The Bad and the Beautiful (1952 Vincente Minnelli)

Kirk Douglas died on February 5, aged 103. I'm glad to see he had been in our sights recently. Last year we saw his debut - as an alcoholic - in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, also in the Mankiewicz picture A Letter To Three Wives, as a teacher. And in particular, it was great to have caught up on his own favourite film Lonely Are the Brave - he'd optioned the novel and had Dalton Trumbo write it. Finally, and most recently, his moment with a wheelchair (no spoilers) in Greedy was effectively a lovely bow-out moment on his career (it was his last starring role before the stroke).

This film is a worthy, Oscar-nominated showcase for him as the charismatic and brilliant film producer who uses his three main collaborators in order to get the end results he wants - that edginess, erupting into violence and passion, is best showcased in the moment when he casts aside his new star Lana Turner (a tough edge that perhaps Billy Wilder had best exploited in the previous year's Ace In The Hole).

What is 'The Shields Magic'? We find out in Charles Schnee's screenplay - in three flashbacks, it involves teaching directors how to direct (a story admittedly based on Lewton and Cat People), actresses to act and writers to write! They are Barry Sullivan, Turner and Dick Powell, and the film also features Gloria Grahame, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Stuart, Gilbert Roland ('Gaucho'), Leo G. Carroll and Ivan Triesault (Notorious).

It uses a nice recurrent development of the Shields Pictures logo.

Lovely David Raksin score accompanies Robert Surtees' crisp noiry images (often on the same kinds of crane he's filming). He, Schnee, Grahame and art direction won Oscars.