Sunset Boulevard

Actress Norma tells writer Joe, "I am big. It's the pictures that got small." (0:16)

Butler Max tells Joe that a maharaja came all the way from India to get one of Norma's silk stockings then used it to strangle himself. (0:25)

Max tells Joe, "Madame has moments of melancholy. There have been some attempts at suicide... no sleeping pills, no razor blades. We shut off the gas in her bedroom." (0:39)

Max tells Joe, "Madame got the razor blade from your room, and she cut her wrists." (0:51)

Joe finds Norma lying in bed, both wrists in bandages and repeats the newspaper headlines he imagines, "Great Star Kills Herself for Unknown Writer." She responds, "I'll do it again." And repeats herself twice more. (0:53)

Norma tells Joe, "I bought myself a revolver. I did. I did. I stood in front of that mirror, but I couldn't make myself do it." (1:33)

Joe tells the actress, "You'd be killing yourself to an empty house." (1:41)

Even before she shoots and kills Joe, Norma appears distracted. (1:42) Joe speculates about her using a "temporary insanity" defense in court. (1:44) Hedda Hopper describes the star as in a state of "state of complete mental shock." (1:45) Norma appears deluded as she orders Max to "Tell Mr. DeMille I'll be on the set at once." Even before she exposes herself to the trauma of killing Joe Norma appears ignore evidence of reality. Does this constitute delusion or just denial? In the moments after she kills Joe she expresses no grief or remorse. Ultimately does she suffer from traumatic dissociation?

References in Be Cool, Carol, The Dressmaker (2015)