Comparing The Film The Bad And The Beautiful

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Bad and The Beautiful and State and Main are films that present the audience with an inside look into the not-so luxurious, grotesque formations of Hollywood Cinema. The Bad and the Beautiful, directed by Vincent Minelli (1952), is a black and white film narrated in flashback form. The camera work in the opening scene is positioned at a higher level forcing the audience to look below at the director at Stage 5. Here, the audience begins to intrude on the not-so glamorous lifestyle of Hollywood. Though, the viewers remain an outsider at this point. Immediately, the camera pans to the centre of a cameraman on a camera boom. We watch as he excitedly zooms in on the woman lying down below, represented as a sexualized object for his pleasure, with strong emphasis on the male gaze. Though Bad and the Beautiful is a film within a film, it is character-driven rather than plot-driven in that it focuses more on the actor's personas. Therefore, there is less use of wide-screen shots as the audience is invited to intrude on the private lives of Jonathan, Fred, Georgia, and James. …show more content…

The camera zooms in on their faces, signifying their bromance, which inevitably deteriorates. Jonathan betrays Fred and disbars him from the film. "You're not ready to direct a million dollar picture," Jonathan says. "Stealing my idea," Fred replies. "Without me it would stay an idea," Jonathan refutes. After the confrontation, Jonathan leaves and the camera zooms out on Fred who stands motionless inside the office. Fred is captured from a distance at eye-level and he becomes ostracized by both the film industry and the audience. Henry Bebbel too walks out uttering, "Always thought that man was a genius," thus implying that Fred is not good enough, nor man enough. Evidently, it's a shot against his

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