Word: boulevards
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While there is enough good acting in "Sunset Boulevard" to put it on the "must see" list, the film suffers from several unfortunate features. The most glaring of these is an overstuffed, unbalanced script. Billy Wilder and Charlie Brackett have just laid it on too thick, a fact which becomes more and more apparent as the film draws to its climax. The outcome is never in doubt since the picture is nearly all one big flashback, narrated by the hero who is floating in a swimming pool with three bullets in his back...
...reported that Wilder and Brackett started shooting "Sunset Boulevard" with only a skeleton script and improvised as they went along. The method resulted in superior photography with a sprinkling of superb touches. This free development, however, was responsible for overburdening the movie with material which detracts from the fine acting...
...Maire Martial Pascaud decided to make a gesture of obeisance to his masters in the Kremlin. Tottering old Communist Leader Marcel Cachin paid a visit to Saint-Junien. To mark the occasion, Mayor Pascaud marched a party of 100 local Communists down Saint-Junien's main street, the Boulevard Leon Gambetta, to hang new signs on each corner rechristening the street Boulevard Joseph Staline. When the street was thoroughly renamed, the mayor and his friends marched out to the football stadium to nail up a large wooden sign reading "Stade Maurice Thorez," in honor of France...
Next day in Paris the Interior Ministry instructed Saint-Junien's postmaster to deliver no mail addressed to the Boulevard Staline. Mayor Pascaud countered by adding the old Boulevard Gambetta signs to the new Boulevard Staline signs, thus giving the street two names. Then, just before the start of the first game of the rugby season, six members of the local team went on strike, refusing to play ball in the stadium. "We didn't come here to play politics," explained Center Forward Jean Colombier. "Le sport est mort a Saint-Junien," sobbed a heartbroken referee...
...Sunset Boulevard. How a faded movie star (Gloria Swanson) attempts a comeback with the help of her kept man (William Holden); a sardonic commentary on Hollywood manners & morals (TIME...