The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) review
The beautiful is like something irresistibly bad
Here is an inversion of the Platonist architectonic which identified the Good, the Beautiful and the Truth. In Vincente Minelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) the good is divorced from the beautiful, which is not true, but an illusion: films. In fact, the beautiful and its craft, the great art of motion pictures and their production, is divorced from everything. It is an obsessive labor, which has its own criteria and necessities, and nothing can stand in its way.
Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), a movie producer loosely based on David O. Selznick and Orson Welles, does not care about friendship, love, sex, honor or anything else for that matter: he merely uses these as auxiliaries for the only thing he really cares about: his pictures. And, boy, can he make ‘em.
Shields is of an unscrupulous disposition, a sordid, betraying little weasel, as only Kirk Douglas could portray. Always one step ahead, he consciously instrumentalizes all his relationships, his emotions, everything he has, even his ego, in order to achieve the one thing he cares about: his art. And he gets it, albeit with a trail of ugliness.
After his films are finished, a bleak emptiness takes over him, as he broods in his mansion with the company of call-girls, bereft of love, family, dignity. Only another film can remedy it, fulfill him, and so he’ll make that film, no matter what it takes or whom it hurts.
The films starts when Shields is an exile in Paris already, bankrupted, a pariah in the industry. He wants a comeback, but no one will give him money for it, unless his former friends, now all successful, are involved in the project. We know all this without even seeing Shields, in a touch of masterful subtlety by Minelli. We are introduced to the haunting specter of Shields’ personality through the disdain and hatred his former friends show towards him: they won’t even take his call.
They are, then, gathered in the office of Shields’ former partner, Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon), a hardworking producer which has everyone’s respect, but clearly lacks that “Shields touch”. Pebbel tries to convince them to take the call, and as they await to have Shields on the phone from Paris, they each tell their own story with Shields, in a series of flashbacks.
The moral of their stories is clear: Shields made their names, indeed, but in one way or another, backstabbed them all. And they despise him for it: the actress, Gloria Lorrison (Lana Turner), the director, Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), the writer, James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell). But beneath that surface of contempt, justified in terms of moral outrageousness due to Shields’ insensitive behavior, one can spot a thick layer of envy: Shields is the true artist, the only one who takes the art seriously, who’s willing to go to the end for it––– and has the talent to do so.
He made them all: Gloria Lorrison would be a failed drunk without Shields; Fred Amiel would never have become a director; Bartlow would not have come to Hollywood and won a Pulitzer. They are replaceable, Shields is not. He’s the real thing, the real artist. Fred Amiel at one point says of Shields: “He’s more than a man, he’s an experience. If they ever bottled him he’d sell more than ginger ale”. That’s part of the film’s troubling message: we allow great artists to have a lot of leeway in the things they do. We just can’t help it.
Indeed, art is addictive. Morally obnoxious, Shields remains irresistible in the end simply because nobody can tell a story like him. He doesn’t deserve a chance, but art’s got nothing to do with justice in The Bad and the Beautiful. Unmoved by Pebbel’s appeal, Amiel, Gloria and Bartlow are about to leave his office when Shields’ call comes through. He starts telling Pebbel his new idea for a film and the three of them, despite their moral and personal convictions, just can’t help listening to it on an extension phone, eagerly eavesdropping, as if they’re doing something wrong. They are: they’re choosing the Beautiful, alongside the Bad, over the Good.
The guy’s got flair, some special access to the Beautiful through his badness. Despicable, yes, but when he starts telling a story… They just can’t resist it: it’s an urge beyond morality. You've got to give the devil his due, and that's art.
