Sunset Boulevard (cert 12A)
Thursday 17 September 2026, 7.30pm
We are delighted to bring back classic film night at Seven Arts, starting with Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece Sunset Boulevard.
Set in Hollywood, it depicts an unsuccessful screenwriter Joe Gillis (played by William Holden), who accidentally gets to know a fading actress from the golden era of silent film, Norma Desmond (brilliantly played by Gloria Swanson). Norma wants Joe to write her screenplay for her imaginary comeback film, and Joe in effect becomes her ‘kept man’, living in her huge mansion in the Hollywood hills.
Wilder was one of the great American directors, creating films like Seven Year Itch, Stalag 17, The Apartment and Some Like It Hot, and Sunset Boulevard is full of Hollywood references, with cameos by Buster Keaton and Cecil B DeMille and countless memorable one liners (“I am big; it’s the pictures that got small”). The structure is innovative, as the film starts with a very famous swimming pool scene which in effect tells how this compelling, tragic and occasionally comic drama will end.
TICKETS: https://www.sevenleeds.co.uk/event/screen-seven-classics-sunset-boulevard/
Dir: Billy Wilder, 1950, 12A, 1hr 50mins
Start time 7.30pm. £8.
