Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard by Steven Cohan

Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard was a critical and commercial success on its release in 1950 and remains a classic of film noir and one of the best-known Hollywood films about Hollywood. Both its opening, with William Holden as the screenwriter Joe Gillis floating facedown in ageing star Norma Desmond's (Gloria Swanson) pool, and lines such as 'I am big, it's the pictures that got small' are some of the most memorable in Classical Hollywood cinema. Steven Cohan's study of the film draws on original archival research to shed new light on the film's production history, and the contribution to the film's success and meanings of director Wilder, stars Holden and Swanson but also supporting actors Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson (who plays Betty Schaefer), Cecil B. DeMille, and Hedda Hopper, as well as costumier Edith Head, and composer Franz Waxman. Cohan considers the film both as a 'backstudio' picture (a movie about Hollywood) and as a film noir, and in the context of McCarthyism, blacklisting and the Hollywood Ten. Cohan explores how the film was marketed, its reception and afterlife, tracing how the film is at once a product of its own particular historical moment as the movie industry was transitioning out of the studio era, yet one that still speaks powerfully to contemporary audiences, and speculates on the reasons for its enduring appeal.

Steven Cohan has produced a well-researched guide to the film’s production and its various visual quotationsReplete with a wealth of stills, it serves the purpose of an expert companion, leading the casual viewer through the richness of Wilder’s bittersweet paean to the film industry. -- Lillian Crawford * Times Literary Supplement *
Steven Cohan has given us a useful, blow-by-blow account of the making of the greatest Hollywood film about Hollywood, plus intelligent critical analysis of the many arts and crafts involved in the production of a classic. -- James Naremore, University of Indiana, USA
Cohan offers a highly animated, wonderfully rich, and thoroughly engaging reappraisal of Billy Wilder’s landmark film, combining a meticulous reconstruction of its production history, a probing formal and contextual analysis of the picture, and an equally convincing account of its enduring legacy. -- Noah Isenberg, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Steven Cohan is Dean's Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Syracuse University, USA and President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. His books include Telling Stories: A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative (1988, co-authored with Linda M. Shires), Masked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the Fifties (1997), Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and the MGM Musical (2005); a BFI TV Classic on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2008); The Sound of Musicals (BFI 2010) and Hollywood by Hollywood: The Backstudio Picture and the Mystique of Making Movies (2018).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781839024085
ISBN 10	1839024089
Title	Sunset Boulevard
Author	Steven Cohan
Series	Bfi Film Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published	2022-09-08
Number of pages	104
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable