Known more for his stylish MGM musicals, director Vincente Minnelli pulled out all the stops for this classic 1952 melodrama about a ruthless film producer, Jonathan Shields, who alienates all of those around him to build his fortunes and legacy in Hollywood. But this is no derivative Jackie Collins-style potboiler with cardboard cut-outs as characters. Ignited by Kirk Douglas's terrifically brutal performance as Shields, the film is incessantly watchable - similar in structure and perspective to Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane" - as the story tracks his rise to the top and fall from grace through three primary relationships - the first with Fred Amiel, a director with whom Shields partners early in their careers, the second with Georgia Lorrison, an alcoholic bit player and daughter of a Hollywood legend whom Shields grooms to become a big star, and the third with James Lee Bartlow, a writer whom Shields tries to make a screenwriter in spite of the constant interruptions by Bartlow's southern belle wife Rosemary.<br /><br />Filmed in a rich black-and-white by veteran cinematographer Robert Surtees, the film is slick and penetrating at the same time, a deep-dive character study of not only Shields but the people who come to admire his tenacity and creativity only to be betrayed by his lack of character. Composer David Raksin's music perfectly underlines the emotional pull of the movie. Minnelli has assembled a great cast to embody the story. Ever resourceful with his trademark dimpled granite chin, Douglas does not make Shields a complete villain but rather an intriguingly textured opportunist. You want to hate him but thanks to Douglas's natural charisma, you can't deny how he opened the right doors for the people around him. Ideally cast as Georgia in what is likely her career-best performance, Lana Turner is surprisingly effective in what must have been quite a stretch for her meager acting talents - from pathetic drunk to clinging starlet to haughty diva.<br /><br />Longtime leading man Dick Powell and familiar character actor Barry Sullivan respectively portray Bartlow and Amiel with precision and an alternating sense of brotherly obligation and resentment toward Shields. In a manner similar to the way he portrayed Ziegfeld in William Wyler's later "Funny Girl", Walter Pigeon plays production executive Harry Pebbel with stentorian fervor. Aging matinée idol Gilbert Roland has an archetypal role as an actor who believes his own image as a Latin lover, and in a few brief scenes, Gloria Grahame fluidly captures Rosemary's purposeful flightiness and veiled frustration. You can even spot Beaver's mom Barbara Billingsley playing a frustrated costume designer scolding Georgia on the way she walks in her creation.<br /><br />Minnelli has concocted some really great scenes, especially the open-ended conclusion. The best, however, has to be when Georgia finds a tawdry starlet (played acerbically by Elaine Stewart, who much later became a game show hostess) descending the stairs at Shields' mansion at which point she flees and drives with Hollywood-style abandon in her car. While it's fun to speculate on who is playing who within Hollywood lore, e.g., Shields as the doppelganger David O. Selznick, Georgia as Diana Barrymore (daughter of John), the characterizations are so rich that the guessing game is secondary. The DVD includes an interesting 90-minute TCM documentary on Turner, who apparently led a life more scandalous and lascivious than anyone in the movie.