248. The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

Directed By Vincente Minnelli

Synopsis

Three people are contacted by a certain Jonathan Shields to be in the film he wants to produce. They all refuse outright, when his glorified accountant gets them all together to discuss it they look back in turn at a charming bastard that fucked them up but still had some kind of positive influence in their lives. Do they do the film or not? We never know.

Review

The Bad and the Beautiful is a scathing look on Hollywood, particularly this character which seems to embody several producers and Hollywood personalities. And it is a great film with great characters and acting thorughout. Still, the really big highlight here is Kirk Douglas' performance in an amazing part that is as much a charmer as a selfish bastard.

And that is the problem with Shields, he isn't a bad guy, he isn't Machiavellian, he is just selfish and has little empathy, a sociopath basically. For some reason he manages to attract every one of the three other main characters in the film, he is enthusiastic, he sells them dreams and he ends up giving them to them but he also manages to screw them up completely.

So, even though they added the 'beautiful' to the title because of Lana Turner, Shields is still both of them, he is the deep pit that attracts as much as destroys, and it is telling that at the end of the whole thing the three characters with so many reasons to hate him (and some to like him) all listen in to his conversation, his spell is working still.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

There has been much debate as to which real-life Hollywood legends are represented by the film's characters. Jonathan Shields is thought to be a blending of David O. Selznick, Orson Welles and Val Lewton. The Georgia Lorrison character is the daughter of a "Great Profile" actor (like John Barrymore) but also includes elements of Minnelli's ex-wife Judy Garland.The director Henry Whitfield (Leo G. Carroll) is a "difficult" director modeled on Alfred Hitchcock, and his assistant Miss March (Kathleen Freeman) is modeled on Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville.

Shields is a bastard: