Which 1950 film noir takes its title from a street in Hollywood?

The 1950 film noir named after a Hollywood street is Sunset Boulevard.

Directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard takes its title from Sunset Boulevard, the major road running through Hollywood and western Los Angeles. The street name gives the film an immediately recognizable geographic setting while also pointing to the movie’s subject: the glamour, decay, and self-mythology of the entertainment industry.

The story follows struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis, who becomes entangled with Norma Desmond, a former silent-film star living in isolation and dreaming of a comeback. William Holden plays Gillis, while Gloria Swanson plays Desmond. The film’s opening narration, delivered after Gillis’s death, establishes its famously cynical tone.

Sunset Boulevard is both film noir and black comedy. Its Hollywood setting distinguishes it from crime-centered noirs such as Double Indemnity, but it shares noir’s fatalism, moral compromise, shadows, and doomed narrator. The film premiered at Radio City Music Hall on August 10, 1950, and became one of Wilder’s most acclaimed works. It was also nominated for 11 Academy Awards.