma’s lover, but soon gets entangled in a web of madness and murder.

See you round the Boulevard-MonsterGirl

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