The reality of life is one thing, and the reality of life imagined by Hollywood—meaning the movies of Hollywood—is a different thing, and sometimes it's easier to see the reality of life in something that isn't real. Take Sunset Boulevard, a movie from 1950 directed by Billy Wilder, a German émigré living in Los Angeles. In the movie, William Holden plays Joe Gillis, a scriptwriter living in Los Angeles, and in an early scene we see him in his tiny apartment sitting on his bed typing on an old Underwood typewriter. Shadows are falling across his apartment wall, and because his scripts aren't selling, when he hears his doorbell ring he knows what's happening. He owes money on his car and the lending company, in the form of two central-casting tough guys, have come to either get the money or get the car. To avoid them he sneaks out to a shoeshine parking lot, gets in his car, and as he drives away on Sunset Boulevard the henchmen pursue him. The chase leads them through parts of Los Angeles that are still topographically recognizable, and in this respect the movie is a kind of momento mori, or maybe just momento, a cultural momento of Los Angeles from another time. William Holden is speeding along, and at a certain point his tire blows and he makes a sharp turn into a driveway that leads to an old, seemingly abandoned mansion. The henchmen lose his trail. We see their black sedan drive past the entrance, and the soundtrack, which was frantic before, now changes to something more settled and somber. He can relax now, that's the point, and when he does he notices an empty swimming pool in front of the mansion. He's standing near the pool when a voice calls out to him to come upstairs. The voice is the voice of Gloria Swanson, a silent movie star from the 1920s, playing Norma Desmond, a silent movie star of the 1920s. She's in the process of conducting a funeral for a pet monkey and she thinks William Holden is the monkey undertaker. And yes, it's bizarre, but somehow as the beginning of this particular movie, it doesn't seem that strange.

The aesthetic of Sunset Boulevard is part of a larger aesthetic that was hovering in the air; it was hovering over Hollywood and therefore over much of the world. The movie was shot in black and white, and the shadows that fell across the apartment wall were part of the film noir style that was brought from Germany and transplanted in Los Angeles. In 1944 Wilder made what is probably a purer version of film noir: Double Indemnity. It's also a momento of Los Angeles; the house where the movie was shot is still there, not that far from my house, in Los Feliz or Silverlake. Wilder wrote the movie with Raymond Chandler, and although Chandler didn't write Sunset Boulevard, both movies are part of what I call the Raymond Chandler aesthetic. Both films embody the post-war cynicism that was hovering in the air, both films deal with femme fatales, and in both films a Raymond Chandler character is trying to change his situation.

Double Indemnity is about the attraction of a man and a woman and what happens after they murder the woman's husband. In the beginning all they see is paradise, but once they get to paradise they get trapped. I like the scene early on, when Fred McMurray and Barbara Stanwyck are feeling the attraction. Their bantering becomes more provocative and more erotic, and at a certain point she tells him, "There's a speed limit in this state. 45 miles per hour."

"How fast was I going, Officer?"

"I'd say about 90."

"Suppose you get down off that motorcycle and give me a ticket."

"Suppose I give you a warning instead."

"Suppose it doesn't take."

The talk is Raymond Chandler talk, and although Fred McMurray sounds hard boiled, beneath his shell he's a moralist, and by that I mean, he knows what he ought to do but can't quite seem to do it.

Raymond Chandler was born in the United States, but he was schooled in England, and he looked at Los Angeles with eyes that weren't completely American. He was a writer of detective stories who hated detective stories, a drinker who wanted to stop drinking, and he saw the both the post-war optimism and the post-war insecurity beneath it.

In Sunset Boulevard, the William Holden character is basically a good guy. He's weak, but still, a morally responsible everyman who just happens to be down on his luck, and by down on his luck I mean he feels a generalized insecurity. There's a threat to him. It's not a huge threat; the henchmen probably weren't going to kill him, but as he says, losing a car in Los Angeles is like getting your legs cut off. So his situation is partially about the threat and partially about what's proffered to remedy that threat. What Holden finds in that seemingly abandoned mansion is a life of a certain ease, a life deluxe. And it's handy in the beginning. He needs a little protection so he stays a few days, and a few days turn into a few weeks, and without any overt decision on his part, the Gloria Swanson character begins feeding him and buying him clothes and putting her Italian touring car, an Isotta Fraschini, at his disposal.

The main thing was, he was safe. He didn't care about solid gold cigarette cases. It was the comfort and safety that seduced him. This was 1950. The war was over, the GIs were home, the factories had been humming, and although hundred of thousands of people had been killed, the killing took place far away, in Europe.

What did Americans know about safety, or the need for safety? America—meaning the United States—was basically an innocent country, but now American soldiers were passing out cigarettes to [European] orphans. Power was suddenly transplanted to a culture that wasn't used to power, that didn't have the experience of power, and for this reason it seemed like a possible utopia. It must have seemed like that to Billy Wilder. His family would die in the concentration camps, and he came to Los Angeles partly because other émigrés were already here, touting the Italian climate, and partly because it was safe.

Europe had been the land of Mozart and Guttenburg, the center of civilization, and when the center didn't hold, although the émigrés (Brecht, Wilder, Shoenburg, etc.) were not all Jews, they all had a common need to escape. Like William Holden they needed to escape the hovering threat. And my point is not about the fact of that escape but the seduction of the hiding place.

Los Angeles was a paradise, a land of sun and flowers and limes growing on trees. And although the abundance must have been intoxicating, there was one émigré who never felt completely at home. Bertolt Brecht saw that money had already corrupted any utopia that might have existed. Like William Holden he realized that comfort had a price. He found it difficult to protest in a land of abundance and sunshine and his reaction was to leave the country. At a certain point in Sunset Boulevard William Holden is ready to leave Gloria Swanson. He's had about enough and he wants to get on with his life, but he's "asked" to ignore that life [and the facts of that life] and live in a dream. Her dream. Her nostalgic dream of a Hollywoodland of the past. And I say "asked" in quotes because how can you refuse a benefactor who's paying the bills? How can William Holden ignore his own desire for safety and comfort, and also the stronger desires of another person? Like many people, he's against corruption in principle, but if a little corruption would make his own life easier .... He tells himself, it's only temporary, that he's only temporarily rewriting her ridiculous movie and obediently watching her outdated Charlie Chaplin imitations. He tells himself he's going to leave but he never does. And of course she's falling in love with him. He's a part of her grand pathetic creation. Aside from him, her only contact with the world is through Max, her chauffeur and also ex-husband, an obscure German film director played by the great German film director, Erich von Stroheim.So two things are going on for William Holden, the fear (of the repo people) and the comfort (of being taken care of). Both things are making him literally a kept man, kept in the house, away from his writing and his possible career, and the scene I want to look at, the scene ... actually I was coming out of the YMCA near Ivar, just down from Hollywood Boulevard, and they have a television set mounted above a door and as I was walking out Sunset Boulevard was playing, and it was this one particular scene, a two-shot of Bill Holden and Gloria Swanson, both dressed to the nines, or the sixes. Anyway they're dressed up, in formal attire, and Gloria Swanson remembers that she's left her cigarettes back at the house. Holden offers her one of his but she makes some derogatory statement about the brand he smokes, that she can't stand them. He volunteers to buy her some of her own brand but since he doesn't have any money of his own he has to wait while she reaches into her purse. It's already clear, but this makes it deadly clear, that they aren't equals. She's in love with him but she also employs him, and it's a delicate difference between the two. Either way he's a gigolo, and when she says something like, Be a dear, and then tells Von Stroheim to pull up at the drug store—which incidentally is Schwabs drug store, famous in that era as a place where actresses waited to be discovered—of course William Holden takes her money. She has plenty, and without even looking at him she holds out a bill, a large bill probably, it doesn't matter. He knows what it means, that he's sucking at her teat, or if that's too much, that he's enjoying the fruit of no labor, and the price of that fruit is the surrender of his life. He's hiding from his life, he knows that. But still he takes the money and goes into the drugstore. That's where he sees the girl, the wide-eyed, idealistic script-girl—the kind of character that doesn't exist anymore—and she asks him how his story is coming. She's read his script and thinks it has potential. Which gets him thinking. About his life. He begins thinking about how he might get free of a situation in which he's found a certain safety, but lost any connection, both to himself and what matters to him.

Billy Wilder originally didn't want William Holden to play the part in Sunset Boulevard. He would have preferred his old friend, Cary Grant, but Cary Grant would have taken the ordeal and made it funny. He would have charmed his way to happiness. With Holden, there's a kind of resignation, an acceptance of defeat. He surrenders to the sway of Gloria Swanson with very little protest. But he never completely lets go of his other life. He manages to keep a thread to that life, a life that includes a girl and a script, and a vestige of a failed dream.

One night, he and Gloria Swanson are driving through the city. He was dressed in his elegant suit (that she bought) looking at a watch (that she bought) not even noticing through the car window the various streets they were passing, and the stores, and the lights of the stores, and the headlights of cars. He was resigned to be inside the open box of the elegant sedan. There was another world beyond the box, a world beyond the reach of Gloria Swanson, but it wasn't his world anymore. His world was safely sitting in the passenger seat, protected from the darkness surrounding him.

Until she asks him to buy her some cigarettes. She carelessly passes him some money, and with it he goes into Schwabs, meets the script-girl who wants to help him with his story, and after that he starts sneaking away. He begins working, with the girl, on a narrative he actually cares about. He comes to life, but it's too late. Plus, it's a secret life, so it can't go on. He knows that. He knows in the end it will probably kill him, but for the moment he doesn't care.