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The Bad and the Beautiful film image; man holding a woman's face while looking at her

Our latest Film Studies series will feature 25 minute introductions by film historian and curator Donald Brackett, followed by the screenings and a brief audience talkback.

Unscrupulous movie producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) is a child of Hollywood who ruthlessly toils his way to the top of the studio system, discarding movie star Georgia (Lana Turner), director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) and writer James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell) along the way. Although Shields manipulates them and leaves each in despair, they find success in Hollywood, thanks in part to Shields, and must decide whether or not to repay him when he offers them a collaborative project.

As its title suggests, The Bad and the Beautiful manages to combine cynicism and romance, noir sharpness and glossy glamour in its love-hate portrait of Tinsel Town. Shields may be a manipulative hustler, but his energy and determination make him hard to resist—and he gets results.

All films will screen again, without the talk.

Aesthetically promiscuous, confoundingly likable, and intermittently unhinged, The Bad and the Beautiful is a crash course in mid-twentieth-century Hollywood mores and backlot intrigue.[…] In working different tonal and moral registers in the brash anything-for-a-frisson Citizen Kane mode, there’s a dynamic sense of joyfully toying with form and attitude. Minnelli’s animating impulse is love of the medium and its eccentric possibilities, which extends to and from his accomplices, including the much-undervalued screenwriter Charles Schnee and the cinematographer Robert Surtees. It’s also a love for the damaged and destructive people who tap into those deep surfaces and shallow depths. Turner and Douglas project the dicey charisma of instability and self-loathing channeled into the Will to Succeed.

Howard Hampton, Art Forum

 


Donald Brackett, a Vancouver-based film critic and historian who writes about the art and craft of movies and their place in our pop culture, is the author of many articles and essays on the subject, as well as being the guest-curator of several film programs for Cinematheque. He is the author of several related books, the most recent being Double Solitaire: The Films of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, which explored their collaborative impact on the golden age of Hollywood.

Lecture

10:30 am

Film

11:00 am

Presenter/Curator

Donald Brackett

Director

Vincente Minnelli

Cast

Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

1952

Language

English

Awards

5 Academy Awards, Best Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume, Supporting Actress (Gloria Grahame)

19+
150 min

Book Tickets

Monday November 25

10:30 am
Guests/Q&As Hearing Assistance
VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre
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Tuesday November 26

6:00 pm
Hearing Assistance
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
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Credits

Screenwriter

Charles Schnee

Cinematography

Robert Surtees

Editor

Conrad A. Nervig

Original Music

David Raksin

Art Director

Edward Carfagno, Cedric Gibbons

Also in This Series

What Price Hollywood?

Dir. George Cukor. Presented by Donald Brackett
120 min

In our latest Film Studies series film critic and historian Donald Brackett gives us a whistle stop studio tour of movies about movies, taking us from the Golden Age to the C21st, beginning with George Cukor's seminal 1932 film, What Price Hollywood.

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Sullivan's Travels

Dir. Preston Sturges. Presented by Donald Brackett
120 min

Continuing his exploration of Hollywood's fascination with itself, Donald Brackett introduces one of the great satires of the Golden Age, Sullivan's Travels. Earnest filmmaker Joel McCrea disguises himself as a hobo to get to know the real America...

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Bad and the Beautiful

Dir. Vincente Minnelli. Presented by Donald Brackett
150 min

Film scholar Donald Brackett introduces Vincente Minnelli's 1952 Hollywood melodrama--a portrait of a driven producer, Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) that went on to win five Academy Awards.

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Day of the Locust

Dir. John Schlesinger. Presented by Donald Brackett
170 min

Midnight Cowboy director John Schlesinger turned his gaze on Hollywood in this rich adaptation of Nathanael West's famous satirical novel, in the latest screening in our Film Studies series, Hollywood Through the Looking Glass.

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Babylon

Dir. Damien Chazelle. Presented by Donald Brackett
220 min

Damien Chazelle's second Hollywood on Hollywood movie (after La La Land) follows Margot Robbie as a starlet on the make at the tail end of the silent film era in the late 1920s, and a couple of friends she makes along the way.

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre