I saw this for the first time, and it was a wonderful film, and Gloria Swanson gave a great performance. I’m wondering, though, why Joe ultimately rejected Betty.
Norma called Betty and spilled the beans regarding their twisted relationship. Joe told Betty to come over, and announced that he liked his life there (which was a lie), and basically told Betty that it was over between them. Then he told Norma to take a hike and left her.
Was Joe embarrassed about his situation with Norma? Was he feeling skeevy about breaking her and her fiance up? Why didn’t he just leave with Betty, who he was in love with?
Part of it was that he believed that Betty deserved better, he wasn’t entirely fond of / proud of himself at this point.
But what I always thought was the bigger factor, was that he was simply finished with Hollywood. He had come to hate Hollywood and the movie business and he was going back home (Ohio???). Betty’s place was in Hollywood, her dreams were in Hollywood. To be with Betty would have meant he had to stay in Hollywood (unhappily) or ask her to leave with him (unhappily).
Also, I might contest your assertion that he was in love with her. He definitely had romantic/sexual feelings for her, but over all I got the impression that he thought of her as “a good kid”.
Part of it is that much of the plot of Sunset Boulevard is taken from Erich Von Stroheim’s unfinished Queen Kelly.
It may not make be entirely clear why a young guy would bend his will entirely to that of a delusional, washed up, geriatric actress, but a batshit-crazy regent is another thing altogether.
Just re-viewed this. (I’m enjoying slug day parked in front of TCM). I agree Gillis thought of himself as a whore – specifically, a gigolo –too tainted for innocent Betty. What’s more, she was engaged to Artie, “as grand a guy as ever there was” (played by an alarmingly likable young Jack Webb).
I sense tons of ambivalence in Gillis towards Norma. Look carefully at her in some of the shots midway through: you get the idea that under all the crazy self-delusion and Joan Crawford eye liner there’s still a beautiful woman in there. (Yes, Gloria Swanson had to be made up older than she really was.) Gillis sticks around not just for his $500 a week, but both out of sympathy (mixed with disgust) for the crazy, tortured star and, yes, some feelings of sexuality. But I doubt he’d have overcome his disgust to take advantage of the latter.
Just to give you an idea of how far we’ve come (or gone?) since 1950, some numnut on IMDB opined that Gillis would have been more believable if played by an actor the audience could imagine as gay. We don’t think in terms of gigolos anymore. But faghags and their fags, those we understand.
It’s interesting what a sharp line in the cultural sand the talkies drew. Remember, in 1949, when Sunset Boulevard was filmed, silent movies were only 20 years in the past: 1985, to our way of thinking. But Norma Desmond was a creature from the prehistoric age (Gloria Swanson was only 52 when it was filmed). They talk about Valentino like they were talking of Napoleon or Henry VIII.
True, but nothing has died in the same way that silent films had. It was a great divide for films, and those that couldn’t cross it, were completely forgotten in 1952.
And though he’s familiar now, Buster Keaton at the was considered as washed up and obscure as Anna Q. Nilsson and H. B. Warner. Keaton was lucky enough to be rediscovered and is now acknowledged as a major star, but he was forgotten in 1950, too.
And Swanson’s film career was also forgotten: she hadn’t made a movie in nine years, and was idle from films seven years before that. Swanson was exactly the type of star that Norma Desmond portrayed, and it took a lot of courage to take the part.
What he is doing with Norma, Betty is doing with him.
To him, Norma is a old timer that he wil gladly suck some of the marrow from her bones all he has to do is help her rework one of her scripts.
Bettty is doing the same thing to him.
She has found a script of his and wants to rework it so she can move up the studio ladder. As soon as her fiancee is out of town he is out of mind. Betty has no real talent but she is willing to work him to get what she wants.
Of course, it’s naive to say that all he’s doing with either of them is entirely script related. It’s implicit rather than explicit, but there’s little room for doubt about what the whole deal is:
Joe’s got a pen for hire, and he’s paid handsomely to dip it in Norma’s inkwell and dirty up her sheets with it.
In Sunset Boulevard, collaboration on a film is totally interchangable with a sexual relationship. Joe’s paid to work on Norma’s script even though the work itself is repulsive to him. (“It’s interesting to see how bad bad writing can be, and this promised to go the limit.”) Mutual interest leads him to work on a script with Betty. Erich von Stroheim’s character used to work with Norma, back when he was married to her. Now he’s given up directing altogether and just sticks around to drive her car – they’re both past all that, as far as he’s concerned, but he still wants to protect her and make her feel loved, through the ruse of the fan letters. When he tries to leave for the last time, Joe is brutally honest with her: Nobody really wants to work with her: Paramount doesn’t want her to perform, the studio only wants her car. (Strictly business, just like Joe.) The fan letters are fake. She’s totally undesired.
To put it another way, Gloria Swanson was six years younger than Susan Sarandon is today, and seven years younger than Goldie Hawn. She was the same age as Pat Benatar, Mary Steenburgen, Isabelle Huppert, Chaka Khan, Ruby Wax, Kathleen Sullivan, Alicia Bridges, Kathie Lee Gifford, Mary Matalin, Amy Irving, Kate Capshaw, and Kim Basinger are now.
That just made my head explode. I’d rewrite Susan Sarandon or Mary Steenburgen, hell, pretty much all of them except Kathie Lee Gifford, for much less than $500 a week. As long as they cleaned out the pool.