AFI's 100 films: Sunset Boulevard

It's been so long since I visited this thread of my blog--which ideally is about all media, and not just books--that I went back and read previous entries. In my discussion of On the Waterfront, I touched on what I think makes a nice framework for this sort of discussion, namely the question of what makes a film great. Waterfront certainly has great elements, especially Brando's performance, but also Kazan's direction. Nonetheless, I left that movie without the feeling that it was great--that there were great elements, but that the finished product did not live up to the adjective.

The same is not true of Sunset Boulevard. Like Waterfront, it featured an unmistakably great performance. Swanson was masterful, and her performance has become a metaphor as much as the character herself has. Unlike Waterfront, I didn't find anything extraordinary about Wilder's direction. So if not direction or acting, what other element is present in the one but not the other that results in, to me at least, a truly great movie?

Assuming that such relatively minor elements as costumes and sets have little to do with the matter, I think it safe to say that the key difference between the two movies is the script. Waterfront was successful in spite of it's maudlin, pandering script, thanks to the presence of other greatness. Sunset may well have succeeded on the strength of its acting, even if the script were not so good--but the script is brilliant, rightfully claiming the Academy Award that year. Wilder et al. tread the line between melodrama and touching believability deftly, which gives Swanson free reign to take her character as far as she can. If the script were less human, she would have had to walk that dangerous line herself. Such over-the-top moments as Norma's tango are cunningly offset by such real ones as Betty's nose job, and the whole thing deserves the honor of being read, as well as watched.

I suppose it's no surprise that, to such a vetted English major as I am, the script is the non plus ultra of a movie. The real test, if one were being scientific about it, would be to find a movie that a great script, but terrible direction and acting. Would such a movie have a chance at release even?