Adept ... Though the book has its shortcomings, he rightly sees the movie as a kind of passkey into the history of the first half-century of Hollywood itself, warts and all ... Lubin is alert to the various ways that Sunset Boulevard doesn’t just observe Old Hollywood but serves as its mausoleum.
For anyone fascinated by Hollywood’s beginnings or Billy Wilder’s body of work, this heavily researched yet never dense page-turner is an essential addition to any film fanatic’s bookshelf.