best movie i've ever seen.

A different way of telling a story

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

What a screenplay! No wonder it won five (5) Academy awards including best screenplay. In the closing scene when Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan, and Dick Powell abruptly get up from their chairs and leave second generation film producer Jonathan Shields' (Kirk Douglas) Hollywood office while Kirk's producer/accountant, Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon), who arranged the overseas phone conference meeting, and Kirk are trying to convince them while he is still in Paris through an overseas phone call to make just one more picture with him. I thought Kirk Douglas would appear in the foyer to confront his three old friends in person who all worked with him to great success on earlier films that he produced. But that did not happen. Instead, actress Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), picks up a secondary phone in the foyer to listen in on the phone conversation the three old friends of Kirk just abruptly left while Kirk continues to speak to his producer/accountant, Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon). Then as Georgia listens in (as she previously did some twenty years ago before she was made a big star) Pulitzer Prize winner screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell) and famed director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) huddle next to each of Georgia's ears to also listen in on the continued phone conversation between producer Jonathan Shields and accountant Harry Pebbel. This scene gave me the goosebumps as it shows the audience that as much as the three former friends had good reasons for not wanting to be involved any longer in producer Jonathan Shields next film, the individual stories of how the three of them rose to fame are explained on the screen, and their personal stories and heartbreaks are owed to their involvement with the great second generation producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas). I loved this film and if it were not for Gary Cooper's great performance in the 1952 western High Noon, co-starring Grace Kelly, I am sure Kirk Douglas was also deserving of the best actor award for his stellar performance in the Bad and the Beautiful. I rate this film a perfect 10 for 10.

The film starts off as an interesting concept. Three comrades in filmmaking recount their terrible experiences with a shared connection with flashbacks depicting said tales. A man who works for said connection begging them to reconcile with him and help him on his new project. What could go wrong?Although it has its moments, The Bad and the Beautiful failed to deliver for me overall. It wasn't as much the setting as it was the overall feel for the characters. For some reason it just didn't keep me as interested and involved as I had expected a melodrama to do.Overall, I honestly don't regret watching the film but I just feel it had more potential than what was shown.

This movie won five Oscars including that for Gloria Grahame as Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Also, Kirk Douglas, perhaps in his prime years, was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Johnathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) is a Hollywood producer who seem to be very unpopular with three of the people that had worked with him in the past. They all refuse his phone calls to make another movie with him. When his co-producer, Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon), calls them into his office to beg them to work with Shields again, their experiences with him are presented as flashbacks. In the first flashback, Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) is a want-to-be director who meets Shields at Shields' father's funeral. Both are broke and have to work together on bad B movies before they are able to strike out together to make the kind of movies that they want.In another flashback, Shields discovers Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner) when she is a depressed alcoholic who hate the memory of her father, but can't seem to get beyond it. After Shields shows her that he believes in her by giving her screen tests, promoting and coaching her, and supporting her when she relapses into an alcoholic binge before her acting debut, she becomes a success. In the third flashback, Lee Bartholw (Dick Powell) is a college professor—an academic novelist—from Richmond, Virginia. When Shields discovers one of Barthlow's novels; he asks him and his wife, Rosemary (Gloria Grahame), to come to Hollywood to 'help' turn his novel into a movie script. After the couple comes to Hollywood, they never return to Richmond. In each of the flashbacks, masterfully presented as separate stories, Shields is a very supportive mentor and friend. So, why do they all hate him so much? Because he is tough to work for and demands more than they can give? In this rags-to-riches-to-rags story, Shields is far from a perfect person. Some even see him as 'a user.' However, when the three principal characters recount their experiences about him, it is really had to convince the audience—much less the characters—that he is not basically a good-hearted person. This is an entertaining movie, often described as 'a hard-hitting expose of Hollywood's tough look at itself.' If it is, in Vincent Minnelli's hands, its bark is worse than its bite. And, its neat three-in–one structure is cleverly woven to make the movie's whole larger than the sum of its parts. However, this structure was not original, it had been used by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in A Letter to Three Wives (1949), also featuring Kirk Douglas.

Recently I have watched classic movies after a long period, adoring movies like "The apartment" or "Witness for the prosecution" by great directors like Billy Wilder. Despite this "The bad and the beautiful" by Vincente Minnelli didn't revive my enthusiasm for this kind of movie. I got the impression of understanding the main character after a few minutes from the beginning of the film: the three point of view, expressed by flashback , were only a repeating with no new elements or surprises. In my opinion this make the movie predictable and the three other character not very interesting. After all I cannot say that "The bad and the beautiful" is a bored film. The climate of that year is fascinating and the actors are very good. It remain a noteworthy work for being a truthful silver screen pictures of that years.