Movie Review: The Bad And The Beautiful (1952)

A fictional biography of a Hollywood producer, The Bad And The Beautiful is a riveting exposé of the power games that make an industry tick.

A-list director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), movie star Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner) and Pulitzer prize winning screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell) all refuse to accept a phone call from producer and former colleague Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), who is now residing in Paris. Movie producer and Jonathan's long-time partner Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon) gathers the three in his office and asks them to reconsider. Jonathan wants to work with them again, despite their tumultuous history.

The movie is then structured into three flashback chapters. The first charts Jonathan's rise from obscurity. After the ignominious death of his father, Jonathan vows to create his own legacy and restore glory to the Shields name. He teams up with struggling director Fred Amiel and together they start cranking out Z-grade movies for Poverty Row producer Harry Pebbel. Once they learn their craft, Jonathan and Fred set their sights on more ambitious projects, and before long Jonathan's courage and vision propel them towards the big time. Pebbel will end up working for Shields; while Amiel will learn just how ruthless Jonathan can be in his quest to succeed as a studio head.

The second chapter finds Jonathan at the height of his success. He plucks unknown actress Georgia Lorrison out of obscurity and casts her as the leading lady in his latest big-budget production. Georgia has lived her life in the shadow of her infamous and now deceased father. Jonathan cajoles Georgia into overcoming her demons and quitting the bottle, and helps her commit to the role, giving her the chance of a lifetime to become a star. But Georgia will find out the hard way that he is as persuasive as he is insincere.

In the final chapter Jonathan convinces professor and author James Lee Bartlow to adapt his book into a screenplay. The problem is that Bartlow's wife Rosemary (Gloria Grahame) is a constant source of interruption, and sometimes irritation, preventing Bartlow from concentrating on his writing. Jonathan spots the obstruction and arranges for movie star "Gaucho" Ribera (Gilbert Roland) to distract Rosemary. The results are unexpected, both for Jonathan's studio and the Bartlow marriage.

Back in the present, Pebbel reminds his three guests that despite Jonathan's driven personality and abrasive methods, they all owe their career success to him. Fred, Georgia and James Lee have to again decide whether to accept the phone call from a man they vowed to shun.

In just under two hours, director Vincente Minnelli packs plenty of Hollywood into a potent film. The Bad And The Beautiful is navel gazing at its best, a film that strips naked the drive, ambition, and desperation of the people behind the images on the screen. Filled with oblique references to real people, shots of films in the making, cutthroat backroom deals, and glitzy parties, as well as the arm twisting, false ego pampering and emotional manipulation that goes into the making of every movie, The Bad And The Beautiful shines the spotlight on the larger than life personalities that create the silver screen magic.

The three chapter format works surprisingly well, and at around 35 minutes each, ensures brisk pacing. Several secondary characters make appearances in all three segments, including Pebbel, Gaucho, and pompous director Von Ellstein (Ivan Triesault), helping to tie together Jonathan's story from obscurity to ostracism. Even Georgia's character has tiny roles in the first and third story, perhaps to justify Lana Turner's top billing.

Star rankings aside, this is undoubtedly Kirk Douglas' movie, Jonathan Shields proving to be one of his most suitable and memorable roles. Douglas' features are put to best use as a driven, manipulative executive, his mind always working overtime to further his own cause while leading others along unfamiliar garden paths.

The Academy Award winning Charles Schnee screenplay (based on the book Tribute to a Badman by George Bradshaw) creates characters that are real and sympathetic without being necessarily always nice or honest. Jonathan Shields and his industry colleagues display strong streaks of selfishness and raw self-interest. But they are all true to their career ambitions, and achieve success laced with the regret of hard lessons, lost relationships and failed ventures. Fred, Georgia and James Lee travel along impressive character arcs, and all undergo profound but credible transitions under Jonathan's influence.

The Bad And The Beautiful exposes the ruthless conniving at the root of the surface glamour, and finds human intrigue worthy of the full Hollywood treatment.

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Movie Review: Murder, My Sweet (1944)

A film noir with a detective hard boiled to dry humour and a femme fatale curved to kill, Murder, My Sweet is a classic and classy example of the genre. The adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely maintains a sharp briskness and enough of a grip on coherence to allow style and structure to register a comprehensive triumph.

Private detective Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) is hired by the gigantic but slow Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) to find a long lost girlfriend named Velma Valento, a former performer at a low class dance joint. Although Velma's trail has long since gone cold, Marlowe uncovers unusual attempts to protect her identity. Marlowe is then immediately hired by a distinguished gentleman named Lindsay Marriott for a seemingly unrelated case: helping to pay a ransom for the return of an expensive necklace belonging to rich socialite Helen Grayle (Claire Trevor), the wife of a wealthy - and much older - collector of precious jade.

Marlowe (narrating): It was a nice little front yard. Cozy, okay for the average family. Only you'd need a compass to go to the mailbox. The house was all right, too, but it wasn't as big as Buckingham Palace.

Soon a murder is committed, Marlowe is implicated, and the mysterious Jules Amthor (Otto Kruger) teams up with Moose -- still looking for Velma -- and they both go after Marlowe and the necklace. With the police closing in and Marlowe drugged and pumped for information, the only grounded person in the case appears to be Helen's stepdaughter Ann (Anne Shirley), although even she is not beyond strange antics to grill Marlowe for her own purposes.

Marlowe: Now this is beginning to make sense, in a screwy sort of a way. I get dragged in and get money shoved at me. I get pushed out and get money shoved at me. Everybody pushes me in, everybody pushes me out. Nobody wants me to DO anything. Okay, put a check in the mail. I cost a lot not to do anything. I get restless. Throw in a trip to Mexico. 

Dick Powell is no Humphrey Bogart, but his version of Philip Marlowe is just as good. While Bogart is more bullish, Powell adds a curly sarcasm that invites more vulnerability, humanizing Marlowe in a world full of steely eyed criminals and blundering cops. The plot of Murder, My Sweet requires Marlowe to be repeatedly knocked around and blacked out, not a situation that Bogart would have been good at. Powell plays along, bouncing back up after every bump on the head to further antagonize the humourless perpetrators.

Marriott: How would you like a swift punch on the nose? 
Marlowe: I tremble at the thought of such violence.

Claire Trevor oozes deadly charm and surplus sexuality, tying men into tight knots and flicking them off with emotionless ease. Helen's elderly husband and two almost equally elderly lovers clearly see nothing past her allure, leaving her free to race up the ladder to a life far away from her humble origins. Marlowe of course sees right through her, but that does not mean he doesn't keep her guessing whether his lust or brains will win the battle for control.

Helen: I find men *very* attractive. 
Marlowe: I imagine they meet you halfway.

Anne Shirley is the requisite innocent girl trapped in a world run by sleaze merchants, and her Ann provides Marlowe with a simple lighthouse of morality around which he can navigate. Equally easy to understand is Moose, and professional wrestler Mike Mazurki gives him a perfectly lumbering and slow-witted presence, a man whose fists can almost solve any problem that his limited intellect cannot fathom.

Edward Dmytryk floods Murder, My Sweet with the colours of black and white, with headlights, lamp lights, fog, shadows, mirrors, glass reflections, and doorways tactically deployed to confound the layered mystery. Moose's entry scene, reflected and magnified to epic proportions in the dark window behind a startled Marlowe, is exquisitely chilling.

Blackmail, sex, lust, illicit affairs, drugs, evil doctors, a missing woman, and a gigantic knucklehead. And of course, Murder, My Sweet. All in a day's work for Philip Marlowe.

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