BRATTLEBORO-Latchis Arts’ Classics at the Latchis series continues with Sunset Boulevard Sunday, June 14, at 7 p.m., including an introduction, afterthoughts, and a book signing with David M. Lubin, author of Ready for My Close-Up: The Making of Sunset Boulevard and the Dark Side of the Hollywood Dream.
Consistently cited by cinephiles and scholars alike as “one of the greatest American films of all time,” Sunset Boulevard (1950) stars Gloria Swanson as Nora Desmond, an aging silent film queen who refuses to accept that her time in the limelight has ended. She hires a young, down-on-his-luck screenwriter (William Holden) to help with her movie comeback. As things unfold, the situation devolves into violence, madness, and death.
Directed by Billy Wilder, the film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won three, including Best Story and Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Score. A hit in its day, although it lost to All About Eve for Best Picture, Sunset Boulevard is a classic noir drama that “remains compelling to this day,” wrote organizers, “75 years after its release.” It is No. 16 on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 American films of all time.
Praised as “a deft account of a Hollywood classic” and a “razor-sharp analysis (that) deepens the history and power of the cinematic masterpiece,” David M. Lubin’s Ready for My Close-Up is a cultural history and making-of book that explores the creation of this very meta and uniquely fascinating film.
Lubin is a professor, curator, scholar, and writer; an author of eight books on American art, film, and popular culture; and a frequent contributor to many major publications, especially as a reviewer for Rolling Stone.
Tickets are $15 in advance, available at bit.ly/869-lubin. Tickets will be $16 at the door. For more information, visit latchis.com.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.