The Bad and the Beautiful | Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas | Searing Betrayals from a Satan Incarnate...

The Bad and the Beautiful | Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas | Bad and so.......BEAUTIFUL!

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The Bad and the Be...

	The Bad and the Beautiful Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas Turner Home Ent, 2002 average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Searing Betrayals from a Satan Incarnate in Sharp Insider's Look at Hollywood Machiavellianism

Known more for his stylish MGM musicals, director Vincente Minnelli pulled out all the stops for this classic 1952 melodrama about a ruthless film producer, Jonathan Shields, who alienates all of those around him to build his fortunes and legacy in Hollywood. But this is no derivative Jackie Collins-style potboiler with cardboard cut-outs as characters. Ignited by Kirk Douglas's terrifically brutal performance as Shields, the film is incessantly watchable - similar in structure and perspective to Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane" - as the story tracks his rise to the top and fall from grace through three primary relationships - the first with Fred Amiel, a director with whom Shields partners early in their careers, the second with Georgia Lorrison, an alcoholic bit player and daughter of a Hollywood legend whom Shields grooms to become a big star, and the third with James Lee Bartlow, a writer whom Shields tries to make a screenwriter in spite of the constant interruptions by Bartlow's southern belle wife Rosemary.

Filmed in a rich black-and-white by veteran cinematographer Robert Surtees, the film is slick and penetrating at the same time, a deep-dive character study of not only Shields but the people who come to admire his tenacity and creativity only to be betrayed by his lack of character. Composer David Raksin's music perfectly underlines the emotional pull of the movie. Minnelli has assembled a great cast to embody the story. Ever resourceful with his trademark dimpled granite chin, Douglas does not make Shields a complete villain but rather an intriguingly textured opportunist. You want to hate him but thanks to Douglas's natural charisma, you can't deny how he opened the right doors for the people around him. Ideally cast as Georgia in what is likely her career-best performance, Lana Turner is surprisingly effective in what must have been quite a stretch for her meager acting talents - from pathetic drunk to clinging starlet to haughty diva.

Longtime leading man Dick Powell and familiar character actor Barry Sullivan respectively portray Bartlow and Amiel with precision and an alternating sense of brotherly obligation and resentment toward Shields. In a manner similar to the way he portrayed Ziegfeld in William Wyler's later "Funny Girl", Walter Pidgeon plays production executive Harry Pebbel with stentorian fervor. Aging matinee idol Gilbert Roland has an archetypal role as an actor who believes his own image as a Latin lover, and in a few brief scenes, Gloria Grahame fluidly captures Rosemary's purposeful flightiness and veiled frustration. You can even spot Beaver's mom Barbara Billingsley playing a frustrated costume designer scolding Georgia on the way she walks in her creation.

Minnelli has concocted some really great scenes, especially the open-ended conclusion. The best, however, has to be when Georgia finds a tawdry starlet (played acerbically by Elaine Stewart, who much later became a game show hostess) descending the stairs at Shields' mansion at which point the fur-draped Georgia flees and drives with Hollywood-style abandon in her car. While it's fun to speculate on who is playing who within Hollywood lore, e.g., Shields as the doppelganger David O. Selznick, Georgia as Diana Barrymore (daughter of John), the characterizations are so rich that the guessing game is secondary. The DVD includes an interesting 90-minute TCM documentary on Turner, who apparently led a life more scandalous and lascivious than anyone in the movie.

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Bad and so.......BEAUTIFUL!

Kirk Douglas in what I consider to be his second-best performance; the first being "Lust For Life" - his portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh. He is backed by a great cast, including Walter Pidgeon, Gloria Grahame and Lana Turner. This is one of the best movies of that entire decade.

Kirk plays a down-on-his-luck film producer. His dad was a big deal in Hollywood once and he deeply needs to fill those shoes. It's not overt how he feels, as he never got along with his father, but the man died leaving him pennies.

Kirk meets Fred, a small-time film director who believes that he and Kirk can work together and make it big, combining their talents. And that's exactly what they do. In spades!

Kirk screws him over.

Then Kirk meets Georgia. She is a drunk and a tramp playing bit parts around town and Kirk makes a star out of her. She falls in love with him and he does everything he can to make her think he loves her. Because if she didn't think so, she'd fall into darkness and be nothing. Well, when she really needs him, or wants him or whatever.....

Kirk screws her over.

Dick Powell plays James, a great writer who can't stop getting himself distracted. He and Kirk become friends and Kirk somehow puts a stop to his digressions, no matter what wife Rosemary has up her sleeves. Let's get to the point.....James gets big and before he knows it....

Kirk screws him over.

The movie is a clear indictment of the shallowness of the film business and how even when certain people get hurt by others, they will jump at the chance to continue to deal with them as long as it means success. It's clear that Kirk's character does what he does for two reasons: 1) to make a success of himself and 2) to keep the people he believes in successful so as to benefit from their successes. The film even manipulates the viewer not only in showing us Kirk's ugly actions, but showing us how well these people benefitted from them if only THEY TOO would recognize it.

Sterling film. Unreal. Some scenes are unforgettable. When Kirk and Fred come up with the idea on how to make the "Cat People" movie, it's a great scene about brainstorming. When Kirk finds the drunk Georgia and carries her to his home, he looks at her lovingly, as if to kiss her like Lancaster did that chick in "From Here To Eternity." But what he does next is a real kicker. He does the complete opposite of kissing. Then, there is the scene where Georgia comes to Kirk's house and sees him with another woman. His speech is timeless! Oscar-worthy and mind-blowing. The best part of the movie.

If I were to cast this film in a remake, it would go like this.....

John = Michael Douglas
James = Tim Robbins
Georgia = Charlize Theron
Fred = Johnathon Frakes
Rosemary = Brenda Bakke

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Val Lewton Story

Interested in Val Lewton films? They should have packed this one as an extra in the latest DVD set of Lewton's horror films for RKO. Maybe they couldn't get studio clearance, but once you get past the mumbo jumbo, THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL contains a startling sequence which closely parallels Lewton's work on his classic feature CAT PEOPLE, credited to Jacques Tourneur. In the BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, Barry Sullivan plays a Tourneur-like director, Fred Amiel, who tangles with an autocratic, costcutting producer (Jonathan Shields, played by Kirk Douglas).

Shields bullies Amiel in the studio but teaches his one important lesson about filmmaking, namely that people are more scared about what they don't see on the screen than about what they do see. CAT PEOPLE, with its languorous, enigmatic screenplay by the gay scenarist DeWitt Bodeen, was always about the offscreen anyhow, and Lewton (and his screen double, Jonathan Shields) could see that right away. BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL ultimately exposes Shields as a horrid person, especially with his callousness about what happens to Gloria Grahame and Gilbert Roland, but it attempts to balance the equation by setting him off as a filmmaker of lasting distinction. As Auden said in his contemporary poem, "In Memory of W B Yeats,"

Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.

That's my ultimate impression of THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, it takes an Audenesque and piquant view of human folly, always seeking to redress the balance by showing how one man, Kirk Douglas, might have been a bit of a dick but by God, he knew how to make movies. The only odd thing is that Lewton was barely cold in his grave (he died in March 1951, while the Minnelli film was already premiering by Christmas 1952). The sophisticated Lewton was born in the Ukraine, and MGM found a star of Russian descent to play him. OK, maybe Kirk Douglas lacked a little je ne sais quoi of sophistication, but he had the power and the Promethean fire needed for the part.

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Climbing to the Top

The Bad and the Beautiful is a commentary on Hollywood. It is considered to be a film noir because it is told in flashback with voice over and it involves imperfect characters. However, there is more of an element of soap opera than there is of film noir outside of the stereotypical pieces.

Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) is a movie mogul, a producer who like most big businessmen stepped on as many people as he could to get where he wanted to be. First was a friend, a director (Barry Sullivan) who he teams up with to make B pictures. There are obvious parallels between him and Val Lewton. Next was a woman, the daughter of a great star who feels she will never live up to his reputation (Lana Turner). Shields helps her to become a major star, but with consequence. Last is a writer (Dick Powell), a man who lived happily with his southern belle wife (Gloria Grahame) at home and stumbled upon success. Shields brought him to Hollywood to be a screenwriter for him, but also got rid of his happy distractions.

The performances are wonderful. Douglas is in top form, a slimy, manipulative man who charms his audience to like him despite all he has done. His best scenes are those with Turner, who is questionable here. She begins playing a woman whose acting isn't up to par and it seems she feels she should play everything at that stage badly. Her lines seem artificial and forced, and instead of appearing innocent, she seems whiney and melodramatic. Later, when her character learns to act and is transformed by love, Turner is wonderful! She creates a peak of intensity in each scene that never becomes boring. Perhaps she did this for effect, as it is obvious Turner was a good actress, but it does not come across as obvious. Only a person who really thought about the part would understand, and most people will not do that. Powell plays his part in a deadpan, which some people will like and some people will not. As there are many people in the world like his character, it is certainly appropriate, but it is also hard to warm up to such a person. He is however in great contrast to Douglas and Grahame, the only Oscar winning performance in the film.

There are plenty of allusions to real life movie people, but not all of them are obvious. It is fun to try to guess who is playing who and how much of the story is truth.

Also included on this DVD is a documentary about Lana Turner. It features plenty of footage with her daughter Cheryl Crane including some strange reenactments about her childhood. Also interviewed are Jackie Cooper, Robert Stack, Evie Wynn Johnson, Del Armstrong, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Rose, and Juanita Moore. Clips from her first movies, Ziegfeld Girl, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Homecoming, The Bad and the Beautiful, The Merry Widow, Peyton Place, Imitation of Like, and Madame X are shown. It talks about her husbands, friends, life in films, and the impact her daughter had on her life. It isn't outstanding, but it is a sufficient look at the actress and a great supplement for the film.

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minelli's take on hollywood is a stabbing with a butterknife

kirk douglas was still in his heel phase in vincente minellis overblown yet still entertaining take on hollywood. lana turner is misused, while barry sullivan, walter pidgeon, and dick powell give their to-be-expected adequate performances. gloria grahame won a supporting actress oscar for the type of show-off performance that embarrasses the academy years later. the movie is fun trash, but nothing near the masterpiece its adherents claim.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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