Sunset Howard Character Traits

n discussing Citizen Kane, Charles Higham mentioned "artistic cheats," flaws in credibility whereby characters in scenes gave information about which they couldn't possibly have full detailed knowledge. Sunset Boulevard's entire point of view is based on a gimmick. Whether one considers it an "artistic cheat" or a valid and audacious device depends up his ability and desire to suspend his disbelief. The problem of point of view in Sunset Boulevard is especially germane.

Sunset Boulevard begins outlandishly. A homicide squad with motorcycle escort rides along Sunset Boulevard to an old mansion where a body lies floating in a pool. We find out that the story is being related by that dead man. It is a shock that takes some acclimation. Can one really accept a dead man (whose corpse we see) telling us the story? One quality that jars against the seeming fantasy is the realistic emphasis in the film's composition. The shots seem like news photos from the front page of a tabloid newspaper. There are several arresting shots, especially those apparently from under the pool up through the water,1 whereby we see the body floating arms spread, beyond it the police and photographers and the sporadic flashes of flashbulbs. The audacity of the shot may
When Joe, trying to elude two men who are trying to repossess his car, hides in a garage on her dilapidated estate, Norma mistakes him for an undertaker who is to bury her dead pet chimpanzee. Norma finds that he is a writer, and she insists he help her with her script for Salome, a film in which she plans to make her triumphant "return." Her writing is pathetic, but because he thinks he will be safe there he agrees. The haughty, grasping Norma is cared for by her butler Max, her former director and ex-husband, who forges fan letters for the forgotten star and who is fiercely