Nancy Olson | Through the Shattered Lens

“All right, Mr. De Mille, I’m ready for my close-up!”

— Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Boulevard (1950)

First released in 1950 and nominated for Best Picture, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is one of the greatest and most influential films of all time. It’s also something of a difficult film to review because, in order for one to truly understand its greatness, it needs to be seen. A description simply will not do. You have to experience, first hand, the performances of Gloria Swanson, William Holden, and Eric Von Stroheim. You have to see, with your own eyes, the way that Billy Wilder perfectly balances drama, satire, and horror. I can tell you about how cinematographer John F. Seitz perfectly contrasts the empty glossiness of Hollywood with the dark shadows that fill the ruined mansion of Norma Desmond but, again, it’s something that you owe it to yourself to see. You need to hear the perfectly quotable dialogue with your own ears. You need to experience Sunset Boulevard for yourself.

And, while you’re watching it, think about how easily one bad decision could have screwed up the entire film. Sunset Boulevard is famous for being narrated by a dead man, a screenwriter named Joe (William Holden). When we first see Joe, he’s floating in a pool. Originally, however, the film was to open with the dead Joe sitting up in the morgue and telling us his story. Reportedly, preview audiences laughed at the scene and it was cut out of the film. And Wilder made the right decision to remove that scene. Sunset Boulevard may be famous for being a strange film but, when you actually watch it, you realize just how controlled and disciplined Wilder’s direction actually is. Sunset Boulevard may be weird but it’s never less than plausible.

Joe Gillis is a former newspaper reporter-turned-screenwriter. He may have started out as an idealist but, as the film begins, he’s now just another Hollywood opportunist. While trying to hide from a man looking to repossess his car, Joe stumbles upon a dilapidated old mansion. The owner of the mansion is none other than Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a silent film star who has sent been forgotten but who still dreams of making a comeback. (When Joe tells her that she used to be big, Norma famously responds that she’s still big and it’s the pictures that have gotten small.) Norma has written a script and the opportunistic Joe convinces her to hire him as a script doctor.

Joe moves into the mansion and discovers a world that has never moved past the 1920s. Norma’s butler and former director, Max (played by Gloria Swanson’s former director Erich Von Stroheim) writes letters that he claims were sent by Norma’s fans. Norma spends her time watching her old movies. Occasionally, other forgotten silent screen stars (including Buster Keaton) drop by to play cards.

Encouraged by Joe’s vapid flattery and a mysterious phone call from a Paramount exec, Norma has Max drive her down to the studio. Greeted by the older employees and ignored by the younger, Norma visits with director Cecil B. DeMille (who plays himself). In a rather sweet scene, she and DeMille remember their shared past. DeMille obviously understands that she’s unstable but he treats her with real respect, in contrast to the manipulative Joe.

As for Joe, he’s fallen for a script reader named Betty (Nancy Olson) and wants to escape from being dependent on Norma. However, Norma has invested too much in her “comeback” to just allow Joe to leave…

Sunset Boulevard is a wonderful mix of film noir and Hollywood satire. And, though the film may be narrated by Joe and told from his point of view, it’s firmly on Norma’s side. As easy as it is to be dismissive of Norma’s delusions, she’s right in the end. It is the pictures that have gotten small and, as she proves towards the end of the film, she is still as capable of making a grand entrance as she ever was.

Joe may have been too stupid to realize it but Norma Desmond never stopped being a star.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3P0Zpe-2og

During my sophomore year of college, I was acquainted with a bearded sociology major who would tell anyone that he met that he was a communist. He also insisted that he was a revolutionary in the tradition of Che Guevara though, for the most part, he never seemed to do much more than hang out in the lobby of Bruce Hall and yell at the top of his lungs. When he wasn’t attacking George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, he was busy quoting Karl Marx and telling people about how communism would fix all of America’s problems. He would also get very upset if you called him a socialist. “No,” he would say, “I’m a communist and I’m proud of it!”

I have to admit that I usually went out of my way to avoid him and I would cringe whenever I would hear him shouting my name and inviting me to come sit down next to him so he could attempt to give me my daily indoctrination while he stared at my breasts. I could never summon up much enthusiasm for his ideology or his idolization of Hugo Chavez. It all sounded rather dreary and boring to me.

I recently found myself thinking about those days in Bruce Hall lobby after I watched the 1952 anti-communist melodrama, Big Jim McLain.

Produced by and starring John Wayne, Big Jim McLain was made at the height of the red scare. Produced in full cooperation with the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee, Big Jim McLain was meant to be an answer to all those weak-willed liberal types who claimed that the committee was going too far in its hunt for communist subversives.

Big Jim McLain starts out with a thunderstorm. While stock footage of lightning illuminates the screen, a medley of patriotic songs play on the soundtrack and a somber-voiced narrator quotes The Devil Vs. Daniel Webster.

Suddenly, the scene changes. We’re in Washington D.C. and we’re watching a meeting of the House Un-American Activities Committee. A shifty little man with a beard is being interrogated by the members of the committee. They ask him if he’s ever been a communist. He takes the fifth amendment. He’s asked if he would ever take up arms against the United States. Again, he pleads the fifth.

The camera pans back to reveal two remarkably tall men listening to the man’s testimony. They both share the same look of disgust, a look that leaves no doubt how they feel about this sleazy little subversive and his constitutional rights. They are Big Jim McLain (John Wayne) and his partner, Mal Baxter (James Arness) and they fight communists.

Suddenly, we hear the familiar sound of John Wayne’s determined drawl on the soundtrack and we realize that Big Jim McLain was using multiple voice-overs long before Terrence Malick even made his first film.

Wayne, speaking in character as Big Jim, explains that he and Mal have spent the last few months proving that the witness is a communist. And now, they have no choice but to watch as he hides behind the constitution. We’re told that this communist will be able to return to his position of teaching economics at an unnamed “north eastern college.”

That opening scene pretty much tells you everything that you need to know about the ideological outlook of Big Jim McLain. The government is looking out for our best interests, outsiders are dangerous, and good men know the importance of following orders.

HUAC sends Big Jim and Mal to “the territory of Hawaii,” where they hand out a lot of subpoenas, conduct a smattering of illegal wiretaps, and try to figure out who is actually in charge of the local communist party. Along the way, Big Jim meets and romances a naive secretary named Nancy (played by Nancy Olson). Nancy just happens to work for a communist doctor but we know that she’s okay because she’s the widow of a serviceman.

Big Jim McLain is a real curiosity piece, a true product of its time. Perhaps not surprisingly, the film really does feel like a time capsule. Full of simplistic characters and nonstop speech-making from John Wayne, it’s easy to laugh at and dismiss a film like this.

Then again, the main idea behind Big Jim McLain seems to be that the government is justified in doing anything to fight its enemies and that anyone who openly questions or disagrees our leaders most be either evil or mentally incompetent. Just how much has our culture changed since then? How different is anti-communist crusader Big Jim McLain from those who today continually assure us that we have nothing to fear from the NSA? One gets the feeling that if this film were made today, Big Jim would be hunting down Edward Snowden and directing drone strikes against America’s enemies.

Perhaps for obvious reasons, Big Jim McLain is a fairly obscure film. I first found out about it from reading J. Hoberman’s Army of Phantoms. Oddly enough, within a day or two of my reading about it, Big Jim McLain turned up on TCM. It’s not a very good film but, in the best exploitation tradition, it is a document of its time and therefore, worth seeing as a piece of history.

As for the communist of Bruce Hall, he ended up dropping out at the end of the semester and, apparently, he later turned up in New York doing the whole Occupy Wall Street thing. I’ve been told that he was recently spotted in Austin, still wearing his Che Guevara t-shirt.

One thing’s for sure.

Big Jim McLain would have taken him out with one solidly placed right hook.