Sam Staggs: Close-Up On Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, And The Dark Hollywood Dream

When you speak of cult movies, you speak in extremes," Danny Peary writes in the foreword to his canon-setting 1981 book Cult Movies. He might easily have added that speaking of cult movies involves speaking of extremes. However slippery the "cult" category may be, any film that attracts a cult showcases extraordinary things, from dead apes to mysterious butlers to flamboyant fashions to lethal, faded stars. Billy Wilder's film Sunset Boulevard has all of the above, as well as an atmosphere of dread and decay that would assure its cult status without any of those attributes. Wilder directed several films that rival Boulevard in quality, and even in mordant humor, though not in outré creepiness. Having showcased cultishly adored high camp with All About "All About Eve": The Complete Behind-The-Scenes Story Of The Bitchiest Film Ever Made, author Sam Staggs here moves on to Eve's 1950 Oscar rival, offering a thorough archiving of Sunset. Staggs believes no detail is too small to recount, and he does a thorough job, whether postulating possible inspirations for the character of Norma Desmond, recalling stories of Wilder's none-too-subtle on-set suggestions regarding Desmond's relationship with her deceased chimp, or detailing star Gloria Swanson's demanding diet. (Whether later chapters on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation demand the same attention to detail may be a matter of individual taste.) In spite of the occasional lapse into Kenneth Anger-like prose—"With that phone call… her wilting career got an injection of rocket fuel"—Staggs offers a witty, literate examination of the film, part monograph, part True Hollywood Story. Particularly good at reclaiming some of the glory, if maybe too much, for Wilder's long-time writing partner Charles Brackett, Close-Up works better as a history than an appreciation. The film shares many of Eve's camp elements, and Staggs captures these as well as he does his off-screen histories. But Sunset also has a unique quality that remains just out of his grasp: a profound understanding about how eras don't so much fade as rot. Still, the best litmus test for cult status is whether a film commands an extension of the experience beyond mere viewing, and those seeking such an extension should delight in Close-Up.