Sunset Blvd.—Campy or tragic?

The poster for the 1950 film "Sunset Boulevard," recently screened at the 100th anniversary of the Palace Theater.

I don't remember what movie it was, but I recently saw a scene with a bunch of guys having "Gay Movie Night," watching Sunset Boulevard and laughing. They got a chuckle out of Gloria Swanson's scenery chewing as the faded movie star Norma Desmond.

I know how gays love camp, in fact essayist Susan Sontag said they practically invented it, but I can't find anything to laugh at in Norma. In fact, I find her so ineffably sad that I want to cry. Yes, the performance is over the top, but that's how silent movie stars emoted in the days before sound.

The official photo of Cinespia. The bright area is where the movies
 are projected on the side of a Hollywood Forever mausoleum,
and movie-goers relax on blankets spread on a lawn in front of it.

Each generation of actors get more naturalistic; I think that's why today's kids find movies we adore hysterically funny. I have seen Sunset Boulevard twice with an audience, and the differences were telling. Once, it was at Cinespia, in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery with a sea of mostly young, ironic hipsters on blankets, many of them in the movie business, sipping wine and cocktails alfresco.

The other time was last week at the 100th anniversary of the Palace Theatre, presented by the Los Angeles Conservancy, of which we are members. Like most organizations dedicated to preserving history, the members are predominantly older. There was a sea of white hair and canes. The man in front of us joked that he and his wife weren't sitting in the balcony because she wasn't interested in going up there with her husband.

So my husband and I are somewhere in between: we are too old to be hipsters, but definitely don't have memories of making out in balconies (although it's a fine idea). While the first crowd had respect for Sunset Boulevard's gimlet-eyed look at show business and jokes about the plight of the Hollywood writer, they often found Norma's antics too funny not to laugh.

William Holden and Gloria Swanson
 in Norma Desmond's living room/screening room.

The Palace crowd could see the pathos of the former movie star's condition: perhaps they too had been forced out of their job by technology and innovation, or perhaps they had fallen in love with the wrong person at the wrong time. Whatever the reason, they laughed at the funny parts (of which there are many), and cried at the sad parts (oh, that was only me?).

As Joe Gillis, the young hack screenwriter who stumbles into Norma's Miss Havisham world she has created for herself, William Holden gets all the snarky lines that comment on how far gone the aging beauty really is. He says, "There's nothing tragic about being 50; not unless you try to be 25."

Gloria Swanson was exactly fifty when making this movie, and in today's world that's not considered old. We've got actresses older than 50 taking their tops off in movies. She looks great; in fact, when they tried to age her for the role with makeup to accentuate the age difference, she suggested that they use makeup to make Holden younger. Swanson argued that a woman of Norma's means and vanity wouldn't look her age. She got her way.

Gloria Swanson looking her age.

I winced when the young crowd laughed at Norma and her desperate attempt to hold on to Joe by buying him expensive gifts and plotting ridiculous schemes to reenergize her career (Playing Salome at her age? Only opera singers get away with that). Although many things have changed since the 50s, discarding women who are past their prime hasn't. Ask any longtime wife who has been replaced by their husband's 20-something secretary or coworker.

One of the best lines in Sunset Boulevard is Norma's declaration that her life is "Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark." That shared experience of being one of those people in the dark, is what keeps some of us returning to the movies time after time. Not even a home theater like Tony Soprano's, complete with popcorn machine, can beat a night out. For better or for worse, there's nothing like hearing the reactions of the people around you.

Of course, there is a lot of incivility among moviegoers, although not at conservancy screenings, or many of the theaters in Hollywood and L.A. Most of those people take their movies seriously. The conservancy puts on their Last Remaining Seats program each year and gives us an opportunity to see inside some of the glorious theaters still in existence in downtown L.A.

The interior of the Palace,
from the LA Conservancy website.

I've seen the Palace, which began its life as an Orpheum vaudeville theater, and the Million Dollar Theater.
I'm dying to get into the Los Angeles Theater, which looks like a French baroque candy box. Tickets go very fast, as you can imagine, but LA Conservancy members get to buy tickets first, making it well worth the money.

The downside for desert dwellers is that these screenings are usually on Wednesday nights, which makes getting down there after work a problem. Last year we went to see Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, one of my favorite movies of his, and it was well worth the effort.

Often, the studios will strike a new print just for the showing, as they did for Sunset Blvd. It was stunning. It was very cool to be at the Palace 100 years to the day after it opened, and the Delijani family who own it have done a fabulous job of restoration.

The Delijani family immigrated here from Iran after the shah fell in the 1970s, and saved the Palace from being destroyed back in the 1980s, according to a Los Angeles Times story. In addition to the Palace, they own the Los Angeles, State and Tower theaters and have plans to restore them all.

It's hard to imagine that there was once hundreds of theaters in LA's Broadway theater district. We should really try to preserve the handful we have left.