The re-release of 'Sunset Boulevard' is a hoot. I suppose I only saw the film when I was 12 or 13, I was just a kid. I hadn't either the comprehension of cinema as an art form, nor the slick understanding of how to manipulate words to crunch cinema into the bits and particles as I do now.
 Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim conducting a funeral for a chimp, late at night. Why did they have the chimp in the first place? - (sick reference to the animal collection in 'Citizen Kane'?) Why does Billy Wilder think it's so funny that William Holden would criticize Swanson for her use of red satin in that chimp's coffin? Still, it's a beautifully haunting image. One that, framed correctly (seen through the eyes of Holden, his first night in his own casket : the room above the garage), is so damned efficient, it's hard to miss the utter genius and sensibility of the wits and skillful cinematic imagination of Mr. Wilder. He's sick, but it's entertaining. He's the maker of what they called "entertainments" when they referred to Graham Greene's novels of less critical virtue than sales virtue.

         And maybe that's why I love 'Sunset Boulevard' so much. It's as much an entertainment as any of the other Wilder films - the comedies that straddle the line between beloved and just "another Wilder comedy" - like the ones I never saw ('The Apartment', 'The Major and the Minor' and 'The Seven Year Itch'). Then there's the serious ones, the films that are nearly deified (held as godlike) in American culture (and that silly AFI thing) - like 'Double Indemnity' (the most deserved), 'The Lost Weekend', 'Stalag 17' or 'A Foreign Affair'. But it's 'Sunset Boulevard' (the highest ranking on the AFI list) that stands out as a bridge between the two types of films. It's the magical, screwball nature of his near-perfect language that melds quietly (but noticably) with those heavy themes of 'letting go' and 'getting in over your head' to form this dripping, soiled thing that makes you laugh, wonder and just go (even after you've seen it once) : "No, she'll keep you captive! What are you doing? Oh - - - nice one, Holden. Nice one!"

         So, doped up with Tylenol Cold and Sinus, just off of the double-espresso and ripe with the possibility, nay, the promise of seeing 'Time Code' and meeting Mike Figgis later that evening - - I straddled in, comfortable with myself, excited and easily missing the previews (while bothering the gentleman in front of me, who just happened to have the same things on his mind - - the illustrious Edward Prigge).

         And goddamn it if I didn't have the time of my life, swimming mind, happy trails - - -just laughing and sucking in those black and white images, sputtering at me from the big white plexi-screen.

"It's a film from the 1950's",
I'd say, when no one had heard of it.
"It's a movie about movies. It's hilarious. It's tragic.
It's the pictures that got small".

         'Sunset Boulevard' - - - - the middle ground of a great director's repertoir, the comedy of tragic proportions, the tragedy of comic proportions.

         That film with the guy floating face-down in the swimming pool and lady that says  "Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up".

         Yeah, this is one of those contrived articles where I can scarcely think of anything cool to say, so I list the scenes and you say : Why is he listing the scenes?

         Anyway, I stole a transpass from this guy in a bathroom, rode the subway for free to see 'Sunset Boulevard'. There. You weren't expecting me to say THAT, were you?