The Bad and the Beautiful

Kirk Douglas plays the corrupt and amoral head of a major film studio in this Hollywood drama, often regarded as one of the film's industry's most interesting glimpses at itself. Actress Gloria Lorrison (Lana Turner), director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), and screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick ...more

Vincente Minelli's self-reflexive, highly stylized profile of a charmingly manipulative producer (Kirk Douglas) seeking a comeback is one of the most cynical and enjoyably trashy films that Hollywood has ever made about itself. Appearing during the height of noir, when the movie business was taking a more jaundiced view of itself in films like Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Big Knife (1955), the film employs many of the stylistic and narrative techniques of Citizen Kane (1941) in portraying a ...more