The story, set in '50s Hollywood, focuses on Norma Desmond (Gloria
Swanson), a silent-screen goddess whose pathetic belief in her own
indestructibility has turned her into a demented recluse. The crumbling
Sunset Boulevard mansion where she lives with only her butler, Max
(Erich von Stroheim) who was once her director and husband has become
her self-contained world. Norma dreams of a comeback to pictures and
she begins a relationship with Joe Gillis (William Holden), a
small-time writer who becomes her lover, that will soon end with murder
and total madness.
