The actual house seen in the film (exterior and back gardens the interiors were shot in a studio) was built in 1924, owned by the former wife of tycoon Jean Paul Getty and not located on Sunset Boulevard. The film title also refers to the existing boulevard in Los Angeles where Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) is supposed to live. For the role of Norma Desmond, Gloria Swanson divorced her fourth or fifth husband and moved to Hollywood. However, Swanson was neither a recluse nor a lunatic like her film character but a hard-working woman who ran her own company and had her own radio show in New York City. Her Hollywood career had ended in the mid 1930s. Gloria Swanson herself had been one of the major stars of silent cinema. The film title Sunset Boulevard is a metaphor for the state of mind and of the career of the film diva Norma Desmond (played by Gloria Swanson). DeMille, who plays himself in Wilder’s film, was directing Samson and Delilah on Stage 18. During the shooting of Sunset Boulevard, Cecil B. Stage 18, by the way, is still in use in 2002.

The studio had total confidence in Billy Wilder. Remarkably, the film was partly shot at Paramount Studios. Sunset Boulevard is a masterpiece of film noir and a bitter tragic-comedy which shows the dark side of Hollywood’s fabric of dreams.

Since November 2002, one of the best films ever (not only on Hollywood filmmaking) is available on DVD: Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950):, .uk,,. Criticism of Hollywood and its studio system remains a subject for filmmakers such as Robert Altman ( The Player, 2001), David Lynch ( Mulholland Drive, 2001) or Woody Allen ( Hollywood Ending, 2002).

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