I'm not sure I'm seeing this movie the way I'm supposed to. The consensus seems to be that this is a movie about a ruthless movie producer, Jonathan Shields, played by Kirk Douglas, who backstabs and betrays his friends in order to achieve success. I'm not sure that's what happens here. Who is the bad and who is the beautiful?
The plot is presented in flashback with three segments told from the perspective of a famous director, a leading lady, and an award-winner writer who worked with Shields in the past. They have been approached to work with him one last time, as a favor, to save his career.
The director says he's has a perfect treatment of a difficult-to-adapt novel but he acknowledges how much better that perfection gets with Shields assistance. The leading lady is an alcoholic with no discernable acting talent who, with Shields attention, dries up long enough to become a star. The writer is a vain, elitist academic who can be flattered into taking a lot of money to write a script. Despite the remarkable success they achieve with Shields assistance, they all feel that he has betrayed them.
But look closely. Each of their stories is told in their own words and their words reveal the reality. The director, whose biggest effort to date had been Attack of the Cat Men is "betrayed" because in order to make their movie the way they dreamed in would be made, Shields must hire a prominent director in order to get them a million dollar budget they needed. The leading lady reports that he "knows how to handle her" even though she was not in a position to hear him say this; by adding this tiny detail to her story, she turns him into the villain of her story, when the reality may be that he simply wasn't interested in her attention. The writer, who blames Shields for his wife death, presented his wife as a silly woman who envied the fame that intended to be his.
Shields may not be an innocent party but they are all really slimy. They are the bad and the movies the create are the beautiful.
Turning the table on this plot, and seeing the artists for what they truly are, seems to be supported by a key detail. In the final flashback, Shields has directed his first movie and, by his own estimation, it is not worthy of release. He is broke and ruined. It is in this light that we assume the three have been brought in to save him, but that isn't the case. In that flashback, he had three Oscars on his shelf, but as the three "victims" are telling their stories, he has five Oscars on his shelf. The entire scenario is a ruse designed to play to their vanity and egos. This is clear in the movie's final scene: three terrible people listening in on a second line to Shields, who is undoubtedly buttering them up.
The plot is presented in flashback with three segments told from the perspective of a famous director, a leading lady, and an award-winner writer who worked with Shields in the past. They have been approached to work with him one last time, as a favor, to save his career.
The director says he's has a perfect treatment of a difficult-to-adapt novel but he acknowledges how much better that perfection gets with Shields assistance. The leading lady is an alcoholic with no discernable acting talent who, with Shields attention, dries up long enough to become a star. The writer is a vain, elitist academic who can be flattered into taking a lot of money to write a script. Despite the remarkable success they achieve with Shields assistance, they all feel that he has betrayed them.
But look closely. Each of their stories is told in their own words and their words reveal the reality. The director, whose biggest effort to date had been Attack of the Cat Men is "betrayed" because in order to make their movie the way they dreamed in would be made, Shields must hire a prominent director in order to get them a million dollar budget they needed. The leading lady reports that he "knows how to handle her" even though she was not in a position to hear him say this; by adding this tiny detail to her story, she turns him into the villain of her story, when the reality may be that he simply wasn't interested in her attention. The writer, who blames Shields for his wife death, presented his wife as a silly woman who envied the fame that intended to be his.
Shields may not be an innocent party but they are all really slimy. They are the bad and the movies the create are the beautiful.
Turning the table on this plot, and seeing the artists for what they truly are, seems to be supported by a key detail. In the final flashback, Shields has directed his first movie and, by his own estimation, it is not worthy of release. He is broke and ruined. It is in this light that we assume the three have been brought in to save him, but that isn't the case. In that flashback, he had three Oscars on his shelf, but as the three "victims" are telling their stories, he has five Oscars on his shelf. The entire scenario is a ruse designed to play to their vanity and egos. This is clear in the movie's final scene: three terrible people listening in on a second line to Shields, who is undoubtedly buttering them up.