The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

A portrait of her illusory world: she receives the scriptwriter while reclining on a meridanne, wearing an indeterminate costume and a silvery wig

Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) explores the duality of a system that is responsible for creating the highest cinematic achievements while showing no regard for the talents, without them, those movies would have never been made. The film’s opening shot of a telephone, underscores the tool that facilitates negotiation, manipulation, and the brokering of deals. Minnelli suggests the phone call is not about a genuine exchange of ideas and has become a means of control and manipulation. A system within the studio is designed to reach success by normalizing moral compromise. The several scenes where we see different forms of eavesdropping on the phone suggest the widespread ethical compromise made possible by using the phone. In closing, the movie returns to a telephone, where the three main characters have to share a single receiver to eavesdrop on a conversation they should not be part of. During the three flashbacks recalling their interactions with Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), all three characters criticized his unethical behavior. The image reveals being unethical is an accepted behavior in Hollywood. 

​One of the central themes of the movie is the blurred border between reality and the fantasy world of the stage. The movie’s characters are either the extensions of the stars who play them, or other luminaries of Hollywood. The character of Jonathan Shields was written based on David O. Selznick, a powerful and shrewd producer. Lana Turner, as Georgia, recalls her  personal difficulties with alcoholism as well as her tumultuous relationships with men. Two outstanding scenes that illuminate Turner’s private life are her screen test in the drugstore and Bartlow’s visit to her apartment to deliver his script. The first exposes the fragility behind her apparent confidence, while the second reveals her indulgence in the dramatization of her own persona. We should not overlook the way Minnelli introduces her to the audience as a recluse hiding from the world in a rundown building, a relic of her father’s fame, with only her dangling feet and a disembodied voice.

The scene, in which she leaves Shields’s house, distraught, unable to control the car, conveys the depth of the emotional injury. With the exception of a single close-up of her foot pressing the brake captures her in an uninterrupted shot. The camera's position, coupled with the chaotic sound effects and torrential rain, augments her sense of solitude, transforming her car into a claustrophobic chamber of suffering. As her mental breakdown mounts, she lets go of the steering wheel, implying her surrender to despair and loss of desire to live. The single close-up of her foot pressing the brake, however, reveals a conflicted dimension of her character; an instinctive attempt to regain control of the car. The shot portrays what appears to be her emotional collapse and a genuine attempt at suicide is a dramatization of her anguish; a moment depicting her self-preservation and despair may coexist.