The plot has been discussed at length in other comments.

To me SUNSET BOULEVARD has it all. The comedy is sly, the drama is of epic proportions because it's not JUST a story about Hollywood or an aging actress. It's really about the giving up of dreams.

Norma's dream of return, held to for 20 years, is ironic because Norma so closely parallels Gloria. That Norma cannot make a comeback in 1950 even with connections to DeMille is sad. The sadness is due to Norma's refusal to accept her aging or the politics of Hollywood that worship youth. It's ironic that Norma has no place in Hollywood (the parade has passed by) but DeMille is still working and in the scenes from Samson and Delilah we spot other old-timers like Henry Wilcoxon and Julia Faye--still working but not as STARS. The final irony here is that Gloria did make the comeback that Norma couldn't make.

Norma has a thing about STARS.... she says at one point... "the stars are ageless." Well this is true in a filmic sense. I can still watch Gloria Swanson in THE LOVE OF SUNYA or MANHANDLED and yup, she is ageless. She is still twenty something. That screen image is forever held up like a bad mirror to the reality of being 50. On another occasion Norma says "nobody leaves a STAR, that's what makes one a STAR." True again, but it's not just Gillis who is leaving Norma, her fans have already left. Hence if one is left, one cannot be a STAR.

Gillis also gives up his dream (temporarily) of being a writer, Max gives up his dream of directing, and even Betty gives up her dream of love with Gillis. Scary stuff.

The film is also about LOVE. Look what these people have done for love: love of another person or love of fame or whatever. Max loves Norma. Norma loves Gillis. Gillis loves Norma and Betty. Betty loves Gillis and Artie. Artie loves Betty. And all of them love Hollywood.

Everyone is crushed at the end of this film..... The scene of Max "directing" the scene as Norma descends the staircase is one of the all-time great scenes in a film. Norma's final speech, which sums up everything ("there is nothing else"), is devastating. Can she really be insane and make this lucid speech? If she's NOT insane then she has knowingly killed Gillis to prevent his leaving her (a STAR)....... Also the shots of Max blinking away tears as Norma descends (supposedly into madness) and also of Hedda Hopper crying are equally as devastating as Norma's speech about "being back" and "all those wonderful people out there in the dark" (which of course includes us every time we watch the film).

I cannot think of any other film (possibly CITIZEN KANE) that works on so many different levels. And Gloria Swanson gives the greatest performance in film history!


I just watched SB again -- three times -- this past week, for perhaps the 100th time.

The film is virtually flawless, IMHO. (Except for the distracting shadow of the camera on William Holden's back as he moves to Norma's bed to wish her, "Happy New Year, Norma . . . ," a technical flaw I've never understood: why wasn't the move re-lit and re-shot, since everything else in the film is perfect?) But what continues to haunt me is Swanson's performance. Her silent-screen "theatricality" is always remarked upon. Yet there are several moments of utterly contemporary "naturalism" that show she knew exactly what she was doing as an actress (and Wilder, as director).

Her sweetness in her "bathing beauty" scene, where she recounts her days in the line with Marie Prevost and Mabel Normand, then leaps onto the sofa beside William Holden -- is so beguiling that you completely understand her sex appeal and warmth (for a moment). When she asks for his match (for a moustache for her Chaplin impression) and tells Holden to close his eyes, "Close 'em!" -- the "Close 'em!" is clearly an ad lib that is so real and intimate that it is almost instantly lost in the macabre sequence that follows -- all flashing eyes and volcanic eruption that C.B. DeMille himself hasn't phoned her.

Soon afterward, believing she will be making "Salome" for DeMille, there is the astonishing montage of Norma's marathon beauty treatments in preparation for her "return." Extreme closeups of Swanson's face, without makeup, reveal a still-youthful, lovely woman with flawless skin. Even under the magnifying glass, even with the "worried" expression of Norma Desmond, Swanson is stunningly beautiful for a few moments. Ironically, for the rest of the picture, she had to be made up to look older. Yet here we get a glimpse of the real Swanson at 50-whatever, and she looks merely a few years older than Holden.

Finally, the entire sequence when Holden returns to find Swanson phoning Betty Shaefer to tell her the truth about Joe Gillis, Swanson is in cold-cream and "wings" to smooth her cheeks and eyes -- an actress completely exposed and without vanity.

She plays the entire sequence "naturalistically" and in complete contrast to her theatrical, "I AM big. It's the pictures that got small," style.

Here, in her bed, caught by Holden, realizing she's going to lose him, she begs him, "Look at me!" The desperation and helplessness, the momentary admission of reality as Norma acknowledges her fears and insecurities and pleads with Holden, are heartbreaking. Swanson's playing in the scene is astonishingly courageous for any actress, and deeply true to the character.

Finally, as Joe packs to leave her and Swanson pleads with him to stay -- grabbing his luggage and begging, "What do you want? Money?" -- again her playing is ratcheting up emotionally into madness, yet is still as contemporary as any Stanislavski method.

Everyone tends to remember Swanson's over-the-top stylized performance: yet her total control as an actress, and her naturalistic moments and emotional nakedness, however fleeting, are something to behold.

Swanson's is truly one of the most astonishing performances on film. Her range here is jaw-dropping.

Watch her transitions in the Chaplin scene alone, in one continuous take, from heart-rending comedy to blind rage. No cutaways. Amazing.

I happened to see Swanson live at the Huntington Hartford Theatre in Hollywood, on Vine, in the late sixties, in a stage show written especially for her, called "Reprise." This piece-of-fluff comedy about a famous movie star returning to her home town was hardly Tony-Award winning. But from her first entrance, you were in the presence of a great actress.

Barely five feet tall, she swept in and immediately established a bodily "line" that commanded attention from then on.

Her performance was delightful. Even more so when, after intermission, the second act began with her character giving a Q&A session at the local Rotary Club.

Swanson walked down steps and into the actual audience, greeting "old friends" (that night's audience members), reminiscing about her career -- even sitting in a man's lap and "teasing" him for not remembering when they "dated" -- as real film clips from her silents played on a giant screen onstage.

She was outrageous and girlish (she was approaching 70 at the time) and delightful, poking fun at herself and her "character's" career.

It was a brilliant bit of stagecraft and an impressive revelation of the "real" Gloria Swanson.

Audiences were captivated and irresistibly charmed by this still-stunning-looking yet down-to-earth "young fellow" -- over fifty years after she first took the world by storm.

Swanson was the antithesis of Norma Desmond. She was entrancing, magical, adorable, and everybody wanted to take her home.

Honestly, perhaps the only other two live theatrical performances I've ever seen (and I've seen hundreds) that could compare to Swanson's sheer talent and charisma were Maggie Smith in "Lettuce and Loveage" and Vanessa Redgrave in "Orpheus Descending." Believe it.

Not every actor understands the difference between film and stage performance, nor can every actor deliver that difference vocally and physically (this was WAY before the days of amplified body mikes). Swanson did.

I was in first grade when "Sunset Boulevard" was released. I was in my 20s when I saw Swanson onstage in "Reprise" in Hollywood.

You could still see the magic that had made her the global phenomenon she had been in silents. You could still see the technique that astounded audiences with "Sunset Boulevard" three decades later.

You could understand where Billy Wilder got his line: "She was the greatest star of them all." Every time I watch SB, I think: "She probably damned well was."


It is among the best and most tragic exit lines in film. And it also leads directly to the best conclusion (I feel) in movies in terms of proper cinematography: the clouding of the focus as Norma Desmond descends the staircase into her madness. Rarely does a film end so satisfactorily and perfectly.

SUNSET BLVD. was not the first film to look at the uncertainties of cinematic success and fame. A STAR IS BORN had done so in the in 1937. It showed how as a star is nurtured by the system to great fame, another prominent star descends into oblivion and death. So why (if the story theme was not new) was SUNSET BLVD. such a tremendous hit and classic from it's first appearance in 1950? It boiled down to this: the personal poison of the great fame of the silent screen star Norma was not mirrored precisely in the fall of say Norman Main (although their two first names bear an uncanny resemblance). Norman had always had a drinking problem which he never controlled. Norma was not into that - she was always into a healthy physical lifestyle (except for smoking), but the effect of her publicity and the fan mail pushed her egomania to great heights. It made her so egocentric that she can only think of the people around her in her immediate cycle as the greatest representatives of all those millions of unseen fans - the wonderful people out there in the dark. They are there for her adoration only. Norman Main, in comparison, did find a measure of happiness in Vicki Lester, whom he discovered and helped to find her true potential. He was more selfless, to the point (as it turned out) of self-destruction. Not really like Norma Desmond. To her people are there to serve Gods and Goddesses called stars.

One might also notice that Joe Gillis is not Vicki Lester. Joe and Vicki were both ambitious, but Joe really wasn't as interested in Norma (aside from giving him room, board, and a temporary job), as Vicki was in Norman. There was a mutual attraction there (Norman was not incredibly older than Vicki, as opposed to Norma's older age compared to Joe's). Joe also had his girlfriend/collaborator Betty Schaeffer. Vicki had no other lover on the outside - it was only Norman. That is why, when he commits suicide, Vicki goes into seclusion.

There is a triangular figure in SUNSET BLVD. for Norma, in her butler Max Von Mayerling. He had been her first director and husband, and he is also (in his over-devotion to her) feeding her ego by writing hundreds of fan letters to her to keep her emotionally happy. It is a sign of her insanity that she never notices that the letters are written by the same hand.

Wilder had used Eric Von Stroheim in FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO as Rommel, so he knew what it was like working with him. Supposedly when Von Stroheim was being directed by Billy Wilder he wanted to throw in various tics and sexual habits for Max (like his carefully washing Norma's underclothes) which Wilder managed to push aside. Von Stroheim's performance (one of his greatest) was not harmed by these cuts, although one wonders what his performance would have seemed like if they had been retained. But by reducing the neurotic behavior of Max (to just his pathetic need to be near Norma to support her) it keeps us concentrating on Norma's psychosis - where it should be.

Norma is the driving force to the end, pulling the wires that manipulate Max, Joe, Betty, even (out of a sense of pity) Cecil B. DeMille and his production staff (example: the light man "Hogeye"). Even with the "waxwork" friends who crop up for cards, Norma seems to be in control (they all congregate to see her - the richest among them). Even with people who are supposedly independent (the funeral home people who cater to her burying her pet monkey; the salesman on commission who urges Joe to buy the vicuña coat) she manages to keep this control. She is the central sun/"Star" in this galaxy - and cannot brook any deviation. The rejection of the ungrateful Joe can only be appeased physically by his death, and emotionally by her mind clouding that failure and it's aftermath from her memory. From the start of the film, with all her egocentricity at work, only a psychic slap in the face was missing to complete the tragedy. Then she was finally ready for that close-up.


Gloria Swanson and William Holden are supreme in this hard look into the dark side of Hollywoodland. Gloria Swanson as the insane Norma Desmond, a mad silent movie star languishing in her old mansion surrounded by reminders of her glory days, and William Holden as a bitingly cynical screenwriter playing gigolo to Swanson while carrying on an affair with nice reader Nancy Olson is great. The other scene-stealer is Erich von Stroheim, who plays Swanson's fromer husband and director, and now her butler.


On my first viewing, I wasn't particularly impressed with this movie but I liked it a lot more on the second and by the third - when it's magnificently transferred on DVD - I was fan, too. This is a good visual film, particularly when it shows the inside of this incredible mansion where a lot of the scenes take place.

To those who have never seen it, you are warned that it is not an easy film to view, it being a portrait of a pathetic has-been silent movie star who still thinks she can come back after a long hiatus and be a star again.

Gloria Swanson, who plays the role, overacts and certainly is not appealing, even bordering on grotesque at times, but she isn't supposed to look good. That's one of the points of the story. Anyway, a young William Holden, in his first starring role, is okay and also provides the narration.

The most interesting figure in the film to me was the ex-husband-now butler, played by Eric von Stroheim. He's amazing in this film. In supporting roles, I also enjoyed the wholesome Nancy Olsen and the young Jack Webb of "Dragnet" fame.

This combination of drama-soap opera-film noir is one of the professional critics all-time favorite films. Odd how they love movies and Hollywood stars so much, yet relish films that tear them down, as this does.


Hack screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) accidentally falls in with faded screen legend Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). She lives in a crumbling old mansion with her butler Max (Erich von Stroheim). She refuses to believe that she's no longer remembered and will never make another movie. She gets Gillis to stay with her and rewrite "Salome" which she thinks will be her comeback. Gillis has no other choice and things slowly get out of hand.

A VERY cynical view of Hollywood--especially for 1950. It shows what Hollywood does to people like Norma--it makes them stars, tells them that they're great and dump them coldly when they're no longer needed. It also takes swipes at directors, agents, screenwriters, even entire studios! It has a tight quick script, is appropriately filmed in gloomy black and white and is masterfully directed by Billy Wilder. Everybody thought this was a bad idea when it was being made. It was believed to be too cold and vicious for the public. Also Holden was warned it would ruin his career by playing a younger man kept by an older woman. But it turned out great and is now rightfully considered a classic.

The acting is almost all good. I never thought Nancy Olson was that good. Her character is too pure and sweet to be believable. Everybody else is right on target though. Holden is just great in his role. You see the pity, anger and helplessness on his face when he realizes Norma is falling in love with him--and he's trapped. von Stroheim was equally good as Max who encourages Norma's delusions. Swanson however is just magnificent! She has a very showy role and could have overplayed it--but she doesn't. She's mad for sure--but you only see it peeking through every once in a while. When she loses it completely at the end it's frightening. If she had played it like that all through the movie it never would have worked. How she lost the Oscar that year to Judy Holliday for "Born Yesterday" is beyond me. This is a must see and a true Hollywood classic but VERY cold and cynical. A 10 all the way.

"I am big--it's the pictures that got small". "All right Mr. deMille--I'm ready for my closeup".


Although my recent revisit to SUNSET BLVD. must have been close to the twentieth time I've seen it, I'm just as stunned and captivated by it as the first time I saw it. In SUNSET BLVD, everything just clicks, complete with all the now classic taglines; "It's not me that got small, it's the pictures that got smaller." "We didn't need dialog. We had faces then." "I'm ready for my close-up now, Mr. DeMille." I can't think of any other picture about Hollywood - or the world of film in general - that has achieved this unique self-reflective look at the film community. Ironically, none probably could have dreamed of the magnificent performance Gloria Swanson turned in. At barely 5 feet tall, she commands the screen like no-one else and really towers above them all as Norma Desmond, the aging, completely delusional film star from the silent era. Hard to imagine Gloria Swanson wasn't first choice to play the part of Norma Desmond with Pola Negri (too much Polish accent), Mae Murray, Mary Pickford (too sweet) and even Mae West all considered for the part of Norma Desmond.

The movie opens with the bullet-riddled body of a young man floating face down in the pool next to a mansion. Soon, the story is told with the brilliant device of a voice-over of a dead man, Joe Gilis (William Holden), recounting the events leading up to his death. A broke screenwriter, down on his luck and desperate to take on any job, he stumbles upon what looks like a deserted mansion, when he's hounded by some creditors. Soon, he's ordered into the house by a female voice that turns out to belong to legendary silent screen star Norma Desmond who retreated from the outside world, now living a lonely and isolated existence with her aging servant (Erich von Stroheim). After some lamenting the current state of the film industry, she offers Joe a job of doctoring her script for SALOME, which she plans as her comeback vehicle. Clearly this is never gonna happen, but Joe decides to take the job, and he money, but soon becomes a virtual prisoner of the actress's creepy past and increasingly delusional dreamworld.

Almost every sentence, remark, Swanson's antiques and postures have become part of our cinematic heritage now, we sometimes forget how delightfully crisp and clever the dialog was at the time, and still is. After the death of Norma Desmond's chimpanzee, Holden acidly remarks; "This must have been one important chimp. The grandson of King-Kong perhaps." "And then the rains came, over-sized, like everything else in California."

This film closed the door to the old Hollwyood-generation, opened one to the new and basically started a new era in self-conscious film-making and - in the process - reconciled the until then completely forgotten silent film stars. Of the three directors featured in the film, Cecil B. DeMille was still well respected and would make some of his greatest films in the years to come. Erich von Stroheim, now degraded to being Desmond's butler, was largely an outcast by then, just as the totally forgotten Buster Keaton who's allowed to play card games at Desmond's mansion once in a while. It's quite outstanding how the cynical Wilder achieves to really make us care about the characters, all of them, but especially Norma Desmond's, whose oblivious outlook on the world surrounding her and her own long since gone fame (Von Stroheim writes her fake fan letters) really makes you pity her fate.

With the right ingredients, the right script, the right casting, Wilder was able to achieve phenomenal results. Needless to say, he made a whole string of films now considered classics, but this is the pinnacle of his career and head and shoulders above any other self-reflective turn Hollywood embarked on in all the years to follow. If forced to make a shortlist of ten films I couldn't do without, this one's on it.

Camera Obscura --- 10/10


Rumor has it that Gloria Swanson was absolutely devastated that she didn't win the Oscar for Sunset Boulevard. 1950 was an unusually tough year for competitors, with the statuette eventually going to Judy Holiday for Born Yesterday.

Admittedly, Gloria is fantastic in this film - she's able to send up herself, while also scandalizing the business she was product of - but the acting chops must really go to William Holden, who provides the willful self-loathing thread that ties much of this noirish and twisted tale together.

Director by Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard represents classic movie making at its peak. Set in Los Angeles, it's a dark, twisted, cynical tale of love, deceit, and opportunism. The film is all about Hollywood behind the scenes and how screenwriters, directors, and actors will sell themselves out for fame and fortune at a moments notice.

Spiritual and emotional emptiness, and the price of fame, greed, narcissism, and ambition is at the heart of this devilishly stylistic film, with the somber mood beginning almost immediately when a dead man is found floating facedown in a swimming pool.

The man is hack screenwriter Joe Gillis (a very sexy William Holden). All we know is that Joe was at the run-down mansion of deluded former silent-film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Through Joe's voice over narrative it soon becomes clear that he was somehow involved with the wealthy Norma.

Down on his luck, three months behind on his rent, and with his car about to be repossessed, Joe accidentally stumbles upon Norma's faded mansion while trying to escape the police. Norma initially mistakes Joe for a coffin-maker for her deceased pet monkey, but once she figures out that he's a screenwriter, she gets him to read one of the scripts she's been working on.

Norma is an insane and faded silent-film star, who is hoping against hope to make a comeback. She's bitterly resentful of the price the "talkies" have taken on her career, so now she soaks in her own misguided and imagined greatness, in profile with the flickering projector lighting her outline in the dark.

Joe is initially hesitant to help the glamorous woman, and then asks $500 a week for his writing services. But slowly we come to realize the contract is actually the other way around. In preparing for her return comeback, Norma quickly turns Joe into a pawn - or more to the point, a slave.

Joe becomes a virtual prisoner in her rundown mansion; the moment he leaves, she slits her wrists, forcing him to come back. With minimal resistance, Joe allows himself to settle into the life of a kept man, as Norma desperately showers him with gifts and fine clothing. The house butler, Max von Meyerling (Erich von Stroheim), grimly looks on, tending to Norma's demanding whims and tolerating Joe's disruptive presence.

Joe wobbles back and forth between heedless acceptance of his strange companionship with Norma and his half-hearted pursuit of a career. He sneaks away to collaborate on a project with Betty (Nancy Olson), a Paramount script reader who is engaged to Joe's best friend. Betty is gradually falling in love with Joe, but when Norma finds out, that he's been sneaking out to meet wit her, all hell breaks loose.

The self-loathing motif is rampant throughout Sunset Boulevard. Max completely does away with his self-respect, Joe hates himself for his unwillingness to commit to a career or love, and seems to sell himself out for money and clothes almost immediately, and Betty despises herself for falling in love with Joe while she's engaged to another.

Norma, despite her haughtiness, is the most blatant case of self-disgust. When she isn't raving about her greatness, she comes across as a frightened and tortured soul  a sad and lonely woman, who is not only remarkably self-delusional, but is also trying to grasp one last chance at happiness. She thinks so little of her current 50-year-old self that she no longer acknowledges the present.

Sunset Boulevard is a must see movie for cinema buffs. There are lots of treasures to be had here, including Nancy Olson's strangely under appreciated performance as Betty, whose misguided love for Joe spirals the film to its grisly conclusion. There's also the hilarious appearance of a skinny and madly grinning Jack Webb as a happy-go-lucky assistant director, and viewers will get a kick out of the excessive exuberance that Norma displays when she towels down a hunky and hairy-chested Joe at poolside.

The funniest scene in the movie is when Norma rolls on top of Joe while he is reclining on a couch, and then does an imitation of Charlie Chaplin in order to cheer him up; the scene is an uproarious mixture of the sad, the funny, and the pathetic.

Billy Wilder's accomplished direction is full of wide shots that capture the depressing set and brave close-ups of our anti-heroes. But in the end, Sunset Boulevard stands out, as one of the finest examples of the frenzied circus of obsession, fixation, and greed that is oftentimes symbolizes Hollywood. Mike Leonard September 05.


It so happens that as I was watching Sunset Boulevard, I was chewing gum, and Gloria Swanson's clipped, derisive tone felt more like it was directed not at William Holden's washed up Joe Gillis in 1950, but at me, sitting on my couch in 2008. I didn't throw my gum away like Gillis does, but still, I did feel a little disconcerted. Norma Desmond knew I was chewing, and she didn't like it one bit.

But this is part of Sunset Boulevard's charm. While it's a movie about the ways movies had changed, were continuing to change, and those they left behind, it also shows us how, in some ways, they've remained the same. Its references to the WGA, popcorn cinema, and the tragicomic nature of washed-up celebrity feel oddly contemporary while simultaneously being firmly rooted in the Fifties.

While some of the period references to actors and directors went over my head - I'm no expert on the silent era - it didn't affect my enjoyment of them one bit. The fact that Wilder and his team were brave enough to include such comments gives the film a cool, relaxed feel even as the web that binds the characters draws ever-tighter.

It's fantastically acted too. Holden is brilliant as the struggling everyman who quickly realises that he's gotten way more than he bargained for, and Swanson is pitch-perfect as the faded screen star whose grip on reality has crumbled far quicker than the walls of her mansion, right down to the wide roving eyes and claw-like hands. They're well-supported, especially by Erich von Stronheim's eerily restrained butler Max.

Of course, great dialogue and performances are nothing without a plot to match. Despite the fact that the beginning reveals the end, Sunset Boulevard still manages to keep you hooked from the moment Holden sits at his desk for the first time right up until the movie's cruel, haunting, tragically human conclusion.

Very rarely do "old" movies actually live up to their reputations, but I'm pleased to say that Sunset Boulevard does, and it's a credit to Wilder's team's ability that this noir-drama stands the test of time. A truly great film.


As it is so often with legendary movies, the legends around have grown bigger and bigger with the time. The stories about the decline of Mary Pickford, Mae West and Pola Negri to play the part of Norma Desmond, the mysterious beginning of the movie, that, after a disastrous preview, was cut and vanished forever (rumours have it, that Billy Wilder himself had a copy of it, but refused to screen it because the experience was too painful for him). But besides all that, what remains is easily Wilders best movie, the best satire about Hollywood and one of the best movies of all times.

For those few unhappy people, who haven't seen the movie (it's hard to believe, but I'm sure there are some) I'll give a short summary: Joe Gillis (William Holden) is a penniless screen script writer who meets by accident Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a former silent movie star, who refuses to accept, that her career is over. She's supported by her faithful servant Max (Erich von Stroheim), who shares some secrets with his mistress. Joe, desperate for money, agrees to edit Normas script for her triumphal return to the screen. Soon she wants him to be more. He reluctantly becomes her lover, though he's in love with Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olsen), also a screenwriter. Though he thinks, he uses Norma, it's easy to see that in fact it's she, who uses him for her purposes.

Wilder demonstrates, what a good director and writer he is, he never goes for a cheap effect, but always serves the script. Never before and never again someone achieved such a sharp and cynical portrait of Hollywood. No wonder Louis B. Mayer went wild, when he saw the film.

The four principal players were all at the peak of their careers with this movie, they've never been better in anything else they did. Nancy Olsen gives a strong performance in a rather small part and Erich von Stroheim is chilling and disturbing as Max. Holden is perfectly cast as the cynical and weary man, who tries everything to have success. It's hard to imagine, that Montgomery Clift really left 2 weeks before shooting, because he didn't wanted to be seen as the lover of an elder woman.

But this is Swansons show, she keeps the small balance between madness and a sane mind until the end, when she finally slips into madness. Her performance is one of the most amazing, multi-layered and carefully acted ever performed on screen. There are simply not enough words to explain, how good she is.

I know, there still serious discussions whether Judy Holiday really deserved the Oscar, or if Swanson wouldn't have lost to Bette Davis performance in "All about Eve" anyway. These discussion are dispensable, the three performances are so diverse, that it's hard to compare them. For me it only shows, how unnecessary awards are, because often enough highly qualified actors and actresses are overlooked. Much more important for me are the results: We still watch the movies, if it's "Born Yesterday", "All about Eve" or "Sunset Boulevard", we still enjoy them and still are enchanted by the performances.


SUNSET BOULEVARD will always be inextricably linked to ALL ABOUT EVE. They both came out the same year; they both star legendary actresses playing legendary actresses; they both are cynical, sometimes savage in their estimation of show business. And, of course, they are both great films.

But they are very different stylistically and philosophically. A primary difference is that EVE is about a survivor. Bette Davis' Margo Channing in EVE accepts, perhaps grudgingly, that change is inevitable. Either she adapts to reality, or she loses all. That is what makes Margo more than just "a great star, a true star." Margo's rival, Eve Harrington, may someday end up like BOULEVARD's Norma Desmond, but Margo Channing never will.

But if EVE is about life, SUNSET BOULEVARD is about death. Even their titles suggest this: "Eve" being the first bearer of life and "sunset" being the approaching night. In BOULEVARD, Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond is to some extent already dead by the time the film starts, locked away in a haunted house, coming out only for the funeral of her pet monkey. She is bound by reputation and profession to a type of film-making that is long dead and nearly forgotten. Her life, like her career, is based on illusions of life.

The prevailing interpretation of SUNSET BOULEVARD assumes that Norma is one of Hollywood's victims; that the town and the industry turned its back on her when she was no longer a star, her career sabotaged by the coming of sound in motion pictures. I don't buy that. The film clearly shows us that at age 50 Norma is still vibrant, still beautiful, still energetic and eager to make movies. Plus, she is filthy rich. This is not a woman who would walk away from movie making because she is afraid of her own voice. Indeed, her voice is magnificent; sultry, insinuating and theatrical. I don't think Norma went mad because Hollywood turned its back on her, rather Hollywood turned its back on her because she went mad.

I don't think we are getting the full story here. Something may have drove Norma mad, but it wasn't talking pictures. Indeed, she may have been unstable all along, but I think there is something in her past that destroyed her, and I suspect that involves Max (Erich von Stroheim). In his "Great Movies" essay, Roger Ebert suggests that the love between Norma and Max, her ex-husband/ex-director/butler, is the heart of the story; that it's Max's love of Norma that validates her continued existence. I don't see that. I suspect that Max is less a servant than a caretaker or even a jailer. Max (like Joe Gillis, Norma's erstwhile boytoy) may be trapped in Norma's web, but it is a web of his own making. He appears subservient, but he is the one in control, he perpetuates her delusions and enables her madness. I even suspect that he only allows Joe into the situation because he knows that Joe is weak and no real threat to his power; and that he suspects that it will help placate Norma by feeding her fantasy of a comeback. There is more than adoration that cements the relationship between Max and Norma; perhaps guilt, jealousy, desperation -- who knows? All I know is that it is best kept as a subtext, a part of the film's impenetrable mystery. The less we understand Norma, the more intriguing she is.

However, if I were to be so bold as to make one major change in SUNSET BOULEVARD, it would be to replace William Holden as Joe Gillis. I respect Holden as an actor, but his screen persona has always been one of strength and -- if not integrity -- confidence; he is not one who plays vulnerable with any conviction. Plus, he doesn't play the part of Gillis with any gentle shadings. The "romance" between Norma and Joe is the least convincing aspect of the film. Joe treats her with barely concealed contempt and a bit of occasional pity, which makes it hard to believe that a self-absorbed diva would even tolerate him, let alone make him the house pet. The role of Joe was originally intended for Montgomery Clift, an actor with a proven ability to appear passive, even as he plays sinister. His work in THE HEIRESS and A PLACE IN THE SUN illustrate this point. I see Joe Gillis, not as a bored hanger-on, but as sycophant who is in awe of Norma, even as he exploits her, and therefore he doesn't realize that he actually is the one who is being used (sort of a younger version of Max). I think Joe should be someone who is cunning, but naive about his own limits, not someone who is already bitter, corrupt and cynical as the story begins.

Maybe I am wrong, but I get the feeling that Holden was very uncomfortable playing the part of, well, a mistress, and especially one kept by such an older woman. Perhaps his manhood was threatened and that uneasiness shows. Clift, or an equally rakish young actor like, say, Farley Granger or Robert Wagner, would enliven the story and make the romance with the perpetually needy Norma more credible. I don't think it is enough that the film shows that Norma enjoys manipulating Joe, I think it has to also be implied that to a certain extent Joe loves being manipulated. The relationship is after all a romance and to be credible as long-term there has to be the spark that it is mutually enjoyable. Holden's interpretation that Joe is just doing it for the money just doesn't ring true. While a pairing of the aging diva with an ambitious -- and yes, probably gay -- younger man is practically a show business institution.

Yet, even with these reservations, it is undeniable that SUNSET BOULEVARD is quite a film. A little bit Hollywood satire, a little bit moralistic fable and whole lot of Gothic melodrama. And Swanson's just-not-quite over the top performance is mesmerizing. It was assumed that BOULEVARD would revitalize Swanson's career. It didn't. But apparently, it didn't matter to her: she dabbled in acting now and again, when the part amused her, but she had better things to do with her life. Swanson played Norma Desmond, but she lived life as Margo Channing.


Down on his luck, screenwriter Joe Gillis (Holden) reluctantly takes a job writing for once famous actress Norma Desmond (Swanson) who is planning her comeback.

Made almost 60 years ago Sunset Boulevard was a marvel at the time of release. Winning 3 Oscars and scooping plenty of other nominations, the story of the struggling screenwriter and failed actress has a level of humanity and realism to maintain its timeless classic tag.

Oscar nominated William Holden (The Wild Bunch) opens the story by taking viewers back 6 months before a tragic event recalling how he ended up working for the neurotic Norma Desmond, cinemas once finest star. Holden's reflection on society and his desperation to work is charismatic, ensnaring and occasionally funny. The obsession with the car is witty and when he first appears on screen in dealing with the finance agents is cool and collected deceitful, establishing the character's core exceptionally well. But this charming on screen presence is overshadowed by an obsessive and starry-eyed portrayal of fame by Gloria Swanson as the unforgivably self obsessed actress.

With the film world growing bigger each year we see more actors come and go and get lost in a whirlwind of controversy off camera. Gossip magazines are more concerned with the battles with diet and appearance and frankly it's amazing to see this depicted in a film made in the 1950's. Swanson is the symbol of today's modern stereotype. Once the star she descends into a world of obscurity and absentmindedness, lost in past glory before seeing the light and preparing herself for her comeback. "I'm ready for my close up Mr DeMille" is an unforgettable line and still remains powerful, with the performance stealing the scenes.

The story itself representing the struggle of writing and surviving for the film industry is consistently accurate and interesting. The power of the bosses, the struggle of independent writers and penning the greatest novel ever reveal the desire and controversy of the industry.

The inclusion of issues such as desire, lust, suicide and money add to the realism of Billy Wilder's acclaimed picture.

Wilder chooses scenes carefully, maintain enough realism to make an almost fantasy about the story. The swimming pool scene and Norma's last scene are testament to the concept of madness of the film industry. This, from all the films I have seen, has one of the finest rounded off endings ever screened, perfectly pitched, entertaining and justification to the film's preaching morals of madness and the powers of film.

The inclusion of an affair and a secret long lost crush add to the depth and drama of the film, which makes Sunset Boulevard packed with fine preaching issues, stunning acting and enough drama and interest to keep you hooked right until a stunning end


Quite simply, one of the sharpest screenplays ever written and luckily it has performances to match. This movie, and if you haven't seen it then you really should rush out to grab it IMMEDIATELY, tells of a symbiotically parasitic relationship that develops between an aged film star and a struggling writer.

William Holden (the writer) is the coolest narrator ever and his character, although often unlikeable, just about keeps us onside for the duration of the movie. Even if writer/director Billy Wilder doesn't manage to keep our sympathies with the right character for most of the movie he produces some scenes in the second half that give Holden's character a twisted redemption and reason to finally make a completely clean breast of things and an escape route from Norma.

As for Norma Desmond herself (THE star who has definitely faded), she may well be the single greatest human character ever to be thrown onto celluloid. Half Quasimodo, half Bride Of Frankenstein and . . . . . . ummmm . . . . half Dracula's Daughter. Gloria Swanson bravely plays the faded movie star with a perfect mix of sadness, fiery anger, intense narcissism and pride, all mixed up with some mild overacting and permanent melodrama.

Max, the butler, IS the avid fan taken to the extreme. Devoted, adoring, ever-present, he's the perfect audience member and just what Norma Desmond needs to keep her sanity for as long as she does. Does he actually help her or is he ultimately responsible for her fall over the edge ? Max or Joe, who is the bigger culprit ? An interesting question that I'm not sure I could easily answer.

Of course, many other people also help to keep Norma from the truth. Cecil B DeMille, her card-playing buddies, even security guards still working at the studio. If more people had reacted the same way as Joe did initially (dismissing Norma and prompting her reply of "I AM big, it's the pictures that got small") then maybe she would have eased back down to earth. If her ego and vanity would have EVER allowed it.

The only real innocent character in the movie, the only one who doesn't help to perpetuate any fantasy and who doesn't act for purely personal gain, is Betty Schaffer. It is poor Betty who is quickly drawn in, chewed up and spat out by Holden's character (hmmmm . . . a writer responsible for breaking the heart of a young, up and coming lady . . . . surely not).

Some people have points they argue about this movie. Why did Joe stick around for so long ? He was a shallow guy, he wanted the meal ticket that he was being offered and, yes, despite his disgust at the offerings he always ended up taking them. Why did he end up back with Norma on that fateful night after her suicide attempt ? Because he was too scared, he didn't want to feel responsible for anyone else's pain. If he'd never actually heard of Norma's fate then he would have been long gone but once it was relayed to him, and still with the fresh memory of the part he played, then he had to make sure that he hadn't done any long-term damage. Joe enjoyed making a buck but he wasn't a completely uncaring man.

I love this movie with all my being. I love the faded, preserved shrine that is Norma Desmond's house. The car and the swimming pool being returned to working order, just as Norma herself is, for the benefit of Joe. Are we watching Gloria Swanson playing Norma Desmond throughout this film or are we watching an older actress play every idol that we've ever discarded ? Is the movie disturbing because of the interplay of the characters or because we, as an audience, do not want to venture into this world of forgotten stars and empty theatres ? Am I reading too much into this film ? Maybe I am and maybe I don't care. Just see it and love it.

See this if you like: Billy Wilder, The Player, Singin' In The Rain.

NB, this review was adapted from the original written under my old RockySchlockyRobot ID that I have long forgotten how to access.


Mainly it is just that, you may guess it. Sunset Boulevard is a movie about movies; one of the first called FILM ever made by Hollywood - because it's a state of art, a piece in art form... an authentic gem.

It's hard to find a film like this one-- it's even impossible. Never saw a movie which depicted film making so perfectly. The shadows of scriptwriting, the dark side of fame, the evil portrayal of such magnificent lives... this is one of the best movies of all time. The best film noir ever done, no doubt about it (can't be compared to other ones because of its subject, of course!) and one of the best ever made in the Golden Age. A film capable of surpassing another mine favorites - like Casablanca or Rear Window.

Everything falls perfect into this film. Everything but the reception - of course the Academy wouldn't accept a film that depicted themselves. But then again, classics only get that designation when further times arrive. Like important people -- "Funny, how gentle people get with you once you're dead.", his words.

The nominations, the Oscars won. This could have been the film to win all the Oscars - almost all of them. Brilliant art direction - amazing collection of props - good music score, screen writing whose dialogs possess a very realistic feel, top-notch performances by all actors (mainly the duo plus the supporters; I was very surprised by Nancy Olson), cinematography and editing which catch that noir feel and a director (who I wish to know better!) of modern camera angles, brilliant moves and captivating images. All in one, I still don't know how the movie hasn't got the most important of all, the Oscar for Best Picture. Yes, was it the blacklist? Was it the depicted reality?

We'll never know. We dream of Sunset Boulevard. We die in Sunset Boulevard. The valley of dreams. The peak of ambitions.

Ah, Hollywood! Once I dream of thou!


You are all out of your minds if you gave this movie less than an eight. And if you hated Some Like It Hot, I'm convinced that you have no soul. If you hated something as masterful as The Apartment, then you have a hole where your heart should be. If you hate everything Billy Wilder ever did, you have no soul, heart, or brain-- you're just a retarded stick with opposable thumbs. In other words, I hate you if you hate Billy Wilder.

Wilder was and always will be one of the greatest writer-directors that Hollywood has ever known. Some of you are forgetting the purpose of film-- to take you away to a world that you didn't know and entertain you. That's what Billy did, only he made it funny, satirical, or both. Sunset Boulevard did get dull at points, but that's life. If you don't want movies to be somewhat real, go delude yourself and watch Teletubbies. Personally, I wish that someone would bring Billy back from the dead to make another movie and make all of the people who probably enjoyed Disaster Movie appreciate his brilliance.

So God, please send your son down here so that he can do that Lazarus thing and bring back Billy. We need him down here. With a new generation of Hannah Montana's that will marry Jonas Brother look-a-likes, I need Sunset Boulevard. Because it reminds me that Hollywood isn't perfect. It's real and imperfect just like the rest of life.

I Heart Billy Wilder!


So, THIS is the famous Sunset Blvd... and what an absolute delight it rightfully turns out to be: Captivating story of struggling screenwriter Holden who accidentally enters aging, old-time screen actress Swanson's life. Before he knows it, he is caught in her obsession of reviving her long gone-career, moving into her mansion... and more than meets the eye unfolds! A joy to watch such old - and smart - b&w (Hitchcock-stylish, indeed) Hollywood at its best, and an especially juicy box of chocolates for movie lovers and cinephiles, with all the famous real-life star faces... As much as "Singin' in the rain" a terrific movie about the film industry itself, a non-flinching self-inventory and the changing of the times pushing old stars out of the spotlight, with a truly great, moving portrait by Swanson.

Maturely intelligent, incisive and stirringly put together with some classic scenes & dialog and an exemplary use of voice-over. It's easy to see why this triumph for writer-director legend Wilder probably is compulsory viewing for film classes!

9 out of 10 from Ozjeppe


Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard is the blackly funny, often pitifully sad portrayal of a has-been silent star, alive as if against the knowledge of the outside world, in her misshapen manor, screening her old films, imagining unstoppably, relentlessly, of a return, that she is under the illusion will vindicate her fans, who all feel robbed of her. But it's also a disfigured love story, which while it keeps it from becoming simply a waxworks or a freak show, causes it to drag a little tiny bit.

Gloria Swanson gives an unforgettable performance as the silent star Norma Desmond, with her covetous, melodramatic fingers, her theatrical gestures, her high-flying delusions of grandeur. William Holden considerately plays the role of the writer half her age, who lets himself be kept by her. But the performance that gives Swanson matching reverberation, relishing the film's Gothic grandiosity, is by Erich von Stroheim, as Norma's mysterious, devoted butler.

The movie engraves itself on the doorstep of the world in which it is set, extracting so candidly from life in pictures that we can smell, lick, penetrate the special minutiae, the unequivocal parallels between the story and the actual actors themselves. What makes it so pitch perfect is how Wilder skates on thin ice flanked by black comedy and tragedy. Swanson's Norma Desmond slithers within millimeters of lampooning herself, taking huge chances with over-the-top sneers, affected lunges, theatrical posturings, and world-record- breaking narcissism, dangling Norma at the brink of psychosis for the vast majority of the movie, then creeping over. Norma obviously is not a wrinkly mummy. She is younger than stars such as Jane Fonda and Frances McDormand. She has aged only in her mind's eye, having grown obsessed obsessed obsessed with her moment of eminence in the past.

What is most fun about Sunset Boulevard is how genuine Wilder had the wonderful nerve to be. He uses real names and shows real people, sometimes extensively. Sunset Boulevard gets to the bottom of the false impressions between audience and insider, and does not allow Norma Desmond to. The plot provides Holden with many reasons to agree to Norma's proposal of a job as her personal, hush-hush script doctor. He's bust, the rent is overdue, he is a fugitive from repo men, and he would hate to return to his job as a columnist in Ohio (It's always got to be Ohio! Why? What did we ever do to anybody?). He is as well not wholeheartedly reluctant to prostitute himself. Holden pitches faint fragility and internal struggle into his character. He goes through the forms of saying he doesn't want Norma's gifts, but he takes them, claims to be surprised on New Year's Eve when she throws a party just for the two of them, but surely he has known from the first that she wants not only a writer, but a young man to reassure her that she is still attractive. What is brilliantly satirical about all this is that in Hollywood, a screenwriter is so oppressed and low on the food chain that he will do anything to keep working. And what is furthermore brilliantly satirical is that Norma's life is not so bad. She's really her own worst enemy, which is what makes her story so pitiful.

There is sure enough the young blonde studio writer with the highly predictable name of Betty, who is engaged to Jack Webb, but as Holden begins sneaking out of the house to work together on a script with her, she falls for him. He'd do her in a heartbeat, but he backs off, to a certain extent because he doesn't want her to find out the truth, but what's more because he shamefully likes the way of life with Norma. Wilder creates an exceedingly absorbing effect here, because when he escapes to see his old pal Jack Webb, and tension grows between him and Betty, Norma's world sure has gotten stuffy by that time and we feel a great deal of solace from her twisted realm.

Of all the great directors of Hollywood's old days---Wyler, Stevens, Lang, Hitchcock---Billy Wilder was the biggest breath of fresh air. He knew how to blast a fun-loving sense of humor at you even in the face of knowingly pathetic subjects and characters. And he could go straight to the other extreme in the same film, outright disturbing you more than you ever thought a film from the old days ever could. Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, Some Like It Hot, The Seven Year Itch, The Apartment, The Lost Weekend, Stalag 17, Witness for the Prosecution, Sabrina and Sunset Boulevard all have a great comforting quality at the same time they are helmed by the silent man behind the camera who you never think about, the sublime master of mood swings, not to mention he consistently shows his strong sense of the importance of a memorable closing line, closing shot.


This film is very disturbing. It reminded me of the love and affection and materialistic things that we all want for ourselves. It's a movie about how fame, fortune and a notion of that being rich will make your life better, might end up destroying you.

It's been almost 60 years since the films release, and yet today, it remain as relevant as ever, as still the biggest stars in the world, gets destroyed for the exact same reasons as displayed in the film. Britney Spears and Michael Jackson comes to mind. Like Norma in the film, these people are kings. But no amount of money or fame can save them from their own destruction. And that is the tragedy.

And yet the world goes on, and we keep dreaming about fame and fortune. Will we ever learn? This film Disturbs me. It's like looking into the state of mind of human beliefs. We all wanna be pop stars and drive around in fancy cars. We do think it will make us more happy. Will it, Norma?

VIII/X


This movie was made back in the day when Hollywood produced incredible movies with incredible story lines. This movie is about a writer named Joe and he is in a lot of trouble. The men are coming to repossess his car but he escapes and parks it into a garage next to a house that he believes is abandoned. Inside lives a former aging silent film actress and her butler. Her name is Norma and she is going to help Joe write her script so that she can make a comeback. The problem is that Norma is a little pulled away from reality. She takes over Joe's life.

What a great movie with perfect acting and a great story. It's a little sad in a way too. I really liked Norma's eyes. They looked like the eyes of a crazy lady. Only a crazy lady would buy a coffin for her monkey and have a funeral.


Perhaps the best film ever made, 'Sunset Blvd' follows the story of lonely and struggling writer Joe Gillis (William Holden) who is thrown into a web of romance and feuds with aging silent actress Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and her creepy butler Max Von Mayerling (Erich Von Stroheim) when he accidentally stumbles across Norma's mansion when he uses her garage for his car so it doesn't get taken. Norma will do anything for him, and she also truly believes she is still famous even though people barely remember her and she can make a comeback to Hollywood. But Joe knows all to better and wants to escape her odd, aging and treacherous ways. He meets Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson) and begins writing a script with her-and perhaps even falling in love. This sets off Norma who will stop at nothing to be in the limelight, get Joe and make pictures again...even if it means murder. An intelligent look at Hollywood with amazing performances and one of the best scripts. The use of the black and white color makes a grim and eerie look of the film, which helps pull the viewer in. A fascinating thing about the film is that while the story is fictional it somewhat holds true to Gloria Swanson, even at one point viewing a film of hers that ruined her career! A truly haunting and memorable look at the desperate and true side of Hollywood. 10/10


This is a movie that takes a look at the dark side of Hollywood, focusing on the fringe-dwellers frantically trying to capture (or retain) a minute scrap of success by whatever means necessary.

Gloria Swanson is easily the best thing about this picture. Her performance is riddled with theatrics but that's exactly what the character calls for. The fact that she didn't win the Best Actress Oscar for this role beggars belief. Swanson, Holden, Stroheim & Olson all received acting nominations but none took home any hardware, despite fine performances all around.

There are a couple of likely reasons for the film's relatively small haul on Oscar night. First of all, the film was up against another classic, "All About Eve", which had garnered a record 14 nominations. Then, there was the scathing screenplay authored by Wilder, Brackett & Marshman. In particular, the story does a fine job of reflecting the amoral quest for success and the narcissism of the famous, hardly the image that Hollywood wanted to convey.

Billy Wilder's direction here is well-handled and there are several moments of greatness, such as the famous ending. In that scene Wilder's direction, Swanson's acting and Waxman's score combine to produce what is perhaps my favorite ending to any movie ever.

There's a reason (several, actually) why this film is considered among the greatest of all time. See for yourself and you won't be disappointed.


In browsing the comments for "Sunset Blvd.," I see that virtually all of them tend to understand that this happens to be one of the best pictures ever made. Don't just ask me, ... or the majority of the other posters here..., consult with The National Film Registry and the American Film Institute.

Atmospheric, well acted and shot, an intelligent and slightly offbeat script, and a host of themes explored. What more could you want from a film?

For those of you who cavil about this one, I find myself remembering how in the early 90's I would have sworn that "Old Style," or "Michelob" were the epitome of beers. It is only after I'd experienced a host of better potables that I become an adequate judge of real quality. For those of you who dismiss "Sunset Blvd.," I have to wonder just what IS a quality film in your estimation? While I don't particularly care for Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix, I can appreciate that they are above average talents, just not my cup of tea. So, maybe it's NOT the movie, perhaps it's you.


I love period movies and this one captures the time and place as well as it is possible. The humor is gentle and very touching. The scene of the 4th of July morning, when all the young boys come out with their firecrackers never fails to put me on the floor laughing.

Wallace Berry's delivery of the one word line "soup?" is almost worth the price of admission by itself.

I heartily recommend this movie to anyone who has a heart. It will be touched


In a small American town, a young man from a good family faces some of the realities of maturity.

Clarence Brown's fond recreation of Eugene O'Neill's popular stage play AH, WILDERNESS! makes a wonderful celebration of basic American virtues. Attention to detail, coupled with excellent performances & MGM's best production values, results in a film full of quiet joys & sorrows.

The story follows young Eric Linden (in his best film role) during the one month period from his 1906 high school graduation until the Fourth of July, as he deals with the pangs & confusions of puppy love. His yearnings for his pretty neighbor and his experimentation with an older, much rougher sort of female, perfectly underscore the angst so often found in young adults regardless of the era. This is brilliantly displayed in the film's most hilarious sequence, the graduation ceremony which Linden hopes to sabotage, which reveals the honest insecurities and mawkishness of the senior class.

Wallace Beery, playing Linden's dyspeptic bachelor uncle receives top billing, and he is a scene stealer with much experience, but he acts alongside an equally good Lionel Barrymore, as Linden's father, who quietly underplays his role as head of the family. Each actor had a powerful screen persona, however neither attempt to dominate what is in effect a prime example of ensemble acting from the entire cast.

As Barrymore's spinster sister, Aline MacMahon is especially fine, her romantic feelings for Beery barely canceled beneath her prim exterior. Spring Byington, as Barrymore's wife, shows a touching sensitivity in her sometimes flustered, nervous concern for her brood.

Playing Linden's collegiate brother, Frank Albertson is good-natured and sturdy, and in a poignant moment gives a gentle parody of his own considerable musical talent by crooning When Other Lips' from The Bohemian Girl. Bonita Granville & Mickey Rooney portray the youngest siblings in the family, with Rooney in particular having some very funny moments.

In smaller roles, Cecilia Parker is all innocence as Linden's sweetheart, while crusty old Charley Grapewin almost spits vinegar as her cantankerous father. Helen Flint gives a forceful performance, considering Production Code restrictions, of the wanton woman who attempts seducing the much younger Linden.

Movie mavens will recognize an uncredited Eily Malyon as the family's Irish maid.

The title is an ironic reference to a line from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Will Rogers was originally pegged to play the role which ultimately went to Barrymore, but he backed out in order to make his tragic plane flight to Alaska.


Eugene O'Neill remains, some fifty two years after his death and some eighty seven since his first plays appeared on stage, America's greatest dramatist. This is not hard to understand - no one ever dissected our personal miseries as well by laying bare his own tragedies. It is understandable that he rarely touched on comedy (it does crop up in some forms in his plays - in HUGHIE look at the way the hotel night man has some twisted hero-worship of the gambler crime kingpin Arnold Rothstein). Twice (actually) O'Neill tried comedy. First a spoof, MARCO MILLIONS about Marco Polo. The other was AH, WILDERNESS!, which was his only successful Broadway play in the 1930s - 1955. It is a lovable look at middle class, small town American family life in 1905 (about the same time that that far more horrifying version of family life, A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, occurs). And because we know what O'Neill was going through, seeing this version is not reassuring at all. The play will amuse, but in our cynical souls we know that it is what O'Neill really needed and never got.

One thing the audience never got (unfortunately) was the star of the original production. In his penultimate Broadway performance, George M. Cohan played the father, Nat Miller. The critics of 1932 raved for Cohan's meaningful and wonderful performance, but we can only read of it - he was never in the running for the movie role. He was extremely difficult to work with under other directors, and would have been hard to control. It's too bad. The original choice for the role at MGM was Will Rogers, but Rogers wanted to make a round the world plane trip with Wiley Post, and went to their joint death in a crash at Point Barrow instead. Still Lionel Barrymore is good as substitute for either Cohan or Rogers.

The cast on the whole is first rate, from Barrymore and Spring Byington as the parents (note the business about the problems Barrymore has eating certain types of fish) to Wallace Beery as the inebriate uncle and Aline MacMahon as the spinster aunt. The business of the three sons, Arthur (Frank Albertson), Dick (Eric Lindon), and Tommy (Mickey Rooney), and the daughter Mildred (Bonita Granville) all helps paint a picture that is close to Norman Rockwell (although the apparently alcoholism of the uncle is troubling). But it has some terrific moments, as towards the end when Nat warns Dick about fallen women/prostitutes as "sepulchres". But with a knowledgeable audience of O'Neill fans they can put in the dead older brother who wasted his talents on booze and women, and the baby brother who died prematurely. Suddenly the glitz and glare of the 1905 small town America on the 4th of July weekend turns into the shadow world of four dead souls pursuing an endless mutual fight in a New England summer house. It is a finely made movie of MGM near it's height, but the source for all the pleasant humor of the piece has a long dark shadow that is unsettling.


This film is a veritable treasure for those who appreciate small-town Americana at the turn of the century. Set in New England in 1906, we see the plethora of events typical of the era: the high school graduation with individual seniors singing, reciting poetry and the valedictorian speech; the Fourth of July celebration with fireworks and picnics; the careful relationships between the young boys and girls; the close-knit family life with a sister and brother of the parents living with them. I thoroughly enjoyed Clarence Brown's depiction of this lost innocent era, which produced a warm glow within me as I watched. There are very few belly laughs - one I remember was when the protagonist Eric Linden says to his not-so-clever girl (Cecilia Parker) "I was born 100 years before my time" and she responds "I was born 10 days before mine." But I found myself smiling often at the goings on. Eric Linden carries the film beautifully.

The rest of the cast is superb: Lionel Barrymore and Spring Byington as Linden's parents; Mickey Rooney and Bonita Granville as his younger siblings; Aline MacMahon as Byinton's spinster sister and Wallace Beery as Barrymore's alcoholic brother. But I was particularly impressed with Helen Flint playing the vamp who Linden gets involved with when he was drowning his sorrows. The title, by the way, is a line from the poem "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám."


Beautifully directed by Clarence Brown, the nearly perfect cast of this rare (but not quite *only*) O'Neill comedy shines from top to bottom even as one speculates the film this might have been had a Methodist minister not effectively murdered one of America's greatest entertainers over the minister's shallow objection to the depiction of a "fallen woman." He wrote to Will Rogers, who was touring in the George M. Cohan/Lionel Barrymore role of the father and slated to do this movie version, stating that he had had to leave the theatre with his daughter rather than expose her to such smut! Rogers prided himself on never doing "blue" material, and withdrew from the film in favor of that fatal trip to Alaska with Wiley Post; one suspects the unfortunate minister saw rather more than he liked of himself in Muriel's father, McComber, in the play, and that was the true source of his offense.

Starting with this film, many productions of AH, WILDERNESS! and the works based on it, like the Broadway musical TAKE ME ALONG, have top-billed the showier role of "Sid" (Wallace Beery) over the core role of the stabilizing force, the father (Lionel Barrymore), whose relationship with his son (Eric Linden) the play turns around. One wonders if it would have been that way had Rogers ignored blue nose objections and made the film, but it is hard to imagine a better performance than Barrymore gives in the role.

While recognizing the vast difference between the usual depth of O'Neill dramas and this warm remembrance of an idealized youth O'Neill might have imagined wanting in middle class Connecticut at the start of the 20th Century, students of the playwright must view this play (and film) next to his more obviously autobiographical masterpieces A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY... , MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN and the sea plays (filmed collectively as THE LONG VOYAGE HOME) for a complete understanding of the author.

The greatest regret in the film is the fresh, forceful performance from Eric Linden as Richard - the boy on the verge of manhood, struggling with the same essential sexual/social issues every young man struggles with, even if they may seem "quaint" and even shallow in this period telling (we only imagine it's somehow different because of the period specifics). It's a fine performance and one wonders what happened to the actor. He lived on to age 85, only passing in 1994, but never made the transition to "adult" leads and after the minor role of an Amputee in the 1939 blockbuster, GONE WITH THE WIND, only made one more minor film during WWII, and called it a career.

Nevertheless, glory in superb work from a balanced cast that showcases Spring Byington as the Mother, the wonderful character actress Aline MacMahon as Sid's love interest, Lily (seek her out as the Nurse in the superb "Play of the Week" filming of Judith Anderson in MEDEA in 1959 or as Ida in Judy Garland's final film, I COULD GO ON SINGING from 1963!) and Mickey Rooney as the almost too energetic younger brother Tommy.

Yes, Wallace Beery breaks Lily's heart (and ours) with his drunk scene played for laughs, but O'Neill knows whereof he's writing, and gives us a depth and subtext to these scenes which most comedies of the period or later "comedy drunk scenes" couldn't imagine, and lets us understand the deeper meaning even while we permit ourselves to smile at Beery & O'Neill's craft.

A last point to be made in appreciating this terrific production: made in "glorious black & white" (as the VHS release calls it), the studio set designers and director Brown took full advantage of the more detailed visual vocabulary monochrome offered and give us so detailed a portrait of the world the play is set in you could teach a master class on the style and technology of the period just from the beautifully observed physical portrait in this film.

Allow yourself a ninety eight minute excursion back to the turn of the last century - this is a trip to what was not quite the cultural wilderness some of us might suppose that you'll never regret taking.


I just saw a screening of this movie and I thought it was really good. The story is of a struggling film producer and his writer/director wife. It is a well written story, and having met the director/writer, is semi-autobiographical, which I found amazing. I went into seeing this movie without any real idea of what to expect and was pleasantly surprised. It had the right amount of humor and reality without getting to cheesy. And Morgan Freeman really does make an appearance in this film! The film contains a lot of close up shots on the characters, but it works; it's a different style than I was used to. Although slow in some parts, overall the characters they meet and the plot really kept me interested in the film. It made me want to go out an rent the first movie, All About You.


I just saw this movie- in fact its still going on- at the Miami Film Festival and it is another movie about people making movies in Hollywood. It's just slow and boring and the character interactions are on the level that you could find in your own household. It drama over money and families and who cares, its mundane and not very interesting. I'd say of the 42 people that showed up, 10 have left already. The story is about a couple trying to make it in the film industry and failing at it, so now they have to decide if they are gonna try to keep working on movies or if they are going to begin their real life with their child. There go two more people from the theater.


I must say I was not expecting to like this movie but I did. My husband buys low budget films all the time and I don't like them. I was busy on my pc and halfway through the movie became drawn into it. The end was the best, it actually struck a cord with me. No other film has spoken to me in this way. It has helped me to feel comfortable in my space of being an educated-accomplished-determined at-home-mom. My biggest critique is that the film does seem incredibly slow at moments, and some of the actors were not good. Boris was great of course! Overall its soo worth sitting through for all you educated broke entrepreneur spirit filled moms out there waiting for your big break and not existing fully in the moment. Good soundtrack. Yellow Teeth. People with an older baby that can't change a diaper. Close shots. Great story. Real people. Excellent message.


I could not wait for this film to be over. The film did not give you a reason to want to keep watching it. I don't understand what the director was trying to accomplish with this movie. What a waste of money. The movie was really predictable. The acting was not bad. The objective is clear, but the director failed at making the journey interesting and there was not enough rooting interest where you were eager to keep watching. It is a shame that African American actors have to be reduced to having to make such poor quality films. It is better to pass on these types of films, and wait or develop projects that are entertaining and meaningful.


Dreadful score, the direction is very amateurish, and the acting is well below average. Cheaply done and it looks it. The story isn't even that interesting. I can't see why they bothered to make it. What really irks me is how the totally obscure director (Christine Swanson) is listed as an award winning director. She won one award - Short Film Award at, get this, The Acapulco Black Film Festival!!!! Now there is a major achievement! Was she employee of the month at Wal-Mart too? Better yet, before the credits, it says that All About Us became a best selling DVD. It isn't even out yet on DVD, (Today's date 06/22/08, street date for the movie 07/01/08) so how can it be a best seller already!!! And it is very likely it won't sell at all. Misleading lies. What a turn off.


I'd never expect such a film from Israel.

I found the movie with a mixed style is somewhat inconsistent at some spots, and some of the music used is kind of tacky, and overall feeling of the movie is very low budget. But within a running time less than an animated film, this movie delivers a complete story with genuine feelings, touches many grounds, and manages to be moving and leaves your heart ache by the time when end credit rolls.

Maybe it's true that the running time of the movie is a stretch for a theatrical release, and the same story in a heterosexual content would not have been much an impact. But still, it's the most wholesome gay film I have ever seen. I'm disappointed that it was not received better at the Cinema21. There were like 5 people for the Sunday night show. Americans are notorious for shun away any movies with sub titles, straight or not.


YOSSI & JAGGER (Yossi VeJager)

Aspect ratio: 1.37:1

Sound format: Stereo

Originally produced for Israeli television but screened theatrically in Tel Aviv to great success before opening nationally to even greater commercial and critical acclaim, this engaging drama from director Eytan Fox has been hailed in some quarters as one of the best gay movies ever made. Running a mere 65 minutes, the film divides its time equally between a platoon of soldiers operating on the Israeli-Lebanese border, and the two men at the center of a clandestine relationship.

Yossi (Ohad Knoller) is a brooding commander who feels constrained by his role as a macho authority figure to conceal his sexuality from the conscripts under his command, while Jagger (Yehuda Levi, a popular Israeli heartthrob whose career was kickstarted by an appearance in the TV soap opera "Cheers for Love" in 2001) is one of his subordinates, a carefree guy who wants them to declare their love publicly by retiring from the Army and setting up house together. There's a now-famous scene, early in the movie, when Yossi and Jagger make love in the snow (don't get excited - all you see are some lingering kisses and the aftermath, in which the two characters are entirely at ease with one another, free from the restraints imposed by Army discipline), but their romance takes up a surprisingly small amount of the movie's running time, which appears to have been curtailed for reasons of length (there's a number of images doing the rounds from scenes which were apparently shot but didn't make it to the final print). Based on a true story, the film is warm-hearted but inconsequential, with some annoyingly jerky hand-held camera movements, and the climactic scenes are a little too restrained to be entirely successful (though Knoller, in particular, gives a truly remarkable performance in the aftermath of a devastating plot development). There's still much to admire, and any reservations are dispelled by the central romance, depicted with disarming frankness and performed with relish by Knoller and Levi. Highly recommended.

(Hebrew dialogue)


I'd like to start with the fact that I hate movies about military and war. We had much too many of them and they are always hard to swallow because they always end in a catastrophe. That's why I didn't want to see "Yossi and Jagger" at first. But then I read that it's supposed to be a good movie with a tender love story; I swallowed and gave it a try. I'm glad I did this. I wouldn't go so far and call the whole movie good but it does have the most touching and beautiful love story I've seen in a long time.

I think it's no secret what the movie is about: We are in a military base in Israel and ordinary young people cope with the daily horror each in their own way. They make jokes about it, try not to be serious and look for ways to not think about it the whole day. Some do it with reading, others with music, the commander with sex for we are in a mixed camp here with two girls being in it. And then there are Yossi and Jagger  close friends in the official version, closeted lovers in reality. Yossi is Jagger's boss and both are the stars in their base for in their very own way both young men are special. Yossi is the serious and more reserved one  he doesn't speak very much, always concentrates on his job and is scared to come out. Jagger (named after Mick Jagger cause he's a bit of a rock star himself) is the more flamboyant, vivid, playful and childish one  he's romantic, he is a dreamer, he makes plans for his future with Yossi and wants a love like in a Hollywood movie. It's stunning  you wouldn't guess they're a couple because they learned to hide it very well, but when they are alone you get a hint at how much they love each other. But, alas, we're in a war movie here and no matter how strong the love between the two young men is and how hopeful they are towards their future  the ugly reality will destroy it.

You might have an idea of how the movie ends and I won't spoil it for you. Despite this fact I would really recommend this movie to everyone. Also because of the two great protagonists: Israeli TV star Yehuda Levi is terrific as Jagger and the charismatic Ohad Knoller is simply wonderful as Yossi (he was awarded for his performance). Hands down for an unusual love story that will break your heart but that you simply can't help falling in love with.


Eytan Fox, the talented Israeli director of the extraordinary film "Walk on Water" is a man who clearly has his feet well planted on the ground. His lyrical "Yossi and Jagger" proves he is man who can deal with a lot of controversial subjects in a realistic and convincing way.

This brief film packs a lot for a 65 minutes feature, but in spite of its short length, what comes out of the story feels real and we don't begrudge the brevity in which it was presented. The story of Yossi and Jagger is presented without phony touches, that in the hands of another director, of worse yet, a Hollywood studio, would have been meaningless.

This is the story about two men who happened to be in love and the consequences of something that goes terribly wrong that ends their involvement. The two central characters stay with the viewer for a long time, which says a lot about Mr. Fox and the way he has presented his tale about how fate intervenes in the lives of these young men.

Ohad Knoller and Yehuda Levi give good performances as Yossi and Jagger. These actors make their characters work on the movie because of the intensity of their contribution to the film.

Mr. Fox is to be congratulated for his inspired direction.


I was a little hesitant to rent this movie after seeing "Trembling Before G-D", which was a real eye-opener to me. I guess we go around with our heads in the clouds, not thinking what other homosexuals have to go thru for their religion.... But , the two movies had nothing in common except they were made in Isreal. Yossi and Jagger is a bittersweet love affair between two Isreali soldiers, very well played by Yehuda Levi , and Ohad Knoller, you could feel the love they had for each other and the hurt Jagger was going thru because they had to be so careful as they were officers. Its hard to get a real grip on the characters as its only 67 min long and leaves you grasping for more. But Eytan Fox did a splendid job with the time he had. The song that Jagger sings is haunting in the extra video on the disc. I felt that these men brought back to Isreal some hope that you can have same sex love without the terrible angst they had in Trembling Before God . I give this great little flick 41/2 of 5 8/10 and will be looking forward to seeing Eytan Foxs' new movie "Walking On Water". By the way you can get the words in English of the song Your Soul on the message boards for Yossi and Jagger on IMDb.


I rented this DVD four days ago and have watched it about 5 times since then. There is something that is particularly moving for me about his movie. The idea of hidden, secret love...and all the excitement and danger that involves. The idea of tenderness in the midst of so much rottenness (literally, in the first segment!). Naivety and violence so close together. And the sadness (for everyone...Yossi, Jagger, Yaeli, Lior's parents) of the inevitable societal assumption (even in the comparatively liberal atmosphere of the Israeli army) of straight-ness in a world of so much diversity and difference.

The only other film that affected me so deeply was "Stand By Me" which, ironically, was mentioned offhandedly in "Yossi and Jagger". The themes of deep care and concern for others (friendship in SBM, erotic love in Y&J) and the deepening and transforming of that care in light of being witness to a death are shared by both films. Themes that hit me hard. I suspect they hit many people hard, as well.

I've read several times on this discussion that a major weakness of "Yossi & Jagger" was its length...only a little over an hour. (Perhaps this is mostly seen as a weakness by those who had to pay full price it see it in a movie theater, instead of getting to watch it 5 times for $3.99! -joke-) Because the film was so short, it did not get as much plot and character development as it could have. Yes...perhaps...and yet...

It seems to me that a large part of the power of the film lies in its length. It is a real testament to Eytan Fox that, in the space of just about 15-20 minutes from the beginning of the movie, he made me care so much about both main characters. And throughout the movie, they both kept their appeal....I sympathized with both to the end. To be honest, there's not many people whom I've met for only 15 minutes, if they died a few days later, I would weep for them. Fox did that.

Furthermore, because there is so much about these characters that we do NOT know (like Lior's mother), we, like her, find the conclusion of the film to be particularly wrenching. I leave the film wanting...maybe even needing...to know more about Lior. Why was he wearing that damn rabbit costume to begin with?? What was his childhood and teen years like?? How did he and Yossi meet? fall in love? How long had they known each other? And what about Yossi? What will he do now? Yes....I would have liked the film to end with a shot of him sleeping alone in a queen sized bed in a hotel in Eilat...but that would have been too easy...too tidy. What does he do now? I don't know. So many questions...and no way of finding out.

I leave the film realizing that time and love are precious...so damn precious.


I'll comment but, sorry, I have not good English.Would be better for me my home language( Portuguese)! I have seen this movie in a friends house, some of them not gay, men and women. The place was noisy, many people talking at the same time and the movie began... slowly people was silent. I saw their eyes in the room...wet... some of them showing their emotions discretely while Yossi and Lior, in a simple way, was sharing their souls in the snow... as I never saw it in a gay movie before. Strong pain in heart when that sad mother (Mrs Amichai) says " people don't have time to know each other...I don't even know my son favorite song..."

Commandant Yossi, not the beautiful soldier Yaeli ,answer: "BO, from Rita". Strong pain in heart when he sees Lior picture as a rabbit... A movie FROM HEART , in a so terrible time , in Golan mountains. Ludencil, Rio, Brasil


On a cold desolate hillside, during a lull in a long winter war, Jewish soldiers in far off Isreal, brace themselves against the wind, the dark night and frigid temperatures, in anticipation of an ambush. The air is frosted with both fears and idyllic dreams of a comfortable civilian life. In this tiny corner in a war torn country, two soldiers await destiny amid their shivering companions. The first is Lior Amichai, affectionately called "Jagger" for his love of the noted singer. The other is his companion and secret lover Yossi who despite command responsibilities, yearns for a time when he and Jagger can openly express their love. Arrayed against this union are the tragedies of life. There is Aya who also loves Jagger and in turn is sought after by others in the tiny force. The squad like most common soldiers, long to return home and dream of peace. It is rare that a film elevates gay love to such a poignant level, but this story does just that. It captures the true sentiments of both characters and tugs at the heart of any who have ever been in love amid the turmoil of conflict. When the war torn drama yields it's tragic outcome, it is touching, sympathetic and memorable. ****


This is an excellent movie, albeit very short. The protagonists of the movie Yossi and Jagger are seen very little, and the love that they share is very special. Unfortunately for their love, it is torn from them when Jagger is killed during a night skirmish. I respect Yossi for coming to grips at the end when they all go to visit Jagger's family and Yossi is the only one that knows the most about his love-Jagger. I could not wait for the movie to be released in the USA. I bought my copy the day it was released. I had read other reviews, and agree that the movie is far too short. I love the theme song by Ivri Lider-In your Soul. Great movie. Rent it first if you like, you won't be disappointed.


I loved this film. It filled my heart with joy and was sexier than any porn film I've seen. I was utterly convinced by everything in it and have watched it again and again. For me, as a pro-Palestian activist of many years standing, I did not care where they were or what they were doing there. This film was very masculine and very gay, a combination that I find wonderful. The snoggin (as we call it in the UK) was really sexy and utterly convincing. The film was far too sort. I needed more between Jossi and Jaggar - in particular more kissing because it was wonderful. The icing on the cake would be to learn that there were any lesbian or gay people involed. The actors were fine but it helps our cause.


Warning! SPOILERS ahead! To me, the most blatant thing about Yossi and Jagger is the sexual tension running throughout the film. Not only between Yossi and Jagger, but between the soldiers both male and female as well. Which, of course, is normal for young people in their early twenties... and more so when they are in the front lines and could die at any moment. I think that this is the key to the film - for we are reminded again and again that what these kids want to do more than anything is to live at 100 miles per hour... it is the only chance they might get. The best example is just before going out on an ambush, suddenly everyone is dancing flat out with an energy that overflows. They shouldn't be spending so much energy when they might need it in the next few hours, but they can't help it. It might be their last time.

What hit me hardest was the ending, where one of the girls confesses her love for Jagger, and everyone in Jagger's family immediately assumes that he was her boyfriend and that he loved her... everyone except Yossi, who knows the truth. This moment in the film shows so well how lonely life can be for gay lovers... especially when one dies. Many times, if they were not completely out of the closet, the one left behind is not allowed to mourn for his lost lover, or at least not in a way that recognizes his real role in the dead person's life. I remember a friend whose lover had died... but no-one at his workplace was aware that he was living in a couple and had just lost his mate. He just had to show up at work the day after the funeral as if everything were fine. What a horror. And we see this same problem for Yossi...who at least has his memories, if not recognition.

Many people try to pretend that there is no such thing as "gay" cinema... or a gay sensitivity. Yossi and Jagger put the lie to this. Of all the films I've seen, this one is one of the simplest, yet also one of the most effective depictions of gay love that I have seen in the cinema. Honest, direct, tender, touching, funny, bittersweet and beautiful - it makes us like and want to know the protagonists better. Kudos to the director, who deserves a greater renown. This film is short, but it is a gem.


I still can't describe this story in few words, is one of those one in a life time experience, its very short but great, you have not a full, crude view of any relationship or the bonds among characters but everything is there. I think what you get at the end is: 'we should say what we have in mind every time we have the chance'. The characters were great Ohad Knoller (Yossi) is amazing, you see feeling like it was real in every move, and Yehuda Levi (Jagger)is even better. Some of the characters are not well defined the two girls for example but you fell for them anyway. Ofir and his love, Yaniv and his dream, really great!! at the end you'll understand why a picture can make you cry.

this is one of those movies that you'll enjoy in a night after a long day of boring life.


Excellent. It treats a real situation in an ambient one it last, in which the social rules or patrons do not allow to the free expression or the free development of the feelings that many do not consider normal. The performance of Ohad Knoller as Yossi is exceptional, combines to a methodical man faithful follower of the system with the tenderness and sensitivity of those who are themselves forced to hide to their feelings and identity. In addition to the film, the sound track is very good and pleases in spite of not being very well-known. Although film is short, it is excellent. The time that lasts maintains to us in expectation and the end is unexpected.


I'm still thinking about the movie two days later. What an excellent story with actors playing difficult roles. Also, great music by Ivri Leder. His album HaAnahim HaAcharim (The Other People) has the version of Bo (Come). I fell

off my seat when I heard it. After living in Israel for three years in the Eighties, the film had me yearning to go back; it captures aspects of the Israel experience so well. If you speak Hebrew and have been to Israel you will appreciate the nuance of the film.


I saw this at the Tribeca Film Festival, which coincidentally just awarded one of the stars (Ohad Knoller) a best actor award for the film.

I usually loath most gay films as there never seems to be any subject matter outside of the characters gayness.

Yossi and Jagger however is a love story of two people caught in the middle of many forces - Careers, being out, military service, authority roles, and living day to day under international hostilities. Their homosexuality, though central to the story line, is portrayed as only one aspect of their incredibly complicated lives. In other words, they are portrayed as real people living their lives that is not consumed by their sexuality even as it overshadows everything they do.

The film also firmly establishes the two leads enough that it is able to spend time developing the other characters as real people as well instead of as springboards to reflect gay jokes or innuendoes as most other gay films do.

Perhaps because this film was made outside of the US it was able to portray its protagonists as people instead of story line characterisations.

SPOILERS I also enjoyed the small joke in the film about how this was not a Hollywood movie. Even near the end when there is a "Hollywood" type moment between the two protagonists during a military ambush, the film returns to the truth with its ending that shows that not everything is about Hollywood happy endings. I particularly was touched by Yossi's nuanced statement of his relationship with Jagger to Jagger's family and the rest of his platoon by being able to answer the mother's questions of Jagger's personal favorites, and how certain characters were oblivious while others knew what was going on.


Do not be deceived - I'll start with the low points and rise to apotheosis. Do not miss this flick!

Surprisingly enough, gay men and women have been allowed to serve in the Israeli army for over 2 decades now (for very pragmatic reasons, I'm sure). The army actually authorized the making of this film, based on a true story. Eytan Fox follows up with his favorite theme of sexual identity within the ranks of the army: here we see a gay couple, two officers, whose love shares its space with an ever-escalating Israelo-Arab conflict. The movie is filmed in this army outpost in the mountains bordering Lebanon, in the middle of Winter (thus the snow, that one seldom relates to the Middle East).

The theme is ambitious. Yet, it turns out that, for commercial reasons, the movie's 65 minutes elapse too fast. There is no time to develop the story. Not the story of the conflict, not the story of the different characters - so many deeply interesting -, and especially not the story of Yossi and Jagger. And boy, would we like to know more about them! These 65 minutes may have been OK for the theatre play that staged in Tel Aviv before the movie opened, but on screen it just leaves your mouth watering for more. I wished some scenes would have been deeper and more intense (the get-together at the end, or that last key-scene at night).

Despite all this, if you can forgive small formal nuisances, and get over that irritating camera-in-hand that works for Dogma but not for Fox, this film is a must-see! For the first 30 minutes of it, I had a disbelieving smile on my lips, and really wanted to joint the Israeli army - mind you, I'm neither Jewish, nor Israeli, and they would never take me! Yet life in the barracks seems so laid-back and so easy-going , so much in contrast with the madness of the conflict, with crazy girls and sexy boys, cheesy music in Hebrew and techno parties in the mountain clusters, white snow and great landscape, wild rabbits and sushi at dinner... Provided my officers looked as cute and handsome and so-damn-sexy-and-hugable-Yehudi-Levi (Jagger), of course I would enlist.

Mild as it may seem at times, it's perhaps the most consequent movie on a gay theme that I have ever seen. No tragic queens, no dramatic depressions and people who threaten to slid their wrists open. Yossi & Jagger's love is real and palpable, even if semi-secret (I think everyone new, anyway). The actors are superb, natural-born to the task, and that shows. One can easily relate with many of the characters - people whom we forget are people, just because they are in the army, just because they are in a war. The scene where Yossi and Jagger kiss in the snow is surprising, and by far the most sensuous thing I've seen in cinema in years! Absolutely delicious, playful, teasing, masterful. A classic in the future, I'm sure! Maybe because of that particular scene, one can survive as a viewer to the end of the movie, and still feel light as a feather. It all seems to end up in a good note, in spite of the circumstances.

The film as is, is not brilliant, but is at times a strike of genius! It's also a splash in the pond, showing you the dichotomies of a society we grew to relate with war and nothing else. Yossi & Jagger is a tender, sweet, sensuous, pure, honest, scrumptious, beautiful, sexy and consequent movie. I am a fan of Eytan Fox as of tonight, no doubt about that! Watch it, watch it, watch it!!! (the extras on the DVD give you even greater insight into his work). The storyline won't leave you that soon, and the main theme-song will replay on your head for weeks to come... cheesy and queenly as it may be ('Come', by Rita)!

Watching a film like this oddly makes you feel as good as when you watched 'Amelie'! I don't say this often, but I'd be ready to watch it all over again.


I hate to say the ending is a little bit cliché, however, the movie is cliché but amazing ! I had seen another two movies of Eytan Fox and Gal Uchovsky's before this one, both are "gay theme", both are amazingly good. I said it because I didn't expect that much from the movies, I never thought they share a same rhythm of the aesthetics with me, a person from a totally different culture background. I found it easy to understand and it arouse resonance, unlike some middle east movies. It is very inspiring. I also recommend it because it is not a shallow combination of gay love and war, but a profound discussion of joy and death. And there's one more thing, very good taste of music showed in all of Eytan Fox's works, "good" here I mean "goes on very well with the movie", the overall ambiance. Specially in the last few minutes, when Yossi was watching Lior's photo in which he was dressed as a bunny rabbit, he suddenly shocked by something, Lior told him about the picture the day he died. I noticed Yossi's complicated feeling, he even smiled. At first I couldn't understand his smile when looking at the picture of his dead lover. But, gradually, I came to feel what Yossi felt, Jagger never left his life, and what we were expected to remember, was the joy that Jagger brought to us, with his passion to love and life.


This little gem may be the best news out of Israel in years. There are no politics and no ax to grind. Eytan Fox has simply given us a powerful, bittersweet love story between two soldiers in a remote outpost. It could be anywhere, in any army, at any time. It just happens to be now, and in Israel.

With great mastery, Mr. Fox put together a stunning ensemble of characters that are diverse, real, funny, and human. Outstanding are Ohad Knoller as Yossi, commander of the unit, and Yehuda Levi as his lover. Opposites attract: Yossi is a career man who has stepped out of character to love Jagger, is terrified of discovery, and reluctant to declare his love; Jagger, so nick-named because of his seductive rock star looks (Mick was sexy, but never this sweet and seraphically beautiful), is a free spirit who is beginning to demand that they live in the open. The two fight over this just before a disastrous foray into dangerous territory. Their parting will break your heart with its profound sense of lost possibilities and opportunities. One yearns for a happier ending for these two sincere, sensual, loving men.