27. Sunset Blvd.

I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.

–Norma Desmond, Sunset Blvd.

The flip side to Singin’ in the Rain. Instead of some plucky silent film stars finding a way to whether the storm of talking picture disruption, here we see what happens to a performer who didn’t make the transition.

Honestly, what a great double feature those two would make.

Whereas Singin’ is a sweaty, try hard musical, Blvd. is an ominous noir that starts with the narrator informing us that he’s the corpse face down in the pool that we’re looking at. Thinking about them side-by-side presents industry shifts as a zero sum game where the only way for some to ascend is climbing over the still-warm corpses of others.

But it’s also worth considering the way that Norma Desmond resists change, both in her art and her conception of herself. She still wants to be a silent ingenue, still wants the same car, the same friends, the same lifestyle.

She clings to an ideal of the past, and refuses to accept that there’s anything worthwhile about the present or future unless it feels like a carbon copy.