Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup...

Set in '50s Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard tells the story of a screenplay writer by the name of Joe Gillis and his inability to sell his work to the studios. He is full of debts and is begins to think about relocating to his hometown to go back to his old job as a newspaper writer. While pondering his next move, he spots his creditors behind him. He blows his tire and dashes to a nearby, seemingly abandoned, mansion on Sunset Boulevard. The owner of the estate calls him inside, mistaking him for a coffin designer. Gillis soon discovers the woman is the former silent-movie star Norma Desmond. Norma's mind is slowly deteriorating so that believes she will return to the big screen, and is isolated from the cruel world by her butler, Max, who was her first director and husband before her cinematic fallout. Norma proposes Joe to move to the mansion and help her in writing a screenplay for her return to the cinema. Norma creates a fantasy that Joe is her lover and after Joe falls in love for the young aspirant writer Betty Schaefer, Norma becomes jealous and completely insane and her madness leads to a tragic end. 

Sunset Boulevard is ranked #16 on the AFI top 100, understandably so. Though the film is slow moving at first, it quickly picks up and grabs the viewer's attention. This film represents everything Film Noir stands for; crimes of passion. *SPOILER* Once Norma realizes Joe will never truly be hers she decided he would be better off dead. I rate this film a 4.3 dead chimpanzees.