This is the sixth installment of BEAVER'S LODGE, a series of video essays narrated by actor Jim Beaver which will offer critical takes on some of Beaver's favorite films. Jim Beaver is an actor, playwright, and film historian. Best known as Ellsworth on HBO’s Emmy-award winning series DEADWOOD and as Bobby Singer on SUPERNATURAL, he has also starred in such series as HARPER'S ISLAND, JOHN FROM CINCINNATI, and THUNDER ALLEY and appeared in nearly forty motion pictures. You can follow Jim on Twitter.
Reckoned by many to be one of the best films about Hollywood, The Bad and the Beautiful is pungent and occasionally acidic, and at the time of its release a clear sign that things were changing in the movie capital. Even one or two years previously it would have been unimaginable for a major studio to release a film quite as disparaging of the people at the top of the heap in movie making.
Of course, sixty years have passed since this film, and much, much more biting and bitter films have been made about the way movies are created. But within the context of its time, and for the quality of its writing and much of its acting, The Bad and the Beautiful is a notable film. I don't find it as compelling as some do, but it's a very entertaining film. In many details it does not match how films are made (at least today), but in essence, in spirit, much of what is at play in this film is still a ripe part of Hollywood today.
Kirk Douglas is Jonathan Shields, a charismatic but unscrupulous producer who has burned every bridge he ever crossed. He asks three former colleagues/friends to put aside their spite for him and help him launch a new film. As the three consider the proposition, we are presented the stories of their individual pasts with Douglas's character. Barry Sullivan is a writer-director whose dream project was taken away from him by his friend Shields. Lana Turner is the alcoholic daughter of a famed actor (read Diana Barrymore and John Barrymore), who is romanced by Shields only in order to get from her what he wants to advance his career. Dick Powell is a novelist whom Shields drags to Hollywood and tragedy. Douglas and Powell, in particular, are good, giving broad and quiet performances, respectively, that are quite true to the types they embody. Gloria Grahame, an actress I like a lot, won an Oscar as Powell's southern-belle wife, though this is scarcely her best performance and her "southern" accent is almost more bull than belle.
Director Vincent Minnelli and Oscar-winning screenwriter Charles Schnee do a very good job with this drama, and the score and photography are rich. The Bad and the Beautiful has lost some of its steel over the years, but it's a very good movie that suggests that there are a lot of people in Hollywood who are either bad or beautiful, or both. That's an over-simple generalization, but it makes for an effective movie.
It's impossible to discuss the movie without posing a number of questions. Whose story are we seeing here? Is it the story of the middle-aged Jack, played by Sean Penn, and his younger self? That point of view would not account for the voiceovers and subjective sequences told from the point of view of the father, played by Brad Pitt, and the mother, played by Jessica Chastain. Is the creation sequence an integral part of the movie's vision or an unnecessary and indulgent side-trip? In the scene between the wounded dinosaur and the predator down by that prehistoric river, why does the predator seem as though he's going to crush his skull, and then suddenly back off? Are we seeing the first stirrings of the schism that is discussed and visualized in different sections of the film – the way of nature versus the way of grace? Or is there some other explanation? Is there a God in Terrence Malick's universe? The repeated shots of trees, water, clouds, sky and figures haloed or backlit by intense, almost heavenly light would seem to indicate that, yes, there is a God, but uncertainty permeates the entire story, if indeed there is a story – and this, too, was the subject of debate.
These complaints have persisted well into Spielberg's fourth decade as a pop culture force, and it's not hard to see why. He is not a confrontational or particularly edgy filmmaker, nor for the most part does he try to be. Even his most stylistically or thematically daring films are conceived in populist terms, to reach the widest audience – the widest MARKET – possible.
In recent decades, the notion that Spielberg is somehow trying to prove himself, or re-brand himself, or be quote-unquote serious when he moves away from action-adventure or fantasy, has come to seem increasingly quaint, shorthand for a truism that's not true anymore. It's a critical relic from a long-gone era, akin to marvelling at the notion that, say, Woody Allen or Pedro Almodovar has directed a bleak drama. Indeed, hardly anyone under the age of 40 expresses even mild surprise that Spielberg would make a film such as Schindler's List, Munich, or A.I.
This series will examine just a few of Spielberg's key obsessions and motifs, as expressed over a wide range of films, released over four decades. We'll look at the influence of pulp fiction, serials and comic books on Spielberg's skillful depiction of violence – and how he learned to modulate it over time, in ever more varied ways. We'll look at the importance of communication and translation in Spielberg's films: the director's evident conviction that curiosity and goodwill can overcome superstition, bigotry and fear. We'll examine Spielberg's multifaceted portrait of evil and authority, and how the two intertwine, and express themselves in some of his most important characters. And we'll look at the director's sometimes warm, sometimes harrowing portrait of family life, with its negotiations and compromises, disappointments and tragedies — and the pivotal role played by father figures. Cold and loving. Present and absent.
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