The Sheila Variations

Pauline Kael: 5001 movies: "The Bad and the Beautiful"

More from Pauline Kael ... moving on alphabetically.

The Bad and the Beautiful 1952

Early in the year the great Hollywood Dunciad, Singin' in the Rain, came out, and then came this spangled, overwright piece of Hollywoodian self-analysis. The first was a satire, the second a satire in spite of itsel -- which recalls the fabled little old lady who said in the middle of Quo Vadis, "Look, there's a sweet little lion who hasn't got a Christian." The Bad and the Beautiful, a glossy melodrama about a "bad" megalomaniac Hollywood producer (Kirk Douglas) and a 'beautiful" alcoholic star (Lana Turner), is one of those movies that set out to explain what Hollywood is really like. It's a piquant example of what it purports to expose -- luxurious exhibitionism -- and the course of what is described as a "rat race" to success is the softest turf ever. The structure is all too reminiscent of Citizen Kane, and there is the "Rosebud" of Douglas's ill-defined Oedipal confusion, but there are also flashy, entertaining scenes and incidents derived from a number of famous careers. And the director, Vincente Minnelli, has given the material an hysterical stylishness; the black-and-white cinematography (by Robert Surtrees) is more than dramatic, it has temperament.

Now. Whether or not you agree with her assessment is irrelevant. Or - it's probably relevant to you (or to me) but that's not why I post these things. I post these things because the woman could WRITE about the damn movies, man - in a way that so so few reviewers write today. She LOVES movies, and she knows how to critique. Her knowledge of the history of the cinema was encyclopedic, her taste was unexpected. But it's the writing - she makes me see things in a different way. The direction has "hysterical stylishness" and the cinematography has "temperament". Amazing. I know what she means - but I never could put it into words.

Posted by sheila