Sunset Boulevard 75th Anniversary

Arguably the greatest movie ever made about Hollywood, Billy Wilder's masterpiece Sunset Boulevard is a tremendously entertaining combination of noir, black comedy, and character study and we bring this special 75th anniversary screening complete with Gloria Swanson movie-star cocktail! The evening includes an introduction by film archivist and author, Jenny Hammerton (https://www.silverscreensuppers.com) and is part of our pre-Oscars night celebration of cinema.

Swanson, a veteran of the silent era, brilliantly suggests a performer who has learned the extravagant mannerisms of early cinema at an impressionable age and can never unlearn them; the kabuki mask of silent movies has eaten into Norma’s face. Swanson executes the film’s many showstopper lines with absolute aplomb (“I am big; it’s the pictures that got small”; “We didn’t need dialogue, we had faces!”) and also does a very good impression of Charlie Chaplin. There are also as-themselves cameos for Cecil B DeMille, Buster Keaton and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper - and this is the heart of the film's terrible warning: of course movie professionals should be aware of and inspired by Hollywood’s glorious past – but they must not, like Joe with Norma, be held captive by it!

Part of our Oscars Season celebration of cinema!

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