“We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!”

The Rio Theatre‘s series of Summer Classics continues on Tuesday, August 8 with one of our favourite genres – movies about movies (and, by extension, Hollywood).

One of the greatest commentaries on ‘the biz’ comes from master filmmaker Billy Wilder, and his impeccably dark film noir SUNSET BOULEVARD. Featuring the glorious (if not perfectly cast) Gloria Swanson as the iconic Norma Desmond as a former silent film star who finds herself “aged out” of the Hollywood galaxy. Refusing to accept that her star burns dark, Desmond hires a young screenwriter named Joe Gillis (William Holden) to help secure her movie comeback. Gillis believes he can manipulate Norma – but he soon finds out he is wrong when his ambivalence about their relationship and her unwillingness to let go leads to an inescapable descent into a fantasy world of violence, madness, and death. With cameos from Cecil B. DeMille, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper,

“Arguably the greatest movie about Hollywood, Billy Wilder‘s masterpiece SUNSET BOULEVARD is a tremendously entertaining combination of noir, black comedy, and character study.” (Rotten Tomaotes)

“Still the best Hollywood movie ever made about Hollywood.” (The New York Observer)

“One of Billy Wilder‘s finest, and certainly the blackest of all Hollywood’s scab-scratching accounts of itself.” (Time Out)

Tuesday, August 8
Doors 6:00 pm | Movie 6:30 pm

Tickets $10 advance HERE | $12 at the door

*Minors OK in the balcony! Must be 19+ w/ID for bar service and main floor seating.
**Groupons and passes OK! Please redeem at the door.

SUNSET BOULEVARD (Billy Wilder, 1950 / 110 mins / G) Aging silent-film star Norma Desmond ensnares a young screenwriter in this poison-pen valentine to Hollywood.