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Zoetropolis: Sunset Boulevard
Zoetropolis: Sunset Boulevard
July 23 @ 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Zoetropolis begins their next America 250 filmseries sequence with Billy Wilder’s mordant, magnificent Sunset Boulevard (1950), one of Hollywood’s greatest films about Hollywood itself. Gloria Swanson gives an unforgettable performance as Norma Desmond, a forgotten silent-film star still living inside the image the movies once made of her. William Holden plays Joe Gillis, a struggling screenwriter drawn into her decaying mansion, her fantasies of return, and the dream machine that has consumed them both.
Sunset Boulevard is noir, melodrama, satire, ghost story, and self-indictment. It asks what happens when identity depends on an audience, when fame becomes a trap, and when illusion begins to feel more livable than reality. As part of our America 250 series, Zoetropolis will use the film to think about one of America’s deepest myths: the belief that the self can be remade. Is reinvention freedom? Performance? Delusion? Survival? And what happens when a culture becomes addicted to its own image? Along with the movie, enjoy a brief pre-screening introduction, a featured cocktail, and conversation afterward.
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