Films › Screenwriting
Sunset Boulevard
Directed by Billy Wilder, 1950
The script is narrated by a dead man, a device that should not work and does because it establishes stakes rather than removing them. Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote Hollywood as a haunted house without ever losing the comedy. Exposition is delivered through wit and status play instead of explanation. The final descent is set up in the first three minutes. Norma Desmond's mansion is shot with deep shadow and baroque clutter by cinematographer John F. Seitz, turning the house itself into a character trapped in an earlier era. Wilder cast Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim, real silent-era figures, so the fiction carries the weight of actual industry history. A working screenwriter should study how the film indicts the business that made it while still functioning as entertainment inside that same business. Franz Waxman's score leans into faded grandeur rather than horror, refusing to tip the film into camp even as the story edges toward the grotesque.
What to watch for
Watch the opening narration and note how much of the ending it already gives away.
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