The Bad and the Beautiful is an interesting film that blends themes from both drama and film noir. On one hand it heavily relies on flashbacks, a noir staple, and it definitely contains some darker material. In the other, it plays out like a drama, and predominately feels like one instead of a noir. It's a cool mix and I think it works very well. The premise itself is pretty neat: three successful people from different fields of the movie industry meet with a producer to discuss their involvement with an old colleague, a man by the name of Jonathon Shields whom they all despise. As they wait to get ahold of Shields, the producer, Harry Pebbel states that he understands their distaste towards Shields, which leads to our flashbacks as he explains why each person has a problem with him. I thought it was a smart way of introducing the flashbacks while still keeping the situation during the present on the forefront. Each character is fleshed out in their respective flashback, and throughout all of them we get to see what kind of person Shields is. Shields himself is an interesting character, because he genuinely seems to mean well when initially meeting one of the three characters, but you shortly realize he doesn't see himself above manipulation when it suits his needs. Despite this, he's a very charismatic individual, which outshines his manipulative tendencies in most cases. I thought it was interesting how they handled the outcomes of the other characters thanks to Shields' intervention. I think Bartlow the screenwriter is the most justified for hating Shields out of the three characters. Thanks to Shields, not only does his wife have an affair with another man, but he also loses his wife to a plane accident that wouldn't have happened if Shields had left it alone. Sure, Bartlow ends up being successful like the other two, but no amount of success outshines that heavy of a loss. The other two, Amiel and Lorrison were also screwed over by Shields, but not to the same extent as Bartlow. Despite this, their hatred towards Shields still feels justified, although when you hear of their success it's hard to view Shields as a bad guy. Another thing I liked was the theme song for the movie. It's got this invigorating flow to it and it's hard to not get a little into it. Additionally, the uncertainty of the ending was a nice touch. It's implied they agree to work with Shields again, but before anyone explicitly says so the movie ends.

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.

Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon) tells James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), and Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) that their mutual former friend, the hated producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), wants to produce a new movie with the their help. On his own, Jonathan couldn't raise a nickel anymore. The movie flashbacks as each one of them recount their lives with the scheming Jonathan. Director Fred Amiel meets Shields when he put on a funeral for his loner father. They rise together as Shields schemes to get producer Pebbel to hire them. However, Shields would eventually double cross him taking away a movie to a bigger director. Beautiful star Georgia Lorrison started off as a hungry bit actress haunted by her late great father. Her life is a drunken mess and Shields confronts her. Under his nurturing care, she becomes a big star and she falls for him. However he rejects her possessiveness and tells her that he was just handling her after catching him with another woman. Bartlow was a small college professor who wrote a best seller book. Shields bought the rights and hires him as the screenwriter but his annoying wife keeps getting into the way. Shields hires a gigolo actor to distract her and they run off together getting killed in a plane crash. Shields eventually tells him which he uses to write a Pulitzer Prize winning book. All three have grudges but Pebbel points out that Shields made each one of them into the stars that they are today.The big guessing game is what each one of these characters are based on. That's half the fun of this movie. Without that, this is a solid melodrama. The splitting of the movie into three does take away the flow. Sometime around the third section, I lost a little bit of interest. I think it started with the overzealous acting at the end of Lana Turner's section. I would have switched the order of the three sections since that confrontation seems to be so climatic with the writer being second and Lana Turner being the last. After the Douglas and Turner blowup, there's nowhere for the movie to go except to wrap up.