Critics reviews

Aldrich crafts an edge-of-seat psychological thriller in dramatic black and white while his stars give equally great performances on opposite ends of the spectrum. Davis is all cackles and theatrics while Crawford’s acting is that of inward strife. That is, until she finds a rat on her plate.

The famously grotesque impasto of Jane’s makeup (Davis’s own invention) matches her roaring theatrical flamboyance; Blanche, plainspoken and sculpturally stark, is reduced to muddled deceptions in order to elude Jane’s clutches. With his biliously ironic images, Aldrich stares ruefully at the women’s ugly battles and sees Hollywood’s own sickness reflected in them.

Crawford's performance is both raw and withholding, mirroring her characters apprehension at opening up to a significant other at her stage in life, and then having that sort of blow up in her face. Crawford’s resilience and fragility are the elements clashing behind her visage, allowing for the raw intensity of her performance.

The film remains a compelling view of another major American city... An even more grotesque Sunset Boulevard, the film is evidence that the movie suits were willing to admit that, on some level, the city of dreams had lost its grip on the public imagination. The film is uneasy for the vulnerability it reveals about itself; it doesn’t just show the cracks, the film is _all_ cracks.

A sort of grotesque musical wallpaper, the music effectively magnifies shock and revulsion but without sufficient individuality to call attention to itself; DeVol was the anti-Bernard Herrmann. It's exactly what WHAT EVER requires. Aldrich keeps the focus squarely on Joan and Bette, the yin and yang of "has-been showbiz legends," playing Jane and Blanche, two made-up "has-been showbiz legends." Celebrity and "reality" and fiction blur together more deliciously than ever before or ever since.