Sunset Boulevard (lost alternate opening from noir film; 1950)
This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its informal writing and lack of references.
Opening titles to the film (a photo of Sunset Boulevard's actual stenciled name).
Status: Lost
Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 film noir directed by Billy Wilder. The film is highly regarded as a classic, considered Billy Wilder's greatest work. The film starred famous silent film actress, Gloria Swanson, in what is now her most famous role. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 1951 Oscars ceremony but unfortunately lost. The film was one of the first batches of films to be selected for preservation by the United States Library of Congress (perhaps the highest honor a film can receive).
The version of the film that was shown to the test audiences had an entirely different opening than the version that was theatrically released. The original scene involved the main character Joe Gillis' dead body in a morgue with about a dozen or so other dead bodies. The bodies trade stories about how each one of them died. Gillis takes his turn and the main story of the film unfolds.
While Wilder thought it was one of the best things he ever filmed, when it was shown to test audiences the reaction was uproarious laughter. Understandably upset given the overall bleak, noir tone he was trying to establish, Wilder decided to go back and re-shoot the opening. It is reported to have cost Paramount Pictures $150,000, but no-one complained when they saw the revised version. The new opening, showing Gillis' dead body alone and floating in a pool, has become iconic.
Along with the original ending to another Wilder film, Double Idemnity, this is an important bit of lost moviemaking history. Fans were disappointed, when the DVD was issued, to find a 'bonus feature' of the original opening consisting only of snippets of the original script and the surviving outtake shots. The completed opening was only ever shown to test audiences, and little is known about what became of it.