A tale narrated by a dead man, Sunset Blvd. is a brilliantly sardonic look at Hollywood and at the baroqueness of the Germanic influence in American cinema. Billy Wilder, who was born in Vienna and wrote scripts in Berlin before emigrating, was never trapped by Germanness. Rather, as the actor Paul Henreid observed, "Wilder was an infinitely talented bad boy who brought everything he had learned in Berlin with him (and gave) it an American translation, an extremely successful translation." But in Sunset Blvd. he toys with Hollywood's own hold on the emigré artist. William Holden's Joe, an "exile" in LA (that is, his car has broken down), finds refuge in the mansion of aging actress Norma (Gloria Swanson). In between Norma's festering need to re-emerge as a star and Joe's scarce resources as a screenwriter lies a movie industry that exploits the very lifeblood of those around it. Wilder snuffs the very sun above Los Angeles, transforming this bright place of swaying palms into a dusky, threatening locale. Joe's noirish cynicism is a fitting complement, but it is nothing against the power of Norma's lived dream.