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"Art is born from what it burns," says the cinéaste of Le Mépris, thus a glittering ode to a mighty flamethrower. Hollywood plays itself, the introductory view of a sound stage might be a vast mirror. The producer (Kirk Douglas) is a studio-building glickster, his emblem is a knight's helmet adorned with feathers and, in a Cocteau joke, a painted mustache. Now ruined, he summons the bitter chimera of director (Barry Sullivan), actress (Lana Turner) and screenwriter (Dick Powell), all former victims. The flashback begins with a dissolve from a shelf full of Oscars to a bastard's funeral packed with paid mourners (Citizen Kane is visible throughout), a flash of ingenuity lifts Sullivan's struggling filmmaker out of Poverty Row but it's the hard-nosed partner who gets the keys to the kingdom. A great thespian's wayward daughter, Turner is the bundle of raw nerves molded into a platinum diva via a strict diet of tests, rehearsals, and harsh romantic manipulation. (Her suicidal car ride is the bravura eruption of all the tension that's been accumulated, in other words a sublime Vincente Minnelli musical sequence.) Finally, Powell's Southern novelist is Faulkner parachuted into a Beverly Hills bungalow with a frisky belle (Gloria Grahame), his case of writer's block is cured at a high price. "You can't be a star in a cemetery!" The whirlwind of piquant flash tends to Tinseltown warts like sumptuous flowers, the camera slithers through a soirée to chart a roman à clef cacophony. ("Montage, montage! But where is the story?") The grinding system of Sunset Blvd. and In a Lonely Place is here a well-oiled machine feeding on neurosis, the go-getter's vicious hustle and the visionary's elusive humility fuse into art on occasion. A fountain of inspiration for 8½ and The Player. Cinematography by Robert Surtees. With Walter Pidgeon, Gilbert Roland, Leo G. Carroll, Vanessa Brown, Paul Stewart, Sammy White, and Ivan Triesault. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |