Stature
In 1989, the film was among the first group of 25 deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Polls conducted by the American Film Institute have demonstrated the lasting appeal of Sunset Boulevard and the esteem in which it is held by the modern filmmakers who respond to these polls. In 1998, it was ranked number twelve on a list of "100 Greatest Films". In 2004, two quotes from Sunset Boulevard were included in their poll of "Greatest Movie Quotes": "All right, Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my close-up" and "I am big, it's the pictures that got small!" at #7 and #24 respectively. In 2005, Franz Waxman's score was named #16 of the top 25 film scores in the AFI's "100 Years of Film Scores" list.
Roger Ebert has praised the acting of Holden and von Stroheim and has described Swanson's as "one of the all time greatest performances." He says Sunset Boulevard "remains the best drama ever made about the movies because it sees through the illusions." Pauline Kael described the film as "almost too clever, but at its best in its cleverness," and also wrote that it was common to "hear Billy Wilder called the world's greatest director." When Wilder died, obituaries singled out Sunset Boulevard for comment, describing it as one of his most significant works along with Double Indemnity (1944) and Some Like it Hot (1959).
By the late 1990s, most Sunset Boulevard prints were in poor condition, and since the film was one of the last to be filmed on cellulose nitrate filmstock, much of the original negative had perished. Paramount Studios, believing the film merited the effort of a complete restoration, mounted an expensive project to have it digitally restored. The restored version was released on DVD in 2002. A 2003 BBC review of the restored film described it as "the finest movie ever made about the narcissistic hellhole that is Hollywood."
Read more about this topic: Sunset Boulevard (film)
Famous quotes containing the word stature:
“With hym ther was his sone, a yong squier,
A lovyere and a lusty bacheler,
With lokkes crulle as they were leyd in presse.
Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse.
Of his stature he was of evene lengthe,
And wonderly delyvere, and of greet strengthe.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“I imagine, on the benches of an assembly, the most intrepid of thinkers, a brilliant mind, one of those men who, when they ascend the tribune, feel it beneath them like the tripod of the oracle, suddenly grow in stature and become colossal, surpass by a head the massive appearances that mask reality, and see clearly the future over the high, frowning wall of the present.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)