Despite only appearing in one scene of Sunset Boulevard (1950), Norma Desmond’s pet chimp is the catalyst for tying Norma and Joe Gillis together, as well as being the first window to the unstable mind of Norma Desmond. When Joe first arrives at the mansion by chance, he is greeted by the butler Max, informing him that they expected Joe for sometime, thinking he was the undertaker they hired. Having been insisted, Joe goes upstairs to enter a fancy room; once he does his eyes dart to a small body with a cloth covering its frame, as well as a finely dressed woman. At first, he and the viewer first believe that this is the woman’s child, who has sadly passed away. The amount of wealth that is offered to Joe to give the deceased is extravagant, from having the coffin lined with material like satin. The mood Joe is in goes from confused at being mistaken to concerned as a hairy arm drops down from the cover. Despite this, the woman doesn’t seem to notice or care, continuing to discuss the terms of burying the deceased. It is at this point she unveils the cover to show the face of a deceased chimpanzee instead of a child. With this, Joe’s discomfort becomes large enough for him to reveal that he isn’t the undertaker that Norma thought he was. What is key to this change is that “several of the key tools for acting change drastically because of the emphasis in ensemble casts on formalism and audience perception.” (Ernest P90) The perception of Norma being a normal, grieving mother changes at the sight of the chimp. What the chimp symbolizes is the status and unhinged mind of Norma Desmond, as well as a symbol for Joe’s fate in the future. It is clear that Norma is willing to pour the same amount of care into a pet as others would for a child, wanting a beautiful ceremony for the dead. Despite this, her behaviour suggests that funding such a burial for a pet isn’t irregular to her, or should be in the eyes of others. The moment that Joe recognizes who Norma is, however, her attention is taken off her dead chimp. Despite him not being the undertaker that she wanted, her ego demands that Joe knows exactly what kind of actor she was. This change of attention and importance from her dead chimpanzee to her acting signifies how fragile Norma’s ego is. Most notable is how the first and final scene Joe shares with Norma is surrounded by death. First, the death of the chimpanzee and then his own death at the hands of Norma.
Works Cited
Wilder, Billy, director. Sunset Boulevard. Paramount Pictures, 1950.
Ernest Mathijs, Referential acting and the ensemble cast, Screen, Volume 52, Issue 1, Spring 2011, Pages 89–96, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjq063
Sunset Boulevard – Daily Scripts. https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/sunset_bld_3_21_49.html
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