From the Film School Vaults: The Aesthetics and Social History of Film Noir in Sunset Boulevard and In a Lonely Place
Abstract
The film noir aesthetics of In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950) and Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950) consist of cigarette smoke curling in the air and the neon signs of the city that the main characters drive past. Both films also contain dangerous—and sometimes deadly—inanimate objects. In In a Lonely Place, it’s the doors that Dix (Humphrey Bogart) slams and bursts through. In Sunset Boulevard, it’s the swimming pool that Joe Gillis (William Holden) winds up dead in. Although both films are film noir, each film tells its own unique story that is engaging enough to hold the audience’s attention.
Art imitates life. Sunset Boulevard’s Joe Gillis is based on director Billy Wilder’s experiences as a struggling screenwriter in Hollywood in the 1930s. The more controlling director Nicholas Ray was over his real-life wife, Gloria Grahame, the more the character of Dix became more controlling of Laurel (Grahame’s onscreen character) in In a Lonely Place. The Production Code Administration limited what each film could do in regard to sex and violence. Such actions were implied by the main characters (e.g. jumping on a bed or explaining a murder and having it occur before the movie begins).
There are many similarities and differences between the aesthetics of In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950) and Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950), all of which were due to the type of Hollywood climate that each of the films were made in. “Film noir (black film) was a genre that flourished during the 1940s and carried over to the 1950s. Noir visual conventions, several borrowed from German Expressionist films of the 1930s, are classic: cigarette smoke curling in the air, neon signs, and reflected pools of water” (Gianos 1998, 130).
Such aesthetics are evident in both Sunset Boulevard and In a Lonely Place. In Sunset Boulevard, the smoke from Norma and Joe’s cigarettes constantly spirals in the air. So does the smoke from Dix’s cigarette in In a Lonely Place. Both films show us the neon signs of the city that the central characters drive past. Reflected pools of water are present in Sunset Boulevard and come from the swimming pool that Joe’s dead body is floating in.
In both In a Lonely Place and Sunset Boulevard, inanimate objects can hazardous and, in some cases, even deadly for the films’ central characters. “In In a Lonely Place, it’s the window that an enraged Dix (Humphrey Bogart) peers through, the doors he bangs at and crashes through, and the stairs down which he flees after practically strangling Laurel (Gloria Grahame)” (Polan 1993, 22). Similarly, in Sunset Boulevard, it’s the staircase that a gun-toting Norma (Gloria Swanson) chases Joe (William Holden) down; the swimming pool that Joe collapses into, dead, after she has shot him; and the many doors that Max (Erich von Stroheim) has had to remove the locks from on account of Norma’s frequent suicide attempts.
Film theorist, Dana Polan states that some of the aesthetics evident in the opening shot of In a Lonely Place are as follows:
In the dark of the night, a man drives in the city, but this is shown to us by an emphasis on his eyes staring back from their reflection in the rear-view mirror. One could consider this to be derivative of film noir: night, the modern city, the apparent uncertainty of forward motion joined with the undoing of confident progress by a paranoid looking back, the nearly three-dimensional fragmenting of the image into several planes (the body of a man in one place, his eyes in another) (12).
In this sense, half of the main character, Dix, is confident. His arms and hands are moving the car forward. But the other half of him, notably his eyes, is insecure. This uncertainty is so extreme that it slows down his progress of forward motion on account of his eyes constantly glancing back. Such an action incessantly questions the effectiveness of his onward movement. The use of superimpositions, in place of a complex flashback structure, is present in In a Lonely Place. “The superimpositions over Laurel’s face as she sleeps repeat the various warnings she has had about Dix’s violent temper. Such a device increases the ambiguity of the future—will Laurel leave or not?—and suggest that her fate is not yet determined” (Polan 1993, 14).
Such superimpositions could be seen as nightmares that Laurel is having and they intensify her doubts and fears regarding Dix’s temper. Because his anger is so unpredictable, she has no idea when it will strike. Dix is the determinant in Laurel’s fate. If he gets a handle on his temper, she’ll live. But if he is not thinking rationally and therefore, allows his temper to get out of control, he could kill her. This is what is so frightening about his personality.
Unlike In a Lonely Place, Sunset Boulevard consists of a complex flashback structure. “The voice of the film belongs to Joe Gillis, a dead man, floating facedown, in a swimming pool. The film then becomes a flashback with voice-over narration” (Dick 1980, 152). Not only does Joe want to inform the audience of the past events that led up to his present state, but he wants to tell us what really happened before the press distorts the facts of his story.
According to Polan, one of the most common aesthetics of film noir is shadows:
Dix’s face is thrown into a threatening half shadow as he tells Brub (Frank Lovejoy) and Sylvia (Jeff Donnell) how Mildred (Martha Stewart) may have been murdered. Just as Dix’s bursts of violence disrupt the calm of his world and force individuals to attempt to interpret him, so do the film’s own bursts of noir moments that stand as intrusions whose status appears to be ambiguous (15).
In other words, because Dix’s behavior is so inconsistent, it causes the people around him to question his credibility. Essentially, Dix’s chaotic world mirrors his chaotic behavior. Moments where Dix’s face is partially lit communicate that his motives are unclear. The lit half of his face represents stability, while the shadowed part of his face represents irrationality. Thus, Dix has a dual personality that is questionable. No one knows which personality is going to emerge and when.
It is important to discuss what unfolded on the set of In a Lonely Place for the reason that such occurrences had a major impact on the type of film that director Nicholas Ray made. “Dix grows even more possessive, wanting to know of Laurel’s every action and demands to be in charge of her life at every moment. Such fictional domination had its real-life counterpart. Ray’s contract with RKO granted him full professional control over everything his wife did from 9 a.m. in the morning to 6 p.m. at night, six days a week” (Polan 1993, 23).
Essentially, Dix is an autobiographical character. His personality is based on Ray’s temperament. As Ray grew more controlling of his wife’s every move, he made the character of Dix more dominating of his lover’s actions. Laurel is an autobiographical character as well. The domination that she is subjected to by Dix reflects the domination that Grahame was experiencing in real life by her husband.
Autobiographical aspects of Billy Wilder’s personality are illustrated in Sunset Boulevard’s central character, Joe Gillis. “There are certain similarities between Wilder and his character. Gillis needs his car, but his creditors are after it. Wilder also had trouble keeping up payments on his DeSoto in the 1930s. Gillis is a struggling screenwriter who is trying to sell his script. Wilder also knew the frustration of trying to get his scripts sold” (Dick 1980, 153).
Clearly then, Joe Gillis is an autobiographical character. Certain aspects of him are based on Wilder’s personality. Wilder created a character he could identify with. He could empathize with Gillis having a difficult time in not only keeping up with his car payments, but in selling one of his scripts as well. He had been in Gillis’ exact position before.
The success of Sunset Boulevard and In a Lonely Place can be attributed to the following circumstances. “What Hollywood had learned to do supremely well were comedies, musicals, Westerns, crime pictures (film noir), and melodramas. Hollywood’s triumph had been a triumph of formula, and the innovation of mainstream American movies had come from the inventive new ways in which they were reshaped” (Sklar 1994, 280).
As this suggests, films that focused on particular genres and their conventions did extremely well. These were the films that drew in the most audiences and thus, were the most profitable. Hollywood constantly found new ways of telling old and similar stories by adding clever twists that were engaging enough to hold the audience’s attention. Although Sunset Boulevard and In a Lonely Place both belong to the genre of film noir, each film told a different and unique story.
Hollywood imposed restrictions on certain kinds of content in its films:
The fact that the film’s Dix would not end up being a psychotic serial killer had to do with the Production Code Administration. The film’s producer, Robert Lord, assured the Code director, Joseph Breen, that there would be no portrayal of the evildoings of a serial killer. The protagonist would only kill one person within the framework of the story and this one murder would take place before the story began (Polan 1993, 55).
As this suggests, in the 1950s, murder could be implied in the film by having its characters talk about it, but it could not be shown onscreen. Such a restriction eliminated the violence of blood and guts that would be depicted from making a killing. Showing less would also create intrigue in the film’s audiences. Similarly, in Sunset Boulevard, there were sexual connotations of Norma jumping on the bed, but that was all. The act of sex couldn’t be shown onscreen during this time either.
The technique of voice-over narration is considered to be one of the major reasons as to why Hollywood was going through such difficult times:
Filmmakers were having a problem with story continuity. There was an increasing trend in the 1940s and 1950s to use voice-over narratives to tell a story that shots and dialogue were incapable of doing. Such a technique forces the narrator’s interpretation of visual experience on the viewer instead of allowing him or her to feel directly. Sunset Boulevard is a remarkable example of Hollywood’s crisis of confidence in its inability to let the moving image speak for itself (Sklar 281-82).
In this sense, filmmakers used voice-over narration in an attempt to make up for the lack of effective storytelling in the film’s shots and dialogue. Such a device imposes the narrator’s perceptions of the film’s images on the viewer. This destroys the opportunity for viewers to form their own opinions about what they see onscreen. Sunset Boulevard exemplifies the insecurities that the film industry was experiencing at the time. Filmmakers didn’t want to take any chances. Using solely shots and dialogue in their films to tell a story was too much of a gamble. Voice-over narration seemed like a good back-up plan at the time in case such devices failed.
In conclusion, the aesthetics of Sunset Boulevard and In a Lonely Place reflected the uncertainty of a filmmaking industry in its abilities to effectively to tell a story. Knowing that various aspects in films of the 1950s were, by far, inferior to those of previous decades, directors like Wilder and Ray desperately clung on to great actors of Hollywood’s past, like Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, and Humphrey Bogart. The chilling irony of it all was that such directors projected their insecurities on to the characters that their actors played so that not only was life imitating art, but art was imitating life as well.
Works Cited
Dick, Bernard. 1980. Billy Wilder. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Gianos, Phillip. 1998. Politics and Politicians in American Film. Westport: Praeger.
Polan. Dana. 1993. In a Lonely Place. London: British Film Institute.
Sklar, Robert. 1994. Movie-Made America. New York: Random House.
Smoodin, Eric. 1987. “Sunset Boulevard.” In The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, edited by Christopher Lyon and Susan Doll, 461, London, United Kingdom: Pan Macmillan.
This was my final paper for Peter Lev’s (one of my favorite professors) History of Film class at Towson University in 2000. I would like to think that I’ve become a better writer since then and am more well-rested than I was in my college days. Moreover, the MLA style guide has changed throughout the years too. So I’ve made some necessary revisions.
Find more posts by Stephanie Sklar HERE
