Consider what this film tells us about Hollywood, about the star system, and about Hollywood's reflection on itself. How cynical or sardonic is the film's viewpoint? To what extent does it also buy into the myths it is criticizing?
Gloria Swanson, who plays Norma Desmond, was herself really a star of silent film in the 20s. And Desmond's career is based in many ways upon Swanson's. Swanson in fact worked extensively with Cecil B DeMille, and also made a film with Erich von Stroheim, who appears here as her butler and ex-husband Max. (The von Stroheim film is the one we see a sequence from when Norma watches her old films in her living room). How do these correspondences affect our view of the film?
What do you make of Joe Gillis? Why does he stay with Norma as long as he does? What are his stakes in the arrangement? What is the significance of his narrating the film, with extensive voiceovers, from after his own death?