“Remains the best drama ever made about the movies because it sees through the illusions, even if Norma doesn’t.”
By delightful coincidence, our first screening at our new home, The Star on Chester Road, was up for the vote at our very first screening in August 2012 (the link - films referenced in The Player).
Gloria Swanson plays one-time star of the silent screen, Norma Desmond, in Billy Wilder's classic. Determined to make a come-back at any cost and convinced that she is still the big star she once was ("it's the pictures that got small") this is comedy at its absolute blackest and one of the finest examples of biting-the-hand-that-feeds-you ever committed to celluloid. A satirically dark portrait of Tinseltown.
