Sunset Boulevard

"Maps to the Stars..." fifty-five years before David Cronenberg. No other American film reveals the image of classical Hollywood as starkly as Billy Wilder's mythic "Sunset Boulevard". Through the portrait of a former silent-film star attempting a comeback with the help of a cynical unemployed screenwriter - for her merely a tool of her obsession - the filmmakers satirize the dark sides of the myth of supreme perfection that the American film industry built throughout its existence.

The role of the deranged Norma Desmond was played by Gloria Swanson, whose career as a silent-film superstar predestined her for this part. Wilder originally considered Mae Murray, whose real fate would have been even closer to Norma's. The role was rejected before Swanson by Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, and Mae West.