PRESENTS
16MM MOVIE NITE
ANTEBELLUM
is obsessed with B&W noir films from the 1950s.
please join us for our premiere screening of
SUNSET BOULEVARD
ORIGINAL 16MM FILM projected on a screen!
DECEMBER 11TH
7:30PM
$10 COVER
NO~HOST BAR
KINKY ART
LIVELY CHAT
BEAUTIFUL PATIO FOR PRE & POST SCREENING RELAXATION
ANTEBELLUM
1643 N LAS PALMAS AVE
HOLLYWOOD, CA 90028
323 856~0667
SUNSET BLVD is a 1950 American black comedy/drama film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett. It was named after the boulevard that runs through Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, California.
The film stars William Holden as Joe Gillis, an unsuccessful screenwriter, and Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a faded silent movie star who draws him into her fantasy world where she dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen, with Erich von Stroheim as Max Von Mayerling, her devoted servant. Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough and Jack Webb play supporting roles. Director Cecil B. DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper play themselves, and the film includes cameo appearances by leading silent film actors Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson.
Praised by many critics when first released, Sunset Boulevard was nominated for eleven Academy Awards (including nominations in all four acting categories) and won three. It is widely accepted as a classic, often cited as one of the greatest films of American cinema. Deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the U.S. Library of Congress in 1989,Sunset Boulevard was included in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The character of Norma Desmond mirrors aspects of the twilight years of several real-life faded silent film stars, such as the reclusive existence of Mary Pickford and the mental disorders of Mae Murray and Clara Bow. It is usually regarded as a fictional composite inspired by several different people, not just a thinly disguised portrait of one in particular, but some commentators have made claims for specific models: one asserts that Norma Talmadge is "the obvious if unacknowledged source of Norma Desmond, the grotesque, predatory silent movie queen" of the film. The most common analysis of the character's name is that it is a combination of the names of silent film actress Mabel Normand and director William Desmond Taylor, a close friend of Normand's who was murdered in 1922 in a never-solved case sensationalized by the press.