The Bad and the Beautiful

source: The Bad and the Beautiful

This movie must have been dated even when it was originally released in 1952. A great cast and a story concept that has so much potential is turned into a melodramatic soap opera. The characters are turned into caricatures of supposed hollywood denizens that are so stereotypical and one dimensional as to become laughable. How Gloria Graham won an Oscar for such a minor role also totally escapes me. Skip this one and view "Sunset Boulevard" or even "Ed Wood" if you want a quality movie based on movie lore.

"The Bad and the Beautiful" takes a look at Hollywood. This incisive take about how movies are made, directed by Vincente Minnelli, dares to go behind the scenes to show what goes on in the way the film industry operates. The film adaptation by Charles Schnee gives us a good idea of that unreal world of fantasy and hype. At the center of the story is Jonathan Shields, a young man with connections to the industry. He wants to follow his father's footsteps and goes at it vigorously, making friends and enemies along the way. Jonathan discovers he can be ruthless whenever he wants. His first victim is Fred Amiel, the talented director who Jonathan bypasses in favor of a more established one. Jonathan quickly forgets the friendship Fred and his wife showed him before becoming a big producer. Then there is there is Georgia Larrion, the boozy daughter of a famous actor. Jonathan shows how he wants Georgia to succeed in the business, personally taking care of selling her to star in his big project, only to betray her with another woman, a glamorous bit player. When Georgia discovers the truth, she flees Jonathan's mansion in a clear night that suddenly turns into a torrential downpour and loses control of the car, but she doesn't suffer a scratch! The last victim of Mr. Shields is the Pulitzer prize winner, James Lee Bartlow, who Jonathan coaxes into leaving his academic life to adapt his own novel for the movies. James is married to the flighty Rosemary, in whom Jonathan discovers a weak link that will do anything to hobnob with the celebrities. Jonathan makes it easy for Rosemary to fall into an affair with the star of Shields' film. When we first watched this film, it seemed much better, than on this viewing where a lot of things surface to make some of the story much weaker than before. Some viewers have compared this film with the fate of Orson Welles in Hollywood, and there are a couple of references that could be interpreted that way. Whether it was so, or not, it's up to the viewer to guess where the truth lies. Kirk Douglas gave a strong performance as Jonathan Shields. Mr. Douglas showed he clearly understood who this man was. He runs away with the film, in our humble opinion. Lana Turner, a beautiful presence in any movie, is good, but at times she appears to be overwhelmed by the range of emotions she has to project, especially with that phony car scene. Dick Powell and Gloria Graham put in an excellent appearance as the Bartlows. Barry Sullivan disappears after Lana shows up, not to be seen until the end. Walter Pigeon is effective as the studio head. Gilbert Roland is perfect as Gaucho, the Latin actor with a lot of charisma. Mr. Minnelli shows he wasn't afraid to portray the industry the way we see it in the film, not a small accomplishment, knowing well how it could have backfired on him. Hollywood is not forgiving to those who dare to show its ugly side and that's when the parallel with Orson Welles problems with the system and eventual exile can be drawn.

A bit of a soap opera, this film was divided into three segments as people recalled their experiences with "Jonathan Shields," played well by Kirk Douglas. "Shields" was a guy interested in making movies and he used people to get to the top. Three of these people tell of their dealings with him, and none of them have too many good things to say. I liked the first and third segments but didn't care for the middle one with Lana Turner simply because Turner became so melodramatic, too hysterical for me. Barry Sullivan was excellent in the first part and helped get me into the story. He was the director who got "screwed" by Douglas. Turner was the unknown actress whom Douglas turned into a star while the last part dealt with the key screenwriter for Douglas, played by Dick Powell. I thought Powell was the best of the four main characters of the film but his segment was the shortest, unfortunately. As good as he was, his wife was equally as annoying. She was played by the normally entertaining and alluring Gloria Grahame, who was anything but that in this role. She sounded ludicrous with her fake southern accent. How she won an Academy Award for this role is mind- boggling. Some classify this movie as film noir, but I dispute that. It's simply a straight drama with soapish overtones. It's well-written, however, and keeps one's interest all the way, so I am not knocking this movie. It has a good things going for it.

This movie is actually a very high quality soap opera. The story is better, as is the acting and direction, but still down deep this is a soap. Now this isn't meant as a criticism, but this is more a description of all the plot twists and betrayals--sort of like a season of a typical soap squeezed into one movie. Kirk Douglas does a really good job of portraying a sociopathic user--a Hollywood big-shot who stomps on all his friends and enemies alike in order to get ahead. He is the major star and focus of the film, despite it having a very strong supporting cast. After you see this film, try to find the sequel, TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN. While it isn't quite as good, it's still an excellent film and shows what happens to people like Kirk once their star has faded.

Vincente Minnelli's virtuoso investigation of how Hollywood works, going behind the scenes and into the characters of a film star, a script writer, a director and a producer, with Walter Pidgeon as the ultimate executive producer making all the final decisions, is a fascinating web of psychology; and the most fascinating character is the villain, the producer Kirk Douglas. When you look deep into his demeanour and how he works, you really can't blame him. You understand why everyone hates him and wants nothing to do with him, but like his three major victims in the end they just can't keep themselves from nevertheless following him, lost for life in a permanent fascination of his possessed genius. Yes, he lets his best friend down, but so did almost everyone in Hollywood. He betrays Lana Turner after having saved her and made her a film star, the treason is atrocious, but he just couldn't help it. And his guilt in the loss of his script writer Dick Powell's wife is very arguable indeed. It was an unintentional accident, yes, he made Gaucho go away with her, he even tried to persuade Gaucho not to use that plane, and there is no tenable case. And the executive producer Walter Pidgeon is the one who never deserts him, always is ready to start again from the beginning and to try the impossible to raise new money for Kirk's new film against impossible odds - the end is the best, as no query is resolved, and you are left hanging in the air, with the one remaining thing, the fascination by the impossible and incurable genius. It's a masterpiece of dissection of how Hollywood works, and it will leave you somewhat disillusioned - is Hollywood really just such an inhuman and monstrous soap bubble of only vainglorious vanity?

Yes, awful...and I love older classic movies, but this one is an overwrought drama queen who has no talent, but spends a lot of money to get us to look at her. It's the Paris Hilton/Britney spears of 1952, which admittedly was a bad year for movies, but this one is so what movies should not be. Winner of 5 academy awards, while some of the greatest movies ever made are ignored...it represents the worst of what Hollywood can throw money at and turn into an over budgeted, overacted, overnotsoonenough bore. Perhaps it could be watched for a hoot, but this is far from Lana Turner's best performance and far from being anything other than a B movie starlet dressed up a for screen-test where everybody but the director recognizes she can't act, but the movie got the part (oscar) anyway, and the only people who got screwed were the audience. If you liked this movie, I know a President you probably voted for in 2000 and 2004, and he won a contest he didn't deserve to win as well. One of the worst wastes of money I've ever watched. Everyone in it did something better some other time for which they deserve more praise and attention.

Over the last couple of years,there has been a lot of praise about "The Bad and the Beautiful",a 1952 melodrama about a hated Hollywood producer. Many critics say the film is a captivating and realistic look at what goes on behind-the-scenes in Hollywood.When I read comments like these and heard it had a cast that included:Kirk Douglas,Lana Turner,Walter Pidgeon,Dick Powell,and Gloria Grahame,I decided to watch it when it came on TCM(Turner Classic Movies)three months ago.The film tells the story of a studio executive(Pidgeon)of Sheilds Pictures,trying to convince three celebrities:an actress(Turner),a director(Barry Sullivan),and a playwright(Powell),to do a film with a greedy producer(Douglas),whom they all greatly despise.To show the audience why they hate this producer,there are three flashbacks.The film starts out very promising,but then just goes into pure boredom.The plot,itself,is fascinating,and if the film would have been done differently,it could've have been great.The flashbacks are extremely slow-moving,and you don't see the terrible things Kirk Douglas does until the very end of each of them.There isn't much detail about them,either. Because the script doesn't have much depth to it,the performers can't breathe life into story. I'll never understand how Gloria Grahame won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for playing Dick Powell's cheap,Southern wife. She's only in the film for ten minutes,if that long,and doesn't bring a real impact to the story.You also don't see her flirting with men,there is only talk of it.I can't believe Vincent Minelli,the brilliant director of "Meet Me in St. Louis","Undercurrent",and "Lust for Life",could direct this misfire.

This glossy, trashy soap opera of a movie has won all sorts of accolades and an idolatrous fan base, but its appeal is lost on me. It's filmed in chilly black and white, giving it the patina of an art film, but if this were filmed in blazing Technicolor, it wouldn't be any more distinguished than a heap of other 50s sudsers, like "Peyton Place" or "The Best of Everything." Vincente Minellis proved that he could do shadowy melodramas as well as colorful musicals, but his direction is still fairly anonymous. The pacing of the film itself, with its rigid flashback structure, is monotonous, and it's much too long. I get a kick out of Gloria Grahame in whatever she's in, so she was a welcome addition to the cast, but she's in the film for maybe ten minutes late into its running time, and I was too numbed by indifference by the time she appeared to regain interest. Dick Powell is the only other actor I really remember, mostly because his dry, cynical writer character was so far removed from the bouncy, googly-eyed boy-next-door roles he played in all of the Warners musicals. Grade: C+

A story of betrayals and misunderstandings in the festering underbelly of Hollywood; this is Vincente Minnelli's cool expose of the workings of a producer (Kirk Douglas, as one of the movies' great detestable characters) and the effect he has on those who come into contact with him: a director who feels abandoned yet goes on to produce his greatest work (Barry Sullivan); an actress who is rescued from semi-alcoholism and turned into a star (Lana Turner, in one of her trademark parts); and a prize-winning novelist who is uprooted to shape his book for the screen (Dick Powell, in one of his last film roles before moving into television and film directing). We see their stories in a series of flashbacks, linked by the three enemies of Douglas coming together in the office of studio biggie Walter Pidgeon – who coolly reminds them of the good things the producer brought to their lives along with the bad. There are other good performers in smaller roles – Gloria Grahame as Powell's twittery wife, Gilbert Roland as the Latin temptation, and so on. ‘The Bad and the Beautiful', filmed in good old black and white, has plenty of meat to keep you watching. Only the slightly twee ending lets it down, but you can't have everything.