I only watched the first 20 minutes of "Sunset Boulevard" before I was getting ready to go to Kim's, then finished it later. But in that first 20 minutes I was taken with the clever narration, from the great lines (the one about copy editors won me over, of course) to how effectively the storyline was set up to how it could keep the movie at a brisk pace.
There was a major break in that style during the extended time when Norma, Joe and Max visit the studio, and we're allowed to perceive exactly what the studio bigwigs thought and said about Norma without Joe's omnipresent perspective. It was an abrupt change to me, and I thought there could have been a couple of reasons for it -- that the audience, who may have found Norma pathetic, would see how well-respected she'd been back in the day as opposed to being exposed for a nobody. Or that she wasn't so pathetic -- that Joe's perception of her influenced what the viewer saw. Or maybe Joe's voice worked most effectively in that claustrophobic coccoon of a house.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Oh! I posted this before reading the comments on the voiceover in the Joe Mama post.
Weren't the outings with Joe — the drive, the shopping spree, the studio visit — the first time Nora had been out of the mansion for a long time? She looked so liberated riding in the open back of the car. It seemed almost possible that she could be in the world again on new terms.
I agree. The change was abrupt, but necessary, I think, to broaden our perspective on Nora. I think De Mille's kindness toward her added something, too — a different kind of pity from Max's and Joe's.
That studio visit changed a lot of my expectations about Norma. One, I assumed she was actually living in genteel poverty and playing Joe for a fool, but apparently she was still very wealthy. Two, I can't remember now whether Max had confessed to writing the fan mail, but I was dreading her studio trip -- I thought they were going to treat her poorly and ignite her meltdown. (I think that studio assistant was the only one a little unkind, and De Mille put him in his place.)
I also thought the truth about her script would come out then, and some of the suspense for me was NOT having Joe's voiceover foreshadowing disaster.
Yes, she was quite rich. I never doubted that for some reason, but the genteel poverty hypothesis would have made sense. When she said offhand that she had a "million dollars" (a ton of cash then), I thought she probably had several times that but a million was just a nice cool round number.
Is her wealth supposed to be an indication of just how fabulously famous and successful she actually was? Presumably, most people who hadn't worked for decades wouldn't be as well off ...
When Greta Garbo went off "to be alone," she was fantastically rich and she remained so into old age. She was a famous tightwad, though, which would be a completely foreign notion to Nora.
It wasn't just movie payments. There was a line about oil wells in Bakersfield that sounded like just one among many investments. So, unlike many young stars, somebody had seen to it that her money had been invested productively. If any of this plays false at all, it is why some con man had not already cleaned her out. Does Max hold the purse strings?
I agree, cl, that the studio trip was a key part of the film. You are right to point out that it is rather outside of the structure that Joe narrates with the voice-over. It is our one chance to form ideas of Norma independently of Joe.
Garbo invested well, too.
I thought you were in Mexico. I have a rather large bone to pick with you.
Post a Comment