Lists
- ranked 7 in WGA 101 Greatest Screenplays
- ranked 12 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
- ranked 25 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (August 2005)
- ranked 25 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time
- ranked 28 in Entertainment Weekly's 100 Greatest Movies of All Time
- ranked 28 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (December 2006)
- ranked 28 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (March 2006)
- ranked 31 in The IMDb Top 250
- ranked 45 in Paul Schrader's Film Canon
- ranked 48 in Cinema Fusion Movie Bloggers' Top 100 Movies
- ranked 52 in The Guardian Top 100 Films
- ranked 54 in BBC 100 Greatest American Films
- ranked 63 in Empire 500 Greatest Movies (2008)
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of 101^w102 Movies You Must See Before...
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies Nominees
- one of Alliance of Women Film Journalists Top 100 Films
- one of Guardian 1,000 films to see before you die
- one of Leonard Maltin's 100 "Must See" Films of the 20th Century
- one of The New York Times Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made
- one of They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 250 Quintessential Noir Films (1940-1964)
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, 10th Anniversary Edition
Perfection
Hollywood never gets tired of making films mythologizing itself, but Sunset Boulevard is the best of them. (Excepting, perhaps, , but theit approaches are so different that this movie is like that one's evil twin.)
It's tantalizingly real, in part because so much of it is. Gloria Swanson really was a silent movie actress, and had hardly worked since 1934; Erich von Stroheim had been one of the greatest directors of the 1920s, though he left it to become an actor, rather than a butler. The card players were real silent film stars, including Buster Keaton; Cecille B. DeMille plays himself. Those are Swanson's pictures on the walls, and one of her movies is the one played -- directed, incidentally, by Stroheim. It might be a false history, but it rings more true than the official story of Hollywood, which remembers the stars only so long as they don't burn out.
It's a brilliant film, with excellent performances from all concerned. See it again and again and again.