Word: stroheim
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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Sunset Boulevard. Gloria Swanson's comeback as a half-mad oldtime movie star; with William Holden and Erich von Stroheim (TIME...
Sunset Boulevard. Gloria Swanson's comeback as a half-mad oldtime movie star; with William Holden and Erich von Stroheim (TIME...
...acting of the other three principals, William Holden, Erie von Strohieim, and Nancy Olsen is also commendable as is that of the minor characters. Von Stroheim plays the part of Miss Swanson's devoted servant who was also the director who originally "discovered her" and became her first husband. Holden, the script writer whose inability to get anywhere leads to his becoming Miss Swanson's "kept man," suffers through this indignity with a convincing series of pained expressions and outbursts, while his voice narrates the story from a "there I was, what-could-I-do" point of view. Miss Olsen...
...like Hollywood mansion, circa 1921, intact to the last monstrous detail. It is inhabited by two living relics: Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a great star of the silent movies, still wealthy, with an arrogant grandeur once rooted in fame and now propped by delusion; Max von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim), once a great director (which Von Stroheim was), now her devoted servant and the dedicated guardian of her self-centered daydream...
Actor Holden plays the picture's most difficult role to perfection. Von Stroheim is equally right as the onetime brilliant director, conveying as much by swallowing hard or tilting his head as he does with any of his lines. Actress Olson is an engagingly unaffected ingenue...