I was about to cancel and indulge in an evening at home full of spectacular acts of grumpiness, but then I thought better of it. Watched as part of a program curated by Gaspar Noé for Picturehouse at the end of a day of shit, I can definitely say it had a pleasant if temporary numbing effect on my battered nerves.
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Renzo Piano once said that when an architect makes a mistake, he or she does it for a long time. This note has been stuck in my mind ever since, somehow placing itself closer to cinema than it was indeed intended to be. Sunset Boulevard is like an old building perfectly constructed, that has no mistakes to carry to these days, but its heartbreaking glory as a film, its dramatic ambitions, and candid sense of humanity. There is no such thing as ageing for a great work of art. Like many of its era, Sunset Boulevard seems to have been shot with that confidence flowing in its steaming veins of celluloid.