Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

Figure 54. Sunset Boulevard
Wilder’s oeuvre is particularly keen on dealing with topics of innocence or
deception, as well as dissecting Hollywood’s world of illusion. It is also for this reason
perhaps that Sunset Boulevard is often compared with the complexity of Citizen Kane and
its exploration of American disillusionment. The film is indeed one of the great original
noirs, with Norma Desmond being one of the supreme (if irregular) femmes fatales (and,
for that matter, Gillis may be an homme fatal too). Despite some uncommon negative
reviews (like the ones included in The New Yorker which depicted the film as “a
pretentious slice of Roquefort”, containing only “the germ of a good idea” (in Staggs
2002:111)), the film is clearly a challenge to the arrogant trumperies of silent Hollywood
and to thirties social realism, following Wilder’s liberal-humanist tradition. In short, the
entire film is a combination of a noir “behind the scenes” Hollywood story, a sardonic
black comedy / drama and a corrosive character study. It remains the most impressive
attack on the futility and arrogance of the movie business.
Co-written, produced and directed by Billy Wilder, Ace in the Hole (1951) also had
the features of a studio auteur film. The film was inspired by two real-life events: the first
involved Floyd Collins, who in 1925 was trapped inside a cave, and the second, which
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