Sunset Boulevard and The Killing

There are certain movies you always hear about. They are referenced, satirized, ripped off, etc. You know certain famous lines from them and they're always mentioned when people talk about "great" movies.

The more films I watch, the more I realize these films are almost always what they're cracked up to be. I'm not one to automatically buy into the idea of canon. I'm not going to like or praise a film just because it's supposedly "important." I'm far too much of a philistine for that. I like too much low-brow to embrace the high road that much.

But, as I say, I'm finding that these films aren't "great" because they're "important" but rather that they are important because they're great. Over the weekend, I watched Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. I knew about "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille" and had seen Carol Burnett goof on Gloria Swanson's portrayal of Norma Desmond. I knew it was narrated by the dead guy floating in the swimming pool at the outset of the movie but I'd never actually seen the thing.

Well, now I have and I can tell you what everyone else will tell you: it's great. Swanson as an unhinged silent film actress determined to get back on the big screen is really a sight to behold. She balances her manipulation, her neediness, and her jealousy on the head of a pin and does it all while convincingly moving and talking like a silent film actress who never quite figured out how to exist in the more modern world of the Talkies.

One thing that's really interesting about the film is how reflexive it is - a Hollywood production about Hollywood production. Cecil B. DeMille plays himself as does gossip reporter Hedda Hopper. Silent film greats like Buster Keaton and H. B. Warner play themselves in small cameos. In its reflexivity, it reminded me a lot of Robert Altman's The Player. It too was a poison pen letter to Hollywood signed by some of its biggest names.





Stanley Kubrick's The Killing is not often mentioned in the same breath as "the greats." When we hear Kubrick, we think A Clockwork Orange or 2001. Maybe Full Metal Jacket and hopefully not Eyes Wide Shut. Before any of that, The Killing was Kubrick's first feature length film with a professional cast and crew. It's stars Sterling Hayden as Johnny Clay, an ex-con out to make one last score. He's out to make the titular killing.

Other than it being Kubrick's first big film and seeing the beginning of directorial touches he developed over his career, it's notable for its disjointed narrative. The story shifts back and forth in time as it shows Clay and his accomplices arrange to steal a cool 2 million dollars from a race track. Though I haven't read it anywhere, I'm pretty sure this has got to be one of Tarantino's touchstone films. Both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction borrow from it, I think. It's an under appreciated classic. Give it a try.