‘The Bad and the Beautiful’: Leaving It for the Audience to Imagine

‘She doesn’t speak. We move the camera in close on her. She opens her mouth to talk, but she can’t. And what she’s feeling we’ll leave for the audience to imagine. Believe me, Jim, they’ll imagine it better than any words you and I could ever write.’
Jonathan Shields, 'The Bad and the Beautiful' 

'The Bad and the Beautiful' is a 1952 melodrama that tells the tale of a fictional Hollywood film producer.

Kirk Douglas plays Jonathan Shields, the son of a successful but now despised movie mogul, as he sets out to restore his family name. Shields is visionary, charismatic and passionate about film. But he also suffers some of his father’s shortcomings. He is ‘the man who’ll do anything to get what he wants.’

We are given a perspective on Shields from three of his former collaborators: a director, a leading lady and a screenwriter. All recognise his formidable talent and boundless energy, but all have been burnt by his ruthless ambition.

‘He shouldn’t have shot the picture. He should have shot himself.’

The film, directed by Vincente Minnelli and written by George Bradshaw and Charles Schnee, gives an insight into how Hollywood viewed itself back in the Golden Age.

The movie industry is depicted as fundamentally conservative and financially driven.

'I've told you a hundred times. I don't want to win awards. Give me pictures that end with a kiss and black ink on the books.’

It’s an industry that has an ambivalent attitude towards creative people. On the one hand, it seeks out the best writers. On the other, it treats them like an expendable commodity.

‘I’m flattered you want me and bitter you’ve got me. Where do I start?’

Hollywood throws together diverse talent from all walks of life and is comfortable with a certain amount of creative conflict. 

'Don't worry. Some of the best movies are made by people working together who hate each other's guts.’

Above all it celebrates that precious and enigmatic commodity, ‘star quality.’

‘When you're on the screen, no matter who you're with, what you're doing, the audience is looking at you. That's star quality.’

'The Bad and the Beautiful' gives a good many film-making tips along the way. 

‘A picture all climaxes is like a necklace without a string. It falls apart. You must build to your big moments and sometimes you must build slowly.’

I was particularly taken with a sequence covering Shields’ early career when he was commissioned to produce a low budget horror movie, ‘The Doom of the Cat Men’. He and his director make a dispiriting visit to the costume department to review the potential outfits for the cat men.

'Look. Put five men dressed like cats on the screen, what do they look like?'
'Like five men dressed like cats.’

 They arrive at a lateral solution.

'When an audience pays to see a picture like this, what are they paying for?'
'To get the pants scared off of ‘em.'
'And what scares the human race more than any other single thing?'
'The dark!'
'Of course. And why? Because the dark has a life of its own. In the dark, all sorts of things come alive.'
'Suppose... suppose we never do show the cat men. Is that what you're thinking?'
‘Exactly.'
'No cat men!'

They resolve to communicate the terrifying beasts by association and allusion; by being implicit, not explicit; by showing the effects of their actions rather than the actions themselves.

'Two eyes shining in the dark.'
'A dog frightened, growling, showing its fangs.’
'A bird, its neck broken, feathers torn from its throat.'
'A little girl screaming, claw marks down her cheeks.' 

This is an age-old lesson, but it’s one worth repeating. We tend to imagine that the route to more effective messaging is direct and literal. We think that the responsible course of action is to show and tell… and tell again for good measure.

Often the opposite is true. We can create more compelling communication by intimation and implication; by suggesting and prompting. If we put less in, they can take more out.

Because, as Shields observed, if you leave it for the audience to imagine…’they’ll imagine it better than any words you and I could ever write.’

'Each day through my window I watch her as she passes by.
I say to myself you're such a lucky guy,
To have a girl like her is truly a dream come true.
Out of all the fellows in the world she belongs to me.
But it was just my imagination,
Once again runnin' away with me.
It was just my imagination runnin' away with me.'

The Temptations, 'Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)’ (B Strong, N Whitfield)

No. 281

‘Ace in the Hole’: Beware the Seductive Allure of Cynicism in the Workplace

'Bad news sells best. Cause good news is no news.’
Chuck Tatum, ‘Ace in the Hole’

In Billy Wilder’s splendid 1951 movie ‘Ace in the Hole’Kirk Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a hard-bitten, unscrupulous journalist who has been fired from the big East Coast papers for lying, drinking and womanising. Arriving in a small New Mexico town, looking for a break to take him back to the big time, he takes a job at the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. 

'I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news, I'll go out and bite a dog.’

After an uneventful year at the paper, Tatum stumbles across an incident where a man has been trapped alive down an old Native American mine. He weaves a sensational story about an ancient curse, a hero in peril and a distressed wife waiting back at home. The piece makes the front page and precipitates a stream of onlookers and reporters to the site of the accident.

'This is the way it reads best, this is the way it's gonna be. In tomorrow's paper and the next day's. It's the way people like it. It's the way I'm gonna play it.' 

Tatum understands that human interest sells newspapers, and he’s happy to spice up the truth a little to enhance that human interest.

'Human interest. You pick up the paper, you read about 84 men or 284, or a million men, like in a Chinese famine. You read it, but it doesn't stay with you. One man's different. You want to know all about him. That's human interest.’

Next Tatum does a deal with the local sheriff to keep competitive press reporters away from the scene, promising that the celebrity he garners for the official overseeing the rescue will increase his chances of re-election. When the disgruntled wife of the trapped man threatens to leave, Tatum coaxes her to stay on and reap the commercial benefits of the sensation at her hitherto desolate trading store. 

'I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.’ 

Then the chief engineer reports that he can get the trapped man out in 12 hours by shoring-up the mine walls. This is too soon for Tatum. He persuades the contractor to drill from above, which will take a number of days. The more dramatic the project, the greater the engineer’s reputation, the more lucrative the jobs he’ll secure in the future.

'I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.’

For Tatum himself the incentive for spinning out the story is simple: more exclusives, more recognition, a bigger job, more money. Soon he’ll be back at the top where he belongs.

'Look, I've waited a long time for my turn at bat. Now that they've pitched me a fat one, I'm gonna smack it right out of the ballpark.’

Intense, vigorous and on a short fuse, growling and grinning, teasing and cajoling, Tatum orchestrates a full-scale media circus. Day-trippers arrive from the city. Cars and tour-buses queue to get in. A special train is laid on. A carnival sets up in the shadows of the mine. 

The disgruntled pressmen endeavour fruitlessly to get Tatum onside.

'We're all in the same boat.’
'I'm in the boat. You're in the water. Now let's see how you can swim.’

‘Ace in the Hole’ is a modern fable. It illustrates what happens when truth is pushed to one side, when compromises are made, when people are manipulated to pursue their own self-interest. It’s a story of when cynicism takes hold.

Of course cynicism can be seductive. Cynics are often charming and funny, crafty and canny. You’ll find them at every level of status and experience; in every company, community and country. They can bend the truth to make it more attractive. They can make straight dealing seem archaic and naïve. 

But cynicism is corrosive. With every corner cut and lily gilded, with every minor deception and petty deceit, with every scornful remark and sarcastic observation, there is an erosion of trust, a decay in confidence, an unpicking of the ties that bind people together. And, in time, sooner or later, things fall apart.

Of course, for all his charisma, intelligence and foresight, there’s one element of the whole media circus that Tatum can’t control: the health and durability of the hapless victim trapped for six days down a mine. And this is where his perfectly laid plans gradually come unstuck.

'When you have a big human interest story, you've got to give it a big human interest ending. When you get people steamed up like this, don't ever make suckers out of them. I don't want to hand them a dead man.'

In memory of Kirk Douglas (1916-2020) who passed away earlier this month.

'Well, if friends with their fancy persuasion
Don't admit that it's part of a scheme,
Then I can't help but have my suspicions
'Cause I ain't quite as dumb as I seem.
And you said you was never intending
To break up our scene in this way.
But there ain't any use in pretending
It could happen to us any day.
How long has this been going on?
How long has this been going on?’

Ace, ‘How Long?’ (P Carrack)

No. 268