For a film so consistently lauded as a core member of the noir canon, Sunset Boulevard‘s noir credentials are dubious at best. Its crime element limited to a single gun incident which tees up the flashback structure, and its visual style making minimal use of the established noir aesthetic, especially chiaroscuro lighting, Billy Wilder’s masterpiece is a psychological drama that replaces gangsters and gun molls with the relentless tug of pride, incriminating all of Hollywood, perhaps all of American culture, as a force of moral and spiritual degradation. We all know the story by now: aging silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) hires struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) as a live-in scribbler (and quasi-gigolo) to polish the screenplay she’s written for her comeback movie, but Norma’s increasingly pathetic obsession with Joe leads to a deadly crime of passion. In a poignant yet understated role as Max, Norma’s former husband and current butler, Erich von Stroheim is brilliant and in many ways serves as the heart of the film. Where Sunset Boulevard shines as a noir specimen is in the atmosphere of decay and decrepitude that soaks Norma’s mansion, which is part Gothic castle and part junkyard, gasping for air through a neglected, swamp-like swimming pool, perfectly suitable for a discreet funeral for a chimpanzee one night shortly after Joe’s arrival. For what was probably the most sophisticated film about the film industry up to that point, Wilder recruited famed director Cecil B. DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper to play themselves while the dialogue nods to Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Alan Ladd, and Daryl Zanuck, among others.