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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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The Best About The Corrupton of Hollywood For Its Time!
The dvd you are about to watch was way ahead of its time in 1952. Movie portrays the seedy side of Hollywood. Kirk Douglas does an excellent performance of playing Jonathan Shields, who doesn't care who he hurts to get his way. In the process, he cheats his best friend, uses a girl by pretending that he is in love with her, and he causes a writer to lose his wife in an adultery rated plane crash. Opening scene is quite effective and gives great strength to the ending. Big stars for their day starred in this movie: Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame, who won best supporting actress, and Gilbert Roland. However, this is clearly Kirk Douglas's movie. Enjoy with a friend.
Side B: Lana Turner...A Daughter's Memoir, this is an excellent touching documentary narrated by Robert Wagner, voice only and interviewed through out by Cheryl Crane, Lana's daughter. There is some very rare footage, a must for Lana fans. However, documentary portrays the sad side lonely childhood Cheryl Crane had growing up without her mother being around. Cheryl grew up being supervised by her nanny and grandmother, while her mother was off making movies and running off with some man. The painful child molestation by Lex Barker to Cheryl is mentioned. The notorious Johnny Stompanato murder case is mentioned in great detail with rare footage of Lana in the court room. Documentary is very candid and portrays Cheryl as a down to earth candid person. This is her show. Documentary shows the loneliness of Hollywood children. This is a must for your Lana collecton but doesn't show Lana in a good light.
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The Bad and the Beautiful
One of my favorite movies about Hollywood, this sharp, stylized melodrama gets top-flight treatment from director Minnelli. Featuring a powerhouse cast--Douglas, Turner, Dick Powell, Walter Pidgeon, Barry Sullivan, and a personal favorite, Gloria Grahame--this scathing look at the inner workings of Tinseltown is a Hollywood voyeur's dream. The intense, Oscar-winning "Bad" will keep you glued to the final credits.
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Hollywood's finest effort to illustrate the Jekyll and Hyde quality of many of its most famous producers...
These men knew their business, helped artists realize their talents, and made money for their studios, but many less powerful people were hurt or crushed along the way... The ensemble acting breathes life into this theme and makes an already realistic script seem that much more real...
From its opening shot to the final fadeout, "The Bad and the Beautiful" is a harvest of riches for movie fans who dote on behind-the-scenes atmosphere and all the other elements of the movie world...
The sound stages, the dressing rooms, the Beverly Hills mansions; the "B" pictures in the making, the screen tests, the sneak previews; the Hollywood funeral, the Hollywood party, the Hollywood premiere--all were on display in what is probably the most detailed study of the dream factory ever presented on film...
The film is filled with magnificent characters and set-pieces... Minnelli directed it with exact pacing, shading the scenes and developing the complicated stories and characters so that they neatly fitted into a fascinating puzzle... Technically, the picture is perfection; the dialog is compelling and the settings are particularly interesting to those who are curious about Hollywood studios and how they function... The music score by David Raksin is a masterpiece of its kind...
The casting is almost beyond questioning: Pigeon and Sullivan are exactly right as the producer and the director, and Dick Powell strikes the right key as the easy-going, pipe smoking writer...Lana Turner, then at the height of her glamorous appeal, clearly knew what she was about in painting a movie queen, and Gloria Grahame won an Oscar for her pretty but intelligent young wife...
For Kirk Douglas it was a tour de force acting... The role of Jonathan Shields is one of the most stimulating ever handed a Hollywood actor--not only as a distinguished, dramatic vehicle but as an opportunity to reveal the character of the kind of film producer actors know but do not love...
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It could have been much better
`The Bad And The Beautiful' (1952) was directed by Vincente Minnelli between two of his greatest and best loved musicals `The Bandwagon' (1951) and `An American In Paris' (1953). He had directed other great films such as `Meet Me In St. Louis' (1944) and `Father Of The Bride' (1950) before attempting his dramatic take on the Hollywood Studio system. Making films about Hollywood was nothing new when Minnelli made `The Bad And the Beautiful'. Only a couple years earlier there was `All About Eve' (1950), `Sunset Boulevard' (1950) and `A Star Is Born' in 1937. This may be part of the reason why this film is not so highly regarded, however there are other reasons too.
The fact that `The Bad And The Beautiful' is regarded as film noir probably has more to do with the cast which featured: Lana Turner (The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946); Kirk Douglas (Out Of The Past, 1947); Dick Powell (Farewell My Lovely, 1944) Gloria Grahame (The Big Heat, 1953) all of whom had starred important noir pictures. Structurally the film is comprised of three flashbacks and uses voiceover frequently to tell its tale, which is all key noir techniques.
I think the film says more about Vincente Minnelli and the changes that were taking place in the worldwide film industry at the time. The studio system, which Minnelli was very a part of, was coming to an end and being replaced by Auteur theory. Films were moving away from studio sets towards location shooting with directors having a lot more control and authorship over their production. The three flashbacks in `The Bad And The Beautiful' I think represents the divisions in the studio system at the time of writer, actor and director battling with a producer and with any attempt to overstep that mark resulting in a rebuff or failure. Within six years the New Wave would abolish those ideas.
I think `The Bad And The Beautiful' had potential to be a great film but is let down by melodrama and some lacklustre acting, character development and direction. It also lacks some of the real grit and cynicism of `All About Eve' or `Sunset Boulevard'. However there are some great moments such as Lana Turner's automotive suicide attempt, which I believe to be the great sequence in the film, but overall I was a little disappointed because I was expecting a lot more. Yet overall I think it's worth seeing at least once.
Other films with similar themes worth seeing also include Nicholas Ray's `In A Lonely Place' (1950) and `Le Mepris' (1963) by Jean-Luc Godard. I think Minnelli will and should be remembered for his musicals, which are superb.
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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.
