Tweet
this movie is amazing. i got it from the public library and watched it over and over and over. it's black and white but you don't lose anything.
Joe Gillis (William Holden)
You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson)
I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
norma desmond is a silent screen star. she lives in this giant house with max (former husband, discoverer and now butler).
joe gillis is the struggling younger man writer. he pops into norma's digs trying to escape from the repo man. the cars in the movie are great [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70409-waytogo.gif[/img]
anyway, he basically ends up her prisoner.
------------------
Memorable Quotes from
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Betty Schaefer: Don't you sometimes hate yourself?
Joe Gillis: Constantly.
Joe Gillis: [narrating] The poor dope - he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.
Joe Gillis: You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond: I *am* big. It's the *pictures* that got small.
Norma Desmond: They took the idols and smashed them, the Fairbankses, the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who've we got now? Some nobodies!
Joe Gillis: I didn't know you were planning a comeback.
Norma Desmond: I hate that word. It's a return, a return to the millions of people who have never forgiven me for deserting the screen.
Max Von Mayerling: She was the greatest of them all. You wouldn't know, you're too young. In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later he strangled himself with it!
Norma Desmond: We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Joe Gillis: [sarcastically] They'll love it in Pomona.
Norma Desmond: They'll love it everyplace.
Joe Gillis: Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along.
Norma Desmond: Don't be silly.
[hands Joe a present]
Norma Desmond: Here, I was going to give it to you at midnight.
Joe Gillis: Norma, I can't take it, you've bought me enough.
Norma Desmond: Shut up, I'm rich! I'm richer than all this new Hollywood trash! I've got a million dollars.
Joe Gillis: Keep it.
Norma Desmond: Own three blocks downtown, I've got oil in Bakersfield, pumping, *pumping*, pumping! What's it for but to buy us anything we want!
Joe Gillis: Cut out that "us" business!
Norma Desmond: What's the matter with you?
Joe Gillis: What right do you have to take me for granted?
Norma Desmond: What right? Do you want me to tell you?
Joe Gillis: Has it ever occurred to you that I may have a life of my own? That there may be some girl I'm crazy about?
Norma Desmond: Who? Some car hop, or dress extra?
Joe Gillis: What I'm trying to say is that I'm all wrong for you. You want a Valentino, somebody with polo ponies, a big shot!
Norma Desmond: What you're trying to say is that you don't want me to love you. Say it. Say it!
[slaps him hard across the face]
[Norma threatens suicide again]
Joe Gillis: Oh, wake up, Norma, you'd be killing yourself
to an empty house. The audience left twenty years ago.
Joe Gillis: [narrating] Well, this is where you came in, back at that pool again, the one I always wanted. It's dawn now and they must have photographed me a thousand times. Then they got a couple of pruning hooks from the garden and fished me out... ever so gently. Funny, how gentle people get with you once you're dead.
Norma Desmond: [to newsreel camera] And I promise you I'll never desert you again because after 'Salome' we'll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!... All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.
Joe Gillis: There's nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you're trying to be twenty-five.
Joe Gillis: May I say that you smell really special?
Betty Schaefer: It must be my new shampoo.
Joe Gillis: That's no shampoo. It's more like freshly-laundered linen handkerchiefs, like a brand new automobile.
Norma Desmond: My astrologist has read my horoscope, he's read DeMille's horoscope.
Joe Gillis: Has he read the script?
Norma Desmond: There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world! But that wasn't good enough for them, oh no! They had to have the ears of the whole world too. So they opened their big mouths and out came talk. Talk! TALK!
[the salesman thinks Joe is a gigolo]
Salesman: [whispering in Joe's ear] As long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna?
[after hearing that Norma Desmond has come to see DeMille]
First assistant director: I can tell her you're all tied up in the projection room. I can give her the brush.
Cecil B. DeMille: Thirty million fans have given her the
brush. Isn't that enough?
Norma Desmond: No-one ever leaves a star. That's what makes one a star.
---------------------
share some of your old fave movies [img]/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] heaven knows, they're not making anything original anymore. they're gonna do a movie version of dallas for pete's sake [img]/forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]
Comment