B illy Wilder’s film starring Gloria Swanson as a reclusive former silent movie star, and William Holden as a young wannabe writer who becomes her kept man, more than ever looks not merely like tinseltown satire or LA noir, but a ghost story. It’s the ultimate film about how the screenwriter is always the loser and the chump. You can tell that Norma Desmond (Swanson) is washed up because she has actually written a screenplay – which is, however, more than Joe (Holden) ever achieves in the course of this film.

Sunset Boulevard’s own script, co-written by Wilder with Charles Brackett and DM Marshman Jr, is of course superb. And after 75 years, we can appreciate the movie’s sober judgment about the dangers of cinephilia and Hollywood ancestor worship. The street name itself, with its dying

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