An insider's view of 1950s Hollywood

It doesn't name real names, employ any credible hard-edged cynicism, or show warts-and-all Tinsel Town tawdriness and tribulations. But "The Bad and the Beautiful" also doesn't fail to entertain, despite its punches-pulled MGM pedigree. Observations reached by our CineVerse cadre include:

THEMES AT WORK IN THIS PICTURE:

• Dreams unfulfilled or interrupted

• The exploitation of fresh, raw talent

• According to reviewer Matt Langdon:

o “The cost of putting one’s professional life before personal relationships”

o “The (difficult) choice that must be made between art and life”

o “Is it possible to forgive such heinous flaws” (as exemplified in the character of Shields)

o “Maintaining respect in a brutal business”

• The dark side of the dream of fame and fortune: how hubris, profiteering, and sin are endemic to Hollywood

• The irony of being beholden to your betrayer

WHAT DID YOU FIND INTERESTING OR UNEXPECTED ABOUT THIS FILM?

• It comes on the heels of “Sunset Boulevard,” released two years earlier, and seems to ape some of that movie’s cynicism and thematic content about the dark underbelly of Tinsel Town and the Hollywood dream.

• Yet, it doesn’t point its arrows necessarily at the highest honchos on the totem pole; there’s no Louis B. Mayer that gets skewered here. “The highest rank of executive it’s willing to tar and feather is the semi-independent producer. But real studio heads are kept out of the picture,” wrote critic Glenn Erickson, who added: “Shield's career isn't squashed out of jealousy or fear by the higher-ups, Bartlow's talent isn't dissipated in hackwork, and starlet Lorrison's loose morals are attributed to her personal problems, not the studio system that kept starlets as salaried escorts on demand.”

• There are not-so-subtle comparisons made between some of its characters and real-life Hollywood personalities of the 1940s/1950s. “Lana Turner's father-obsessed starlet stands in for Diana Barrymore, the Southern writer (Dick Powell) who hates Hollywood and wants to go home is a blatant take on Faulkner, the director (Barry Sullivan) plays Jacques Tourneur to Shields' Val Lewton on a movie called "Attack of the Cat Man"; the Shields character rings a bell…for David O. Selznick,” posited blogger Farran Smith Nehme.

• Ironically, it seems to undercut its thematic argument that career accomplishments trump personal relationships. Consider that Shields doesn’t seem to experience a comeuppance, and the people he used and hurt come back to him for the opportunity to make more exploitable art.

• The low key, expressive lighting style looks similar to film noir; non-noir dramas at this time utilized this stylistic look to convey dark and serious tones.

OTHER MOVIES THAT THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL MAKES YOU THINK OF:

• Sunset Boulevard

• A Star is Born

• Two Weeks in Another Town

• A Life of Her Own

• The Barefoot Contessa

• The Big Knife

• The Carpetbaggers

• The Player

• Citizen Kane (which also uses flashbacks to tell its story and a high boom shot of technicians high aloft of the stage)

• The low-budget but creative B horror pictures by Val Lewton

OTHER FILMS DIRECTED BY VINCENTE MINNELLI:

• Meet Me in St. Louis

• An American in Paris

• The Band Wagon

• Gigi

• Brigadoon

• Lust for Life

• Father of the Bride