Giunti Odeon presents the second event in the series organised in collaboration with the Teatro della Pergola: to coincide with  Before the Storm, written and starring Umberto Orsini, one of Billy Wilder's greatest masterpieces and one of the greatest films in the history of cinema, Sunset Boulevard, comes to the big screen. Joe Gillis (William Holden), a Hollywood screenwriter, is going through a difficult period in his career. To escape the debt collectors (he is not paying his car instalments), he ends up in an old house that seems abandoned, but is not. It is inhabited by Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a former silent film star. Joe agrees to review a terrible script that the diva is writing, dreaming of a sensational return to the set. The atmosphere in the house is gloomy, dark, almost deadly. The diva constantly screens her old films, and the guests are surviving mummies (Buster Keaton is among the regulars). A prominent figure is the butler von Mayerling (Eric von Stroheim) who, it turns out, was also Norma's first husband. The woman ends up falling in love with the young man, who in turn is in love with a colleague of his (Olson). Gillis accepts his situation as a kept man for a while, then gives in. But Norma, now mad, shoots him as he is leaving. The man falls into the swimming pool, a symbol of the things he had so desired.