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The Bad and the BeautifulRating:
Release Date: 05 February, 2002 Retail Price: $19.98 OUR Price: $9.97 You SAVE: $10.01! Cast: Complete Cast (17 total) |
The Bad and the Beautiful Reviews
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
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 she 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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