Previews and revision
Wilder and Brackett, nervous about a major screening in Hollywood, held a preview in Evanston, Illinois, in late 1949. The original edit opened with a scene inside a morgue, with the assembled corpses discussing how they came to be there. The story began with the corpse of Joe Gillis recounting his murder to the others. The audience reacted with laughter and seemed unsure whether to view the rest of the film as drama or comedy. After a similar reaction during its second screening in Poughkeepsie, New York, and a third in Great Neck, the morgue opening was replaced by a shorter poolside opening,[30] using footage filmed on January 5, 1950.[31]
In Hollywood, Paramount arranged a private screening for the various studio heads and specially invited guests. After viewing the film, Barbara Stanwyck knelt to kiss the hem of Gloria Swanson's skirt. Swanson later remembered looking for Mary Pickford, only to be told, "She can't show herself, Gloria. She's too overcome. We all are." Louis B. Mayer berated Wilder before the crowd of celebrities, saying, "You have disgraced the industry that made and fed you! You should be tarred and feathered and run out of Hollywood!" Upon hearing of Mayer's slight, Wilder strode up to the mogul and retorted with a vulgarity that one biographer said was allegedly because Mayer, who was Jewish, suggested that Wilder, who was also Jewish, would be better off being sent back to Germany, an extraordinary sentiment so soon after the war and the Holocaust, in which Wilder's family perished.[32][33] In 2020 Olson recounted that friends who had attended the screening told her that Wilder had simply told Mayer "Go fuck yourself."[23]
The few other criticisms were not so venomous. According to one often-told but later discredited anecdote,[34] actress Mae Murray, a contemporary of Swanson, was offended by the film and commented, "None of us floozies was that nuts."[35]
Premiere and box-office receipts
Sunset Boulevard had its official world premiere at Radio City Music Hall on August 10, 1950.[36] After a seven-week run, Variety magazine reported the film had grossed "around $1,020,000", ($12,917,178 in 2023 dollars [37]) making it one of that theater's most successful pictures. Variety also noted that, while it was "breaking records in major cities, it is doing below average in ... the sticks." To promote the film, Gloria Swanson traveled by train throughout the United States, visiting 33 cities in a few months. The publicity helped attract people to the cinemas, but in many areas away from major cities it was considered less than a hit.[7]
The film earned an estimated $2,350,000 at the U.S. box office in 1950 ($29,760,166 in 2023 dollars [37]).[38]
Critical response
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 98% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 112 reviews, with an average rating of 9.5/10. The critical consensus states: "Arguably the greatest movie about Hollywood, Billy Wilder's masterpiece Sunset Boulevard is a tremendously entertaining combination of noir, black comedy, and character study."[39]
Contemporary
Sunset Boulevard attracted a range of positive reviews from critics. Time described it as a story of "Hollywood at its worst told by Hollywood at its best",[40] while Boxoffice Review wrote "the picture will keep spectators spellbound."[41] James Agee, writing for Sight & Sound, praised the film and said Wilder and Brackett were "beautifully equipped to do the cold, exact, adroit, sardonic job they have done." Good Housekeeping described Swanson as a "great lady [who] spans another decade with her magic,"[7] while Look praised her "brilliant and haunting performance."[40]
Some critics accurately foresaw the film's lasting appeal. The Hollywood Reporter wrote that future generations would "set themselves the task of analyzing the durability and greatness" of the film, while Commonweal said that in the future "the Library of Congress will be glad to have in its archives a print of Sunset Boulevard."[7]
In a rare negative review of the film, The New Yorker deemed it "a pretentious slice of Roquefort" containing only "the germ of a good idea".[7] Despite praising it as a "great motion picture" with "memorable" acting, Thomas M. Pryor wrote in The New York Times that the use of the dead Joe Gillis as narrator was a plot device "completely unworthy of Brackett and Wilder".[42]
Retrospective
In 1999, Roger Ebert described Swanson as giving "one of the all time greatest [acting] performances", but singled out von Stroheim's performance as "hold[ing] the film together".[43] He included it in his Great Movies list, calling it "the best drama ever made about the movies because it sees through the illusions."[43] Pauline Kael described the film as "almost too clever, but at its best in its cleverness",[44] and also wrote that it was common to "hear Billy Wilder called the world's greatest director."[45] When Wilder died in 2002, obituaries singled out Sunset Boulevard for comment, describing it as one of his most significant works, along with Double Indemnity and Some Like It Hot.[46]
Film writer Richard Corliss describes Sunset Boulevard as "the definitive Hollywood horror movie", noting that almost everything in the script is "ghoulish". He remarks that the story is narrated by a dead man whom Norma Desmond first mistakes for an undertaker, while most of the film takes place "in an old, dark house that only opens its doors to the living dead". He compares von Stroheim's character Max with the concealed Erik, the central character in The Phantom of the Opera, and Norma Desmond with Dracula, noting that, as she seduces Joe Gillis, the camera tactfully withdraws with "the traditional directorial attitude taken towards Dracula's jugular seductions". He writes that the narrative contains an excess of "cheap sarcasm", but ultimately considers it a valuable part of Joe's characterization as a hack writer.[47] David Thomson notes the irony of having Gillis tell the story: "The man who can't dream up a viable story line becomes the best pitch he'll ever hear. He is the story and it is Billy Wilder's sour valedictory to let the ghost of Gillis tell the story, facedown in the gelid swimming pool exactly the Hollywood reward that Joe gets only in his dreams. And so this breathtaking portrait of Hollywood failure is wrapped up in rueful, ruined success."[48]
