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Hooray for (Hating) Hollywood is a series revisiting those classics of the early 1950s which turned a withering gaze on the American film industry. Whether due to the blacklist, the decline of Hollywood's Golden Age, or America's more generalized postwar anxiety, Hollywood's screenwriters and directors were suddenly driven to lift the curtain from the dream factory and take a closer look at what went on behind the silver screen. Be warned: these reviews will contain spoilers.]
The Bad and the Beautiful, released the same year as
Singin' in the Rain, steps that film's good-natured satire up a notch. Where the sunny musical pokes and prods the stars - the easiest and safest target of public ridicule - Vincente Minnelli's melodrama dares to criticize a big-shot producer for his hubris and ruthlessness.
Singin' in the Rain punishes its protagonists with bruised egos, while
The Bad and the Beautiful doesn't stop short of personal betrayal, sexual manipulation, and even death. One film heaps its ridicule on the absurdities of silent cinema, a period safely in Hollywood's past, while the other takes the action right up to the world of 1952, basing its characters on figures still prominent in "the biz." All in all, it would appear that
The Bad and the Beautiful launches a serious attack on Hollywood's mores and myths, that it is a scathing indictment, while
Singin' in the Rain is a good-natured roast. Yet in truth,
The Bad and the Beautiful - in its own unusual way - is just as much a celebration of the Hollywood system as
Singin' in the Rain - perhaps more so.
