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For a long time, President Trump\u2019s lists of favorite movies have consisted of golden age classics like \u201cGone With the Wind\u201d and tough-guy fare like \u201cThe Good, the Bad and the Ugly\u201d and \u201cBloodsport.\u201d In recent years, though, a new title has entered the mix: He\u2019s been routinely praising the 1950 noir \u201cSunset Boulevard,\u201d with various reports saying he\u2019s screened it on his private plane as well as at the White House<\/a> and Camp David.<\/p>\n What these stories mostly miss is what so enchants him about the film. Which character does Trump relate to most, do you think? Is it Gloria Swanson\u2019s Norma Desmond, the obscenely wealthy-but-faded star obsessed with comebacks and raining contempt on anyone who doesn\u2019t approach her with abject fealty and admiration? Or William Holden\u2019s Joe Gillis, the opportunistic screenwriter content to compromise his morals for a payday? Or Cecil B. DeMille, the Hollywood kingmaker whose friendly exterior disguises his determination to preserve his industry\u2019s institutional sexism?<\/p>\n The staying power of \u201cSunset,\u201d 75 years on, is due in large part to its ability to contain such multitudes. It\u2019s a movie that at once celebrates Hollywood and savagely critiques it, that\u2019s blackhearted yet sparkles with glimmers of romanticism. Critic David M. Lubin adeptly recognizes those nuances in \u201cReady for My Close-Up,\u201d his history of the film. And though the book has its shortcomings, he rightly sees the movie as a kind of passkey into the history of the first half-century of Hollywood itself, warts and all.<\/p>\n In many ways, the film was a sublimation of the career-long anxieties of its director\/co-writer, Billy Wilder, and co-star Swanson. Born in Austria-Hungary, Wilder struggled to break into Germany\u2019s silent film industry while working as a paid dancer for hire. Arriving in Hollywood in the ’30s, he soon mastered glittery Lubitsch-style meet-cutes while also embracing dark themes in films like \u201cDouble Indemnity\u201d and \u201cThe Lost Weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/b> BILLY WILDER’S 50-YEAR ITCH IN HOLLYWOOD<\/a><\/p>\n Swanson, for her part, knew all about the fading stardom that Norma symbolizes: In the ’20s she was earning $20,000 a week, but she didn\u2019t survive the rise of the talkies, and her first marriage, to actor Wallace Beery, was abusive<\/a>. The ferocity with which she delivers her classic line \u2014 \u201dI am big, it\u2019s the pictures that got small\u201d \u2014 was hard-earned.<\/p>\n Lubin is alert to the various ways that \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d doesn\u2019t just observe Old Hollywood but serves as its mausoleum. Indeed, an early cut of the film opens with a scene in the L.A. County morgue, as Joe Gillis suddenly sits up among the fellow corpses to relate his tale. (Wilder removed the scene after test audiences laughed in response to it, wrecking the film\u2019s somber vibe.) Gloom presides in Norma\u2019s mansion. The infamous \u201cwaxworks\u201d scene captures silent-era figures like Buster Keaton playing cards, their faces pure funereal alabaster. Erich von Stroheim, playing Norma\u2019s butler, ex-husband and emotional support beam, was once a giant among silent-era directors. In the film, as Lubin nicely puts it, he and Swanson \u201care the equivalent of celestial stars, whose light reaches our eyes long after they have ceased to emit it.\u201d<\/p>\n But Lubin also recognizes that while the themes of \u201cSunset\u201d are dark, it works in a variety of registers. Remove Holden\u2019s wry voice-over patter, or his flirtatious banter with an aspiring screenwriter (played by Nancy Olson), or his life-of-the-party pal (played by a pre-“Dragnet” stardom Jack Webb) and the souffl\u00e9 collapses. \u201cPart of what makes \u2018Sunset Boulevard\u2019 such a pleasure to watch is that it\u2019s always on the verge of tipping one way or another into comedy, mystery, melodrama, social satire, or horror,\u201d Lubin writes.<\/p>\n True, but Lubin doesn\u2019t engage much with a related question: Why does \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d endure now? It survives in adaptations, spoofs, pop-culture references, and, apparently, the White House screening room. But a four-page chapter titled \u201cThe Legacy of \u2018Sunset Boulevard'” hardly seems to do the matter justice. It\u2019s not only that Norma symbolizes our corrosive need for attention \u2014 \u201can archetypal figure that embodies our compulsive search for fame and acceptance,\u201d as he puts it.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/b> Directors remake ‘Sunset Blvd.,’ ‘Romeo + Juliet’ and ‘Our Town’ for a new Broadway era<\/a><\/p>\n Holden, in a voice-over, gets closer to what \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d reveals better than most movies: fear. \u201cThe plain fact was she was afraid of that world outside,\u201d he says. \u201cAfraid it would remind her that time had passed,\u201d he says. And she\u2019s not alone. He fears for the loss of status a lack of a screenplay represents. The waxworks are horror-show images of the consequences of fear of decline. Norma, fearful of her own mortality and irrelevance, papers it over with all the money and pages of her terrible screenplay she can muster.<\/p>\n And us, the audience \u2014 all those wonderful people out there in the dark, as Norma calls us, staring directly at us at the film\u2019s end \u2014 we\u2019ve found our fears captured too. The film challenges us to confront our mortality, and watching it on a giant screen offers a kind of reassurance. Look: Even the famous and powerful are mortal. It\u2019s a big picture, and for as long as it’s playing, it lets us feel big too.<\/p>\n Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of \u201cThe New Midwest.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Get the latest book news, events and more in your inbox every Saturday. <\/a><\/p>\n