Way Over the Edge

Don't you just love a good full-circle ending? In Sunset Boulevard, we end where we began—at the scene of Joe Gillis's eerie murder.

The dead man has narrated the story of his own tragic demise from beginning to end, when the cops are fishing him out of Norma Desmond's pool. (She's murdered him to prevent him from leaving her.) But the deceased Joe sticks with the narrative long enough to witness Norma's final phase of pure craziness, which is how the movie really ends.

After killing Joe, Norma suffers a total break with reality. She was already pretty batty in the first place, but this really pushes her over the edge. Cops, reporters, and gossip columnists swarm the house. She sits combing her hair and looking in the mirror, remaining silent while the investigating officers try to ask her questions. It's all very eerie.

And then, it gets even worse.

When she hears that the news camera crews have arrived, she thinks that she's actually making her movie, Salomé, and that Cecil B. DeMille is actually there to direct it. She descends the staircase, believing she's playing the role of the princess Salomé, before saying that she's too happy to continue with the scene. Meanwhile, her servant Max—who directed her earliest movies and used to be her husband—has commandeered the camera crews, playing along with her delusion and pretending to direct her.

Grimly Inevitable

In the movie's final lines, Norma tells everyone in the room:

NORMA: I can't go on with the scene. I'm too happy. Do you mind, Mr. DeMille, if I say a few words? Thank you. I just want to tell you how happy I am to be back in the studio making a picture again. You don't know how much I've missed all of you. And I promise you I'll never desert you again because after Salome we'll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!... All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up. 

After she recites these lines, she moves toward the camera for that very close-up and we can see the true insanity shining in her eyes. Seriously: nightmares for weeks.

Really, this is just the logical conclusion of everything Norma's done. It's the way she's behaved for years. She's feasted on her own image and indulged her own celebrity for so long that, finally, after killing Joe, the whole world becomes one with her fantasy.

All that exists for her is her own celebrity, her own idea of greatness. She oh-so-conveniently ignores everything that contradicts this, like the cops asking her about killing Joe. As the movie closes, the director, Wilder, presents us with the ultimate result of our own obsession with celebrity—something sad, unnerving, and uncomfortably amusing (a little)—the ridiculousness of pure narcissism.