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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Turner Home Ent
Salesrank: 20729
Released: February 5, 2002 |
| Our Price: $10.24 |
| Used Price: $9.65 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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| Features:
Black & White Closed-captioned DVD Full Screen Subtitled NTSC | |
Editorial Review:
A Hollywood producer who has risen from poverty to power by using people, money, and sex, finds he needs the help of those he has betrayed.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 5-FEB-2002
Media Type: DVD
Description of The Bad and the Beautiful:
In The Bad and the Beautiful, Kirk Douglas plays a tyrannical, manipulative producer fallen on hard times. To get back on his feet, he asks for help from three Hollywood giants whose careers he helped launch--a director (Barry Sullivan), an actress (Lana Turner), and a writer (Dick Powell). Unfortunately, they all hate him. Flashbacks explain why. Douglas had been close to all three at different points in his career: He and the director started out together making B-movies, he gave the wayward actress her first starring role, he turned the novelist into a successful screenwriter. Then in one way or another he stabbed each of them in the back, though not always deliberately. The script has a lot of backstage clichés, but Vincente Minnelli's sharp, energetic direction, the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, and the topnotch performances--particularly Douglas and Gloria Grahame, who won an Oscar for her sweet role as the writer's cheerful Southern wife--flesh out the clichés with cutting details and convincing bile. Caustic, starry-eyed, and slyly funny, The Bad and the Beautiful is a strange and skillful blend of "If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere" pluck and poisonous cynicism, one of the great movies about making movies. --Bret Fetzer
The Bad and the Beautiful Reviews:
how to write a great film 
2009-12-08 - pay attention budding young screenwriters to films such as this and others from decades past . how did they manage to write great film with mature themes for general audiences ? they made it too smart for people of a certain age to be interested but conveyed all the same stuff a current film would need an R to achieve . this would earn a PG today . if that . but it's so good and worldly and honest . what happened to film like this ? they don't write like this any more and they seldom act this good . CGI . cable television . titillation . there's enough blame to go around . thank god for TCM and NETFLIX though . hey , i'm not exempt . i love much modern film and most of what i listed above and often disparage . these old films and their days are but a lovely reminder of a different time . perhaps i prefer to visit this era because i wasn't born yet ? perhaps it was just better ? some of both i think .
Not as Bad or Beautiful as it Could Have Been 
2009-02-15 - This is a film that falls a little short of the greatness it's title suggests. The writing is superb. The acting is excellent notably Lana Turner as an alcoholic daughter of a famed actor and Oscar winning Gloria Grahame as a sultry Southern housewife. I think the film goes wrong in the flat-footed direction of Vincente Minnelli. Minnelli was a journeyman director at best and he doesn't seem to have a handle on the material he's given here. One can't help but wonder what a more artful director like Douglas Sirk, Mark Robson, or "Sunset Boulevard" era Billy Wilder could have done with this film.
The Good And Bad About The Bad And Beautiful 
2009-01-20 - A bit of a soap opera, this film was divided into three segments as people recalled their experiences with "Jonathan Shields," played well by Kirk Douglas.
"Shields" was a guy interested in making movies and he used people to get to the top. Three of these people tell of their dealings with him, and none of them have too many good things to say.
I liked the first and third segments but didn't care for the middle one with Lana Turner simply because Turner became so melodramatic, too hysterical for me. Barry Sullivan was excellent in the first part and helped get me into the story. He was the director who got "screwed" by Douglas.
Turner was the unknown actress whom Douglas turned into a star while the last part dealt with the key screenwriter for Douglas, played by Dick Powell. I thought Powell was the best of the four main characters of the film but his segment was the shortest, unfortunately. As good as he was, his wife was equally as annoying. She was played by the normally entertaining and alluring Gloria Grahame, who was anything but that in this role. She sounded ludicrous with her fake southern accent. How she won an Academy Award for this role is mind- boggling.
Some classify this movie as film noir, but I dispute that. It's simply a straight drama with soapish overtones. It's well-written, however, and keeps one's interest all the way, so I am not knocking this movie. It has a good things going for it.
Best Movie in Grand Tradition of Classic Hollywood Style I've Seen In A While
2009-01-12 - WOW. Short review: Just watched it on VHS and got online immediately afterwards to order it on DVD. Not only that, this is the movie that's tempted me into finally making the plunge into Digital Projector purchase. This movie deserves to been seen on the biggest screen possible. The cast is fantastic, but hey, you already know that. Viva Minnelli!
Oh, and this movie's also responsible for the first ever review I've written for Amazon. Cheers, GB
Hollywood On Hollywood: Insider Stories Thinly Veiled By Fiction
2008-12-08 - The 1950s saw three major films that savaged Hollywood itself. Today, both SUNSET BLVD (1950) and A STAR IS BORN (1954) retain their luster and continue to grow in stature; THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, however, has been somewhat dimmed by the passage of time. Even so, in 1952 it was thought of as a red-hot expose of Hollywood's more underhanded tactics, received tremendous press, and received no less than five Oscar nominations.
The plot revolves around Johnathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), whose father was a much hated movie mogul and who now seeks his own career. As it happens, however, he becomes as greatly disliked as his father. Now down on his luck, he seeks assistance from three previous co-workers who have risen in their own careers--and they aren't at all eager to do it. As the film progresses each of these characters recalls their experiences with Johnathan in no uncertain terms.
Fred (Barry Sullivan) and Johathan were friends who struggled together in early days and became a successful director-producer team--but Johnathan backstabbed Fred, stealing his ideas to further his own career. Georgia (Lana Turner) was an alcoholic bit player who Johnathan launched to major stardom, using her love for him as a lever to motivate her performance--but when the film was finished he brushed her off in a particularly ugly way. James (Dick Powell) was a rising novelist lured by Johnathan to Hollywood--but when his southern belle wife Rosemary (Gloria Graham) proved a hinderence to James' work, Johnathan organized an affair for her that had tragic consequences.
The characters and events that fill THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL are a movie buff's dream, for virtually everything is drawn from life. Johnathan Shields is loosely based on producer David O. Selznick and director Fred on Val Lewton; the movie they make that launches their careers is called DOOM OF THE CAT MEN, an obvious reference to Lewton's CAT PEOPLE. Georgia is clearly based on self-destructive actress Diana Barrymore and James on William Faulkner, with his wife Rosemary likely a reference to Zelda Fitzgerald. Even George Cukor and Alfred and Alma Hitchcock come in for character sketches and the film makes indirect references to the productions of REBECCA and GONE WITH THE WIND.
Like most films directed by Vincent Minnelli, THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL is a very stylish film, smooth, slick, and ultra-glossy. But the Minnelli style typically serves his dramas less well than his comedies and musicals; the film lacks the hard bite one would like to see in this sort of material. The performances, however, are excellent. Kirk Douglas seems a bit hammy at times, but it works; Lana Turner gives what may be her single finest performance--seldom thought of as a gifted actress, her suicidal meltdown while driving through a rainstorm is a revelation. Gloria Graham, best known for her film noir films, is justly celebrated for her performance as the endearing but annoying Rosemary, and she won an Oscar for her performance. The art direction, musical score, and all the production values are flawless.
The DVD comes with several bonuses, most notably a lengthy documentary focusing on the life of Lana Turner, for whom this was something of a comeback after a period of declining popularity and film failures. The picture is near-pristine and the sound excellent. Although not really among the first tier of "Hollywood on Hollywood" movies, THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL has much to recommend it.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
