Breaching the frame: Psychoanalysis and sunset boulevard

Abstract

Sunset Boulevard is a film that breaches the frames that cinema has conventionally used. It playfully satirises Hollywood with its silent era, its glossy nostalgia, its mystique that conceals its brittle cynicism. Norma Desmond is satirised but she is also the means by which Hollywood stands exposed. In many ways, the audience like Joe Gillis thinks they are in on the joke, till it turns against them. This paper argues that we can read this as a cautionary tale for psychoanalysts as we enter into an analysis of the patient, only to discover that we have been recruited into a world that never was in our control.