2,278 words
The vision of fifties America as a sunny, prosperous world full of stable values and families has no truck with Billy Wilder. Having spent some time in the Weimar Berlin of his youth as a paid dancer for women, he got used to being used and rented out, if anyone can ever get used to it. He packed his cynicism with him when he came to America and easily fit into Hollywood. To Wilder, everyone has a price, and their most noble values and visions are up for grabs.
His 1950 film Sunset Boulevard shows how a vision splendid of Hollywood’s has-been actress Norma Desmond is in fact macabre and warped, a Venus who takes on Joe Gillis, a reluctant escort of sorts, and bends him to her life. If the goddess Venus was born in the sea, Joe Gillis ends up face down in Norma’s swimming...