Sunset Boulevard's relationship to noir is probably more contained in the narration and its tone -- the film irresistibly moves toward tragedy.
No film noir is as inventive as Hollow Triumph.
The Killers constantly circles around its elliptical plot.
--Wampa 12, The Film Noir Bible, 2003
Sunset Boulevard was directed by the cynical Billy Wilder in 1950 and, among many other plot elements, it is one of the few films, along with Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950), to deal with the lower levels of Hollywood employees struggling to make a living. Its unusual narrative device --a dead man narrating while lying in a swimming pool -- is an effective element in the general darkness of this film, about a young screenwriter (William Holden) who becomes the kept man of a silent movie star (Gloria Swanson). Swanson's butler is played by Erich Von Stroheim. Stroheim, in real life, was an incredibly brilliant director who directed Swanson in his last film, the never-released Queen Kelly. In Sunset Boulevard, Queen Kelly is screened by Swanson's character, Norma Desmond, as an example of what her films were like. One problem I have with this film and its brilliant dialogue (at one point Holden tells an amusing story about the fate of one of his screenplays) is Wilder's attitude toward silent films; it is unclear to me whether Wilder and others considered (as many people do) silent films to be primitive and unappealing. Over to play cards at Norma's decrepit house are Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B, Warner and Buster Keaton; Holden calls them "the wax works." Does Wilder consider these actors, who made many wonderful films, as just has-beens? After all, Wilder himself briefly started with silent films in Germany. Or was Wilder just pandering to the audience, as many people then, and even more so now, consider silent films of little artistic merit? Many of us who have seen silent films, including those of Buster Keaton, Cecil B. DeMille, Von Stroheim and D.W. Griffith, in good prints and projected at the proper speed, are impressed by their marvelous artistry. When Jack Webb says to William Holden, in Sunset Boulevard, "where did you get that suit, from Adolphe Menjou?" I chuckle briefly and then remember the wonderful performance of Menjou in Chaplin's A Woman of Paris (1923), which in 1950 had long been out of circulation.
Hollow Triumph, 1948, was ostensibly directed by Steve Sekely, but since Sekely's career was undistinguished and shows little of the artistry of Hollow Triumph, I am willing to believe, as has been reported, that Paul Henreid directed most of it; it was a Henreid production and he kept it at low-budget Eagle-Lion to keep control over this bizarre story. Henreid plays a criminal who discovers that a local psychiatrist looks just like him; on the run from the mob he kills that doctor and takes his place, The doctor has a scar on one side of his face so Henreid, a medical school drop-out, gives himself a matching scar. Unfortunately, he is working from a flipped photo and puts the scar on the wrong side, but fortunately nobody even notices, except for a moving scene at the end when the cleaning lady mentions it, as Henreid unsuccessfully flees killers about to get the doctor for his unpaid gambling debts. What makes this movie work as well as it does is Henreid' s deadpan direction, a moving performance by the voluptuous Joan Bennett as first the doctor's and then the imposter's lover, and John Alton's cinematography. Alton was a master of light and shadow and did several films noirs for director Anthony Mann (later he became adept at wide-screen color in films he did for Allan Dwan). Alton shoots from weird angles in semi-darkness that give this strange story an oneiric credibility.
The Killers, directed by Robert Siodmak, was made in 1946 at the beginning of the film noir cycle. It uses Hemingway's story intelligently at the start, emphasizing the importance of literature and pulp literature on film noir. The story then focuses on the insurance policy that the murdered Swede had left to a maid at a hotel in Atlantic City. The Killers, like many films of the time, was influenced by Citizen Kane (1940), as we only see what the insurance company investigator sees in the flashbacks he hears and never actually see what goes on between Burt Lancaster (in his first film) and Ava Gardner (who betrays him), except to the limited extent it was seen by others. There is a powerful score by Miklos Rosza and cinematography by Woody Bredell, including a robbery shot in one take with a crane, and many shots that pave the way for later films noirs, including backlighting and dark foregrounds
note: Turner Classic Movies is continuing its series of films noirs on Fridays in July; it is also offering a free online course on the subject (I am taking the course and recommend it highly). The most useful reference book on film noir I have is Wampa 12's The Film Noir Bible, available from Amazon.
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