Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: "Sunset Boulevard:Ready for its close-up"
1. "It's a Hollywood Story"
2. "It Happened in Hollywood!"
3. "It's a Great Motion Picture!"
Conclusion; "Is Hollywood the City of Dreams...or Heartbreak?"
Notes
Credits

Promotional Information

Steven Cohan's study of Billy Wilder's 1950 noir classic Sunset Boulevard examines the film's production history and visual style and its status as a Hollywood film about Hollywood

About the Author

Steven Cohan is Dean's Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Syracuse University, USA and was the former President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies from 2015–2017. His books include Some Like It Hot (BFI Film Classics, 2025), Hollywood by Hollywood: The Backstudio Picture and the Mystique of Making Movies (2018), The Sound of Musicals (BFI 2010), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (BFI TV Classics, 2008) and Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and the MGM Musical (2005).

Reviews

Steven Cohan has produced a well-researched guide to the film’s production and its various visual quotations. Replete with a wealth of stills, it serves the purpose of an expert companion, leading the casual viewer through the richness of Wilder’s bittersweet paean to the film industry.
*Times Literary Supplement*

Steven Cohan has given us a useful, blow-by-blow account of the making of the greatest Hollywood film about Hollywood, plus intelligent critical analysis of the many arts and crafts involved in the production of a classic.
*James Naremore, University of Indiana, USA*

Cohan offers a highly animated, wonderfully rich, and thoroughly engaging reappraisal of Billy Wilder’s landmark film, combining a meticulous reconstruction of its production history, a probing formal and contextual analysis of the picture, and an equally convincing account of its enduring legacy.
*Noah Isenberg, University of Texas at Austin, USA*

[Cohan’s] book … maintains the estimable quality standards of the BFI series. Sunset Boulevard is a salutary and brilliant reminder that filmmaking is usually a collective enterprise rather than the lonely product of one auteur.
*Journal of American Culture*