It is surprising how loath film-makers have been to make films about themselves, or about the magic medium of illusion they transmit to the world. As egotistical and narcissistic as most film artists are—including the writers and directors, who are the crucial creators, of course—they have seldom dared turn their cameras on their own involuted lives or explore the cultural importance and impermanence of most of the work they do. For that reason, Sunset Boulevard … was not only rare as an invasion of a ticklish subject when it came along, but it was—and still is—the most arresting and subtly philosophical film about Hollywood that there has been. (p. 198)

Sunset Boulevard takes a long look at the past of this mesmeric medium and makes the sardonic discovery that most of its yield is vaporous and vain, that the seeming triumphant creations accomplished in one age...