Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed by Billy Wilder and co-written by Wilder, Charles Brackett and D. M. Marshman Jr., taking its title from the street running through Hollywood and western Los Angeles. It stars William Holden as a struggling screenwriter and Gloria Swanson as a former silent-film star who involves him in her delusional fantasy of a returning career, with Erich von Stroheim as her devoted butler. The film received eleven Academy Award nominations and won three, was named to the first group of films added to the National Film Registry in 1989, and is often ranked among the greatest American films ever made.