Sunset Boulevard

Billy Wilder’s landmark film noir centers on Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a faded, fabulously wealthy star of the silent era living in delusional seclusion in a decaying Hollywood mansion, still convinced of her own greatness and plotting a triumphant return to the screen. When down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) stumbles into her orbit, he is drawn into her gilded, suffocating world. A scathing portrait of Hollywood, fame, and the brutal way the industry discards aging women, the film won three Academy Awards and gave cinema one of its most unforgettable older female characters. With Erich von Stroheim and Nancy Olson.