Mickey Rooney is an electrifying dynamo in this foot-tapping, often astonishing musical which helps cement for me why the pre-war period was the absolute creative peak of Hollywood. This Rooney/Garland vehicle, the second of many musical pairings charts the journey of the young teenage pair to make something of their fledgling big band. The magic of the Busby Berkeley choreography matched with Rooney’s electrifying performance, as singer/dancer/actor /musician and Judy Garland’s youthful energy gives this film a pulse rarely seen in movies today.
Showing posts with label Musical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musical. Show all posts
Thursday, 21 April 2016
Wednesday, 17 September 2014
All That Jazz
The influence of Fellini’s 8 ½ is clear in Bob Fosse’s own memoir-like fictional film. The story of a theatre director under immense pressure to make his next show a hit, while under the usual pressures of the business, told with a mixture of fantasy and realism is cut from the same mould as Fellini’s great picture. The creative evolution of Fosse’s work from 'Sweet Charity', 'Cabaret' and 'Lenny' seems to culminate in this overly ambitious yet invigorating explosion of cinema.
Friday, 15 February 2013
Cabaret
Rethinking the traditional notions of the Hollywood musical, Bob Fosse’s Cabaret still bedazzles us with seemless blend pre-war period melodrama and its the unpolished kitchen-sink musical numbers to arrive at his sublime political musical which discards the razzle-dazzle in favour of the seediness of a two-bit burlesque show.
Monday, 14 May 2012
Camelot
Starring: Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero
By Alan Bacchus
The story of King Arthur, told through the music and lyrics of Lerner and Lowe (My Fair Lady), was a cultural touchtone of the '60s, both the Broadway version, which John F. Kennedy famously identified with, and its big screen adaptation, a lavish, "spare no expense" production shepherded by the last studio mogul then still in business, Jack L. Warner. Sadly, its place in pop culture history notwithstanding, the film has withered with age; it's a dated spectacle without the memorable songs or performances of its '60s contemporaries, such as West Side Story, The Sound of Music and Oliver!
The story plays out as we expect, told mostly in flashbacks before the moment of Arthur's confrontation with old friend Lancelot. We see Arthur's romantic courtship with Guinevere, their unification as king and queen, the formation of the round table, the introduction of the master French knight Lancelot du Lac, Arthur's conflict with Morgana and his illegitimate son, Mordred, and the overarching, strenuous love triangle between Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur.
The themes that stuck with Kennedy are strong ― the internal struggle of being a man and a king, and the responsibilities as leader first and husband second. Unfortunately, these nuances get lost in a shabbily designed and executed film dated by the prevailing and ugly aesthetic trends of the psychedelic era, from Richard Harris's atrocious haircut and furry costumes to the choppy editing style, which at the time may have seemed progressive, but today just looks sloppy. Vanessa Redgrave is typical '60s eye candy as Guinevere, dressed in swinging '60s high hair and faux fur. And Franco Nero, the original Django, is campy and somewhat laughable as Lancelot.
Joshua Logan's direction is sporadic, often astounding with big scenes of epic scope but underwhelming when it comes to intimate dialogue. Sadly, despite the Blu-ray, the HD treatment is lacklustre, producing no pop or spark of clarity to wow us. As with the content, the picture looks dull and flat. Energetic commentary from critic Stephen Farber is enjoyable, providing unbiased critical opinion, both good and bad, along the way. While clearly a fan of the film, he's not shy in making us aware of its follies. The Warner packaging, as expected, looks great and includes the glossy liner notes and the accompanying CD soundtrack. As well as the the Farber commentary, there's a wealth of production featurettes that will likely satisfy die hard fans of the film. But for mild curiosity seekers, this isn't the best representation of the grand musical spectacles of the '60s.
Sunday, 18 December 2011
Velvet Goldmine
Starring: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale, Eddie Izzard, Toni Collette
***1/2
By Alan Bacchus
Velvet Goldmine was a perceived failure in its day, but it’s a film that showed up on a lot of critics' Best of the Decade lists at the end of the ‘90s. Even I was dumbfounded by the preposterous indulgences of Haynes' love letter to glam rock. The mixture of fantasy and realism under the New Queer Cinema banner had me scratching my head. But there's much to admire in Haynes' ambitiousness and ability to recreate the feeling and tone of those ‘70s rock operas, all with a strong emotional character-based anchor.
The opening moments signal the epic-like ambition of Haynes – a scene set in the 1800s, visiting the gay author Oscar Wilde, who we're told was dropped from a UFO at birth, and in his childhood yearns to be a pop star. The reincarnated pop star we're meant to think he became is Brian Slade (Meyers), who in his youth grew up idolizing an out-of-control Iggy Pop-like rocker, Curt Wild (McGregor).
An audition with a star-making producer (Izzard) leads Slade to create a Ziggy Stardust-like alter ego through which to channel his audacious and overt bisexuality and hardcore lifestyle. The rocky journey of Slade and Wild are chronicled via a not-so-disguised Citizen Kane narrative set in 1984 featuring another fame-chaser, a smitten reporter (Bale) who investigated the rumoured fake-death of Slade years prior.
A strong theme of fame and obsession fuels Haynes' wild stylistic flourishes, which attempt to put us in a grandiose rock opera world like Quadrophenia and Phantom of the Paradise. That said, other than the trippy UFO/Oscar Wilde opening, most of everything we see on screen could have actually happened.
Haynes' loose narrative consists of short set pieces and montage scenes that hopscotch us through the ‘70s at a sharp pace, an energy which Haynes remarkably keeps up for almost two hours. Without a semblance of traditional movie coverage, everything we see on screen is a stimulus brimming with life. And great period music, both real and fake, merges perfectly to create visual and audio harmony.
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' androgynous features and palpable screen presence should have been a star-making performance. Unfortunately, the failure of the film prevented this. Eddie Izzard's bombastic performance as the manager steals scenes, but it's Christian Bale we notice above all others. He could have blended into the background of the 'traditional' segments of the picture, but his aching internalized desires to be like Slade or Wild and inhabit their worlds carry more emotional weight than anything else. At the end, we get the film's most infamous scene – anal sex with Ewan McGregor on a rooftop. It's tastefully done, and we don't see much, but I think even the most bigoted homophobes might shed a tear for Bale's character, who in the most transcendental manner achieves his dream.
Looking back, Velvet Goldmine works so well because it takes the best of those ‘70s rock operas (none of them great films anyways), keeps the good stuff, throws out the bad and infuses itself with hopeful and passionate nostalgia.
Velvet Goldmine is available on Blu-ray from Alliance Films in Canada.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
West Side Story
Starring: Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, George Chakiris, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno
***½
By Alan Bacchus
The famed Broadway show so vividly brought to life on screen and equally celebrated with 10 Academy Awards, mondo box office bucks and full pop culture infusion arrives on Blu-ray with bells and whistles, as well as a robust high definition transfer.
For the most part it’s still a marvel and a strangely vacant tragic love story. Of course, the original source material is Romeo and Juliet reset in the streets of New York. Although here, with its bubble gum musical treatment, the environment feels significantly less gritty and less threatening than Shakespeare’s 17th century Verona. But more on that later.
The opening scene is still electrifying. After the overture and the calm helicopter view across the city, the film settles in on an enclave of one of the boroughs, a school yard where a gang of 'thugs' snap their fingers in unison. It’s part of their intimidation of the other kids around them to assert their authority. There’s no dialogue and little music. Then, as the guys strut down the street, a glide of the foot, a ballet leap and a twirl signals a full-on dance number, during which we’re introduced to the Jets and the Sharks, two rival gangs, one made up of Polish descendants and the other Puerto Rican immigrants.
Jerome Robbin’s innovative and startling dance numbers combined with the energetic direction from Robert Wise results is a superlative introduction to the film. The first third of the film, in fact, is one eye-popping scene after another. In the tradition of the best studio musicals of the ‘30s, Wise’s camera whips around freely and moves as elegantly as the dancers. And when punctuated by Leonard Bernstein’s punchy score, everything is perfectly in sync.
Where the picture suffers is the love story between Maria (Wood) and Tony (Beymer). Wood, as a Puerto Rican, still distracts us from her star-crossed infatuation with Tony. And Richard Beymer is unfortunately upstaged by both Russ Tamblyn and George Chakiris. Tamblyn and Chakiris are so prominent in the first half of the film that we actually forget it’s about the lovers. As leaders of their clans, they both express themselves with wildly different but equally mesmerizing dance styles.
The ‘Dance at the Gym’ sequence is one of the most impressive numbers showcasing both dancers at their best. Chakiris features a tightly wound and controlled Latin-America style while Tamblyn shows off his acrobatic ‘Donald O’Connor’ flips and jumps. The terrific Blu-ray featurettes consist of numerous acclaimed choreographers and dancers breaking down the innovations from Robbins in these sequences for lay viewers like myself.
The film loses much of its energy with the deaths of Tamblyn and Chakiris after their second act rumble. With them out of the picture, we can only rely on the love story to maintain the momentum. Sadly, the romance falls flat all the way to the end. Robbins and company do manage to pull out one great sequence in the second half, perhaps the greatest musical number in Hollywood history. The ‘Cool’ number, which takes place in the dark and claustrophobic parking garage, was famously reworked by Martin Scorsese in his Michael Jackson ‘Bad’ video. There’s no Chakiris or Tamblyn in this scene, but the rest of Jets kick it up a notch with style.
Even though this is the small screen, we can feel the sense of scope from the original 70mm cinematography. The wide shots look bigger, the colours pop brighter and the close-ups are more pristine and detailed than most pictures of its time (or now!). None of this grandiloquence is lost over the years. And although the love story doesn’t work, the doomed finale feels utterly tragic. It’s a strangely downbeat ending to a monumentally successful film.
West Side Story is available on Blu-ray from MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
It’s Always Fair Weather
Starring: Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Michael Kidd, Dan Dailey
***½
By Alan Bacchus
To be honest, I had actually never even heard of this film before it played on Turner Classic Movies this week when I saw it for the first time. It's really a must-see musical directed by the great team of Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly and their follow-up to the legendary Singin’ in the Rain. Although It’s Always Fair Weather was critically favourable back in the day, it didn't perform as well as Singin’ in the Rain, and thus never achieved the same cultural awareness as that film or their first collaboration, On the Town. That’s a shame, but what a fun 'discovery'. It's Always Fair Weather is a marvellously lavish piece of cinematic spectacle featuring Gene Kelly dancing on roller skates, some early triptych split screen work, and big, bold Cinemascope.
Like the Gene Kelly/Donald O'Connor/Debbie Reynolds team, Weather features another trio of friends, specifically war buddies from WWII who make a pact to meet up 10 years after VE Day to rekindle their friendship only to find in the present that they have almost nothing in common. As typical of the Kelly/Donen collaborations, some remarkably energetic song and dance set pieces are the chief reason to watch this picture. Like a fight sequence from a Jackie Chan movie or a car chase from Michael Bay, the five or six musical sequences in this film are a marvel of choreography, creativity, athleticism and technical artistry.
The characterizations of the three leads are admittedly base archetypes. Gene Kelly plays Ted Riley, a guy who gets dumped by his girlfriend by phone on VE Day and then turns into a womanizing, two-bit fight gambler and fight promoter. The tall, lanky Dan Dailey is Doug Hallerton, a painter who sells out his dreams of being a respected artist for a hum drum life of drawing cartoons for lowly TV advertisements. Angie Valentine (the legendary Michael Kidd) is the chef of the bunch, who lives a humble working-class life as a grill man and owner of a burger restaurant in Schenectady, New York. But characterizations like these are typical of the genre and really a means to get these characters to express themselves so dramatically in the form of song and dance.
The first set piece indeed reminds us of a Jackie Chan sequence. It features the three soldiers stinking drunk in 1945 celebrating their victory in the middle of the streets of New York tap dancing around in and on top of a yellow cab. Like Chan, Kelly and company make clever use of the props in the surroundings in their routines.
It's not always the boys who shine though. Cyd Charisse is magnificent in her main set piece as a Marilyn Monroe-style cock-tease amid the snarling sweaty men in a boxing gym. The most celebrated scene is the roller skating sequence, which feels like the famous Singin' in the Rain sequence, except instead of tap dancing with his shoes along the rain-soaked streets, Kelly elegantly glides around on a pair of roller skates. Kelly's skills on skates are amazing, matched equally by his ability to tap dance with skates on!
Kelly and Donen could have been the Michael Bay of our age. In addition to these musical sequences, they stage a rambunctious comic fist fight sequence at the end showing exactly how the choreography of dance and song in old Hollywood equates to the same creative and technical methodology of action sequences today.
Sunday, 3 July 2011
Rose Marie (1954 version)
Rose Marie (1954) dir. Mervyn LeRoy
Starring: Ann Blyth, Howard Keel, Fernando Lamas, Joan Taylor, Bert Lahr, Marjorie Main, Ray Collins and Chief Yowlachie
***
By Greg Klymkiw
Did you know that all Canadian watering holes in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta are populated with friendly mad trappers who raise their mugs of beer nightly and sing rousing a cappella renditions of "Alouette"?
Well, now you know.
God help me, I love operettas.
Glorious tenors and sopranos trilling through insanely romantic melodramatic plots with dollops of broad comic relief have always been my idea of a good time. Rose Marie, a magnificent chestnut (stuffed with loads of oozing cheese) was based on the Rudolph Friml, Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto A. Harbach operetta (light opera, for the uninitiated) and was made into a movie three times - a 1928 silent version with Joan Crawford in the title role, Woody Van Dyke's astonishing 1936 version with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy and the order of today's business, Mervyn LeRoy's ridiculous and stunningly creaky CinemaScope version (in glorious Technicolor no less) from 1954.
Though the 1936 version is a better movie in all respects, I'll always have a special place in my heart for the 1954 vintage. When I was a kid in the 1960s, MGM mounted several major retrospective play dates of their greatest (and even not-so-great) classics and played them in first-run theatres. This version was the first I saw in that series of major reissues - a gorgeous, newly minted print in the aforementioned CinemaScope, Technicolor and on a huge screen in an old picture palace (long since shuttered forever).
Seeing the blazing red uniforms of my country's illustrious Royal Canadian Mounted Police in this fashion has stayed with me well into my dotage.
Even though I eventually discovered and loved Woody Van Dyke's 30s trollop into backlot Canada, this version of Rose Marie is much closer to the original operetta - offering up plot machinations far more ludicrous and as such, deserving copious kudos for doing so.
Read this and weep:
Howard Keel plays square-jawed Captain Mike Malone, a happy horse riding, tune-belting Mountie who trots into the deep bush of Alberta in search of Rose Marie (Ann Blyth, sporting a weirdly delightful French Canadian accent by way of Hollywood voice coaches). Mountie Mike earlier promised an old friend that he'd raise the child as his own should said pal ever bite the bullet. Mountie Mike is the ultimate Canadian Scarlet Avenger - true to his word and always getting his man (or in this case, woman). His loyalty and resolve knowing no bounds, the Mike-ster collects this newly orphaned lass of the wilderness - a spunky wild child tomboy who has no desire or intention to ever leave the idyll of nature.
Rose Marie doth protest too much and does so in utter futility. One never says "no" to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and especially not Mike, for he does what any man of the law would do.
He takes her by force.
Before you can say "maple syrup" la belle femme, soon dons the garb of the Mounties and is raised at the outpost as such.
Yes, a Mountie!
With a bevy of hunky red-suited and red-blooded Canucks providing surrogate parentage, our shapely little Missy becomes even more curvy and delicious - vaguely hiding those supple curves just beneath her form-fitting RCMP adornments. In addition to Capt. Mike, Rose Marie is doted on by a surrogate grandfather figure, the charming irascible Barney McCorkle (marvellously played by Mr. Cowardly Lion himself, Bert Lahr).
Can this possibly get any better? Read on, dear reader.
When Mike's C.O. Inspector Appleby (Ray Collins - he of Boss Jim Gettys fame in Citizen Kane and Lt. Tragg in Perry Mason) pops by to survey the troops, he displays considerable disdain over the lack of close shaves adorning the gorgeous faces of Capt. Mike's men, until he caresses the cheek of Rose Marie.
(To this day, cheek-caressing is the preferred method of inspecting closeness of shaves amongst the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Canadians are indebted to Hollywood forever for revealing this fact to the world.)
At first, Appleby is mightily impressed with the smoothness of this slightly peach-fuzzed face, but one double take later, he realizes the delicate-skinned mountie is, in fact a woman. He orders Capt. Mike to take her into town so she may be trained in the ways of the weaker sex by Lady Jane Dunstock (Marjorie Main of "Ma and Pa Kettle" fame), a ballsy inn-and-brothel-keeper who adorns herself in bright purple-coloured satin dresses.
And presto! Rose Marie is tutored in the ways of woman and reveals looks so beguilingly gorgeous that Mike falls in love with her.
(To this day, whores and/or brothel-keepers are entrusted by Canadians to transform tomboys into ladies and again, Canadians are indebted to Hollywood forever for revealing yet another salient factoid of Canuck-hood to the world.)
Ah, but the plot (as it were) thickens when the dashing James Severn Duval (Fernando Lamas as a French Canadian trapper born in the Yukon and sporting a Spanish accent) is ordered by Chief Black Eagle (Chief Yowlachie, a Native American actor) to stop diddling his comely daughter Wanda (Joan Taylor).
Chief Black Eagle no want-um paleface to make-um daughter squaw. Bloodline must stay pure. Mixing white with red make-um heap mongrel papoose. This make-um Apple, eh? Red on outside, white on inside. Is heap extra bad if white is Quebecois of Spanish persuasion.
No matter, though. Once Duval gets a glimpse of Rose Marie, he's immediately smitten and our poor heroine is faced with having to choose between two hunky fellas.
What's a girl to do?
From here, the plot (as it were) becomes an even stickier Acadian gumbo of romantic intrigue when Wanda jealously decides to get her studly fur-trapping Hispanic back at any and all cost. This turning point happens during one of the most outrageous musical numbers ever committed to celluloid - the Busby Berkeley choreographed "Totem Tom-Tom", a mouth-wateringly sexy depiction of an ancient aboriginal fertility dance where Wanda writhes frenziedly amongst a bevy of beauties and a passel of bronze bucks. During her sensual manipulations, that would, no doubt, put most pole dancers in gentleman's clubs to shame, Wanda becomes distracted enough to notice the love of her life smooching with our lily white heroine.
No give-um birth to Apple papoose if this dalliance continues in earnest.
Hell breaks loose and our tale dips its toe into the dark side with non-aboriginals tied to stakes, murder, mistaken identity and last second reprieves from the gallows.
I was riveted.
That said, my 10-year-old daughter repeatedly chided me with, "But Dad, how can you like this? It's so predictable."
Well, as I said earlier, I'm a sucker for operettas.
It's not just the familiar plots, but that fact that they're used primarily as a coat hanger for the lead characters to burst into song. The ditties in this one are plenty ripe.
This version of Rose Marie is blessed with a rendition of "Indian Love Call" that rivals any I've heard or seen.
And, lest I forget, allow me to cite a great comic warble assigned to Bert Lahr entitled "I'm A Mountie Who Never Got His Man". This number, newly created by George Stoll and Herbert Baker is a genuine laugh riot, though you will need to seriously forget anything you've ever learned about cultural sensitivity to even sit through it, much less thoroughly enjoy it.
In fact, the movie is replete with all manner of stereotypes. Some might call them racist, but there's nothing especially hateful about the attitudes, but rather more ignorant - especially given the time period in which the film is set and when it was made. Though one shouldn't outright excuse the propagation of outmoded cultural representation from another age, it's still probably a good idea to try and appreciate the supremely oddball imaginations it took to come up with them, and in turn, allow yourself a fascinating window into a bygone perspective.
Another interesting aspect of the film is the bizarre portrait it paints of Canada. If you ever get a chance, please read Pierre Berton's magnificent book "Hollywood's Canada". It's an amazing catalogue and history of this strange period when Hollywood decided to prevent an indigenous film industry from blossoming in Canada with government support. Canada, as per much of its history, strapped on the kneepads before Uncle Sam and agreed only to allow taxpayer support of documentaries, and in return, the American government (through the Motion Picture Association of America) agreed to make as many movies as possible promoting Canada - its culture, history and natural beauty. This included shooting in Canada, but in the case of Rose Marie much of the stunning technicolor footage is of the second-unit variety. Of course, this policy of cultural "reciprocity" resulted in the stereotyping of Canada to such an extent I can still fool most anyone from America who has never ventured above the 49th parallel (including Rhodes Scholars) that we all wear fur hats and lumberjack shirts, live in igloos or teepees and bottle-feed the newly-born with Molson Canadian beer. My road trips through the Deep South (Mississippi in particular) are always a blast when I encounter gas jockeys, convenience store clerks and academicians who ask in their tell-tale drawl of white-trashery, "Y'all frumm Kenuh-duh?"
As to the portrayal of Canada's Aboriginal peoples, I must wholeheartedly reiterate that Rose Marie is best enjoyed if you gird your loins of cultural sensitivity and doff your caps of Political Correctness.
In essence, go Republican. Or go home.
"Rose Marie" is one of hundreds of movies from the Warner Brothers catalogue that will not receive an official release on DVD. In Toronto, Canada the only places that carry a wide selection of these titles are the flagship store of Sunrise Records at Yonge and Dundas and the newly resurrected Starstruck Video at Dundas and Tomken. They're simply colour balanced transfers from the best existing materials and available only in specialty shops or online - for a premium price, of course. Also, the transfers do vary in quality. So far, many are good, but I have to sadly admit that the "Rose Marie" transfer is not all it could be. Frankly, it's begging for proper clean-up and meticulous transfer to Blu-ray - not just DVD. That all said, I'm happy many of these pictures are finally available for home consumption, but it would be a lot better if the price point was, at the very least, lowered.
Thursday, 23 June 2011
New York, New York
Starring: Robert De Niro, Liza Minnelli, Lionel Stander
**
By Alan Bacchus
Martin Scorsese’s maddeningly uneven ‘coke movie’ New York, New York gets the Blu-ray treatment for the first time. It would be less a disappointment from the man if it didn't come at the time of one of his great artistic peaks – between Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. This period was poisonous to many of the great ‘70s filmmakers, as Steven Spielberg's 1941, Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate and Francis Coppola's One from the Heart, like New York, New York, were ambitious, admirable failures.
Robert De Niro is like Dick Powell on coke, a cocky skirt-chasing sax player named Jimmy Doyle trying to make it in the post-WWII big band era. If De Niro is Powell then Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli) is his Myrna Loy, a beaten down singer/dame who suffers for years as Doyle's creative partner and lover but is continually subject to his violent outbursts and verbal abuse. Minnelli does her best to work with such a shallow and underwritten role, but ultimately she's mostly a victim who only reacts to Doyle’s outrageous behaviour.
The movie really only hits its stride in the final 45 minutes, which includes a series of musical set pieces in the grand MGM style featuring Liza taking the stage to show off her immense talents. The 'Happy Endings' sequence feels like Scorsese doing the final Gene Kelly montage in An American in Paris, and the title song New York, New York, as sung by Liza, is terrific and sends the film out on a high note. But before that, it’s the Robert De Niro show. His talents are unbridled by Scorsese, as he lets loose like a rampaging Jake La Motta and affable oddball Rupert Pupkin.
Unfortunately, Jimmy Doyle lacks the curious charms of these two other characters. One of the film's inconsistencies is the opening sequence, during which he’s introduced as a con man/pick-up artist exploiting the jubilance of VJ Day to try and ‘get laid’. It's in this lengthy opening sequence where he meets Francine, who initially does everything she can to shove him away but instead falls in love with his perseverance.
This sequence plays like a screwball comedy fuelled by Robert De Niro’s rat-a-tat banter and the dialogue rhythms of Mardik Martin’s (Mean Streets) distinct writing style. We can see Scorsese’s skills with big scenes. Effectively populating his frames with hundreds of extras, we can practically hear the ticker rack up the excessive budget. But this scene feels like a different movie and Doyle feels like a different character.
After this comic introduction, Doyle quickly turns into a manic madman artist, a transition, which even after several viewings of this film, just never fits the bill for me. In the second act, as Doyle and Francine make their way towards success, De Niro's aggressive behaviour overpowers each and every scene, especially Minnelli, who can only charm us with her sad expressive eyes.
But, as mentioned, this is an admirable failure. As a musical vehicle for Scorsese, it's no stain on his filmography. His streetwise aesthetic and the primal masculine aggression of Mean Streets and Raging Bull combined with the MGM dream factory genre is a wholly Scorsese vision. While it has never landed softly on me, it's a risk great artists like Scorsese continually need to take. After all, his next (dramatic) film was Raging Bull.
New York, New York is available on Blu-ray from MGM Home Entertainment.
Friday, 3 December 2010
Swing Time
Starring: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers
***1/2
By Alan Bacchus
The Warner Bros four-pack (The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat, Swing Time and Shall We Dance) acts like a four part time capsule of one of the legendary eras of the studio system - the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers song and dance team. Three of the pictures were directed by the same man, Mark Sandrich and this fourth one, Swing Time, arguably the most celebrated picture of the bunch, directed by the great George Stevens.
As usual there’s a scheme and a whole lot of disreputable behaviour going on. Lucky Garnett (Astaire) is mostly despicable in his journey, playing a gambler who needs to make $25,000 in order to appease his father in law to be to marry his daughter. After he moves to New York he meets his dance partner Penny (Ginger Rogers) who holds the key to his success as an dancer in the big city, Problem is he falls in love with her thus complicating his desire to make money and his obligation to go back home and marry his girlfriend. And so, there's a whole bunch of scheming, Lucky lying to Penny, his girlfriend, and himself and at the same time gambling his way into debt. Also, his unconditional hatred for Ricky Romero the latino bandleader is slightly racist.
As traditional for these types of movies in the 30's, it's classic screwball plotting taking us through the silly hijinx in between main dance set pieces.
It takes 30mins before we see Astaire and Rogers in action, and when they get going, they are both electric. Astaire's effortless style makes him look like he’s floating on air, gliding across the dance floor with ease and elegance. There’s also a clever smirk on his face, a cocky look and recognition of his immense talent. And Rogers, she's nimble and athletic and doing it all in heels.
These films aren’t really traditional musicals, but dance pictures with the occasional song. In Swing Time we don’t get a song until 25mins in and a second until the very end. But there's four stunning dance set pieces, each one distinct and unique and a classic in the annals of cinema history.
The final ballroom set design is magnificent and the stuff of the great Bubsy Berkeley pictures. Stevens stages the last numbers with great pizazz, dressing the set with a great black staircase and a luscious sparkly walled backdrop. And the reflective floor is perhaps borrowed from Berkeley's trademark design - and who knows maybe even borrowed from another Warner Bros set.
The Bo Jangles number is the best though, deservedly celebrated, Astaire's performance, a stunning solo tap dance backed up by three different shadow versions of himself projected as giants in the background. And we barely even notice that Astaire is in blackface.
"Swing Time" is available on DVD from Warner Bros Home Video via the TCM/Warner Astraire-Rogers Collection
Friday, 19 November 2010
The Sound of Music
Starring: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer
****
By Alan Bacchus
For about 5 years The Sound of Music was the highest grossing film of all time. It was a phenomenon back in the day, besting the box office record held for 25 years by Gone With the Wind. It’s a touchstone film, and a treasure of pop culture moments. I hadn’t actually seen it in full from beginning to end, until now this splashy Blu-Ray release, yet I seemed to know the story intimately, and I even knew the lyrics of most of the songs. Such is the penetration of this movie into our public consciousness.
It’s an elegant heartwarming family film, one of the best 'Disney' movies, Disney never made. Based on the real story of the Austrian von Trapp signing family of seven children, their father, and their stepmother who escape their Nazi-infested homeland. But the actual escape is really just a suspenseful climax to an endearing story of family, motherhood and love between two polar opposite people.
The matriarch of the von Trapp is Maria (Julie Andrews), whom we see in the opening as an absent-minded nun who’d rather spend time singing songs on top of the glorious green hills around her quaint village in the Alps than be on time for her prayers. Her fellow nuns recognize her infectious personality is not really suited to a nunery, instead she gets assigned as the new governness (an elaborate term for ‘nanny’) to the aristocrat and recent widower Captain Georg Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). With the rub being, Captain has seven children who’s aggressive activities have scared off all other previous candidates.
Of course Maria is resolute and warm and makes a great impression despite the children’s attempts to break her. Captain is different though, the death of his wife has hardened him reverting back to a military-like authority within the house. But Maria warms him up too, with song and dance, and eventually they fall in love. When one of Captain’s colleagues discovers the musical talents of the children, he books them to perform at a local concert, something which Captain continues to forbid. But as the Nazi’s encroach on their lands, Captain realizes his country and his lifestyle are in danger and engineer’s a daring a risky escape at this very concert.
Andrews exhibits such magnetism, that Shirley Temple, Natalie Wood, Julia Roberts type of magnetism that lights up a room, or in this case, a cinema. Christopher Plummer is a fine actor too, and has a different kind of stage presence. Captain von Trapp is characterized rather obviously as a stuck up old widower with a pickle up his ass, and Plummer's change to a smitten love struck young man is a great transition. Though a born Canadian, he wears the skin of an Austrian aristocrat with a British accent so well. And he can sing. Who can forget the romantically patriotic Edelwiess song he plucks away during the final concert in the faces of the nasty Nazis in the front row.
As mentioned, these songs, which feel like a Hollywood national anthem of sorts, are so familiar: Edelweiss, My Favouite Things, So Long Farewell, Do-Re-Mi and of course the opening ditty where we see Ms. Andrews belting out ‘The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music!”. In fact, I can’t think of a grander introduction to a character on film than Ms. Andrews' in this moment. It comes after Robert Wise’s long helicopter journey taking us across the impossibly beautiful mountaintops of the Alps before finding Maria on top of her grassy hill signing her heart out.
On Blu-Ray Ms. Andrews looks amazing, so does Wise’s absolutely perfect compositions. The real world on location scenes shot in Austria, Bavaria and other fabulous places in Europe ring out great authenticity. And remember this film was shot on 70mm as well, making everything extra crisp. You don’t even need to go past the first song to see the pictoral perfection. Just watch the clouds in the background, the formation of which is pastoral, exquisite, and just the right shape to create the perfect composition complimenting the green mountaintop and Ms. Andrews’ position on it.
Next to a 70mm big screen revival, the Blu-Ray makes for the next best reason to rewatch this film once again.
The Sound of Music is available on Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Moulin Rouge
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Ewen McGregor, Jim Broadbent, John Leguizamo, Richard Roxburgh
*½
By Alan Bacchus
I hated this movie when I first saw it on the big screen and I still hate seeing it for a second time on the brand spanking new Blu-Ray almost 10 years later . What many found and loved as a wild extravagant melodramatic rock opera to these eyes and ears is just an overly dramatized two hour long garish pop video version of Gilbert and Sullivan.
The story finds a young writer Christian (McGregor) in Paris at the turn of the century employed by a really weird group of stage producers, which includes John Leguizamo shrunked down to the five-foot sized Toulouse-Lautrec, looking to write and finance a play around the debaucherous nightclub, 'Moulin Rouge'. Christian ingratiates himself with Moulin Rouge's owner Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) as well as the club's luscious courtesan Satine (Kidman). They fall in love, which runs counter to Zidler's plans to use Satine to woo their moneybags investor 'The Duke' (Richard Roxburgh). Meanwhile Satine's days on earth are numbered as she suffers from TB.
The love triangle of Satine, the Duke and Christian continues all the way up to the premiere of their show 'Spectacular Spectacular' where true love triumphs, just in time before Satine falls victim to a melodramatic death.
Remember that scene in Dumb and Dumber, when Jim Carrey's character, says, 'Wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?" and then proceeds to scream wildly into the ear of Jeff Daniels? This is a similar feeling I get when watching 'Moulin Rouge'. Of course to critique the film for being 'over-the-top' would be useless. It's a rock musical which needs to have a big top razzle dazzle quality. But Luhrmann executes his stylish pop opera like a shrill cat in heat.
Let's start with the editing, there’s some terrific production design in the celebrated stage sequences, but Baz Luhrmann chops everything up so fast and with a non-sensible montage sensabilities we lose the sense of scope. I'd even argue that the production design is too busy for it's own good. Like ill-matching plaids, we can barely even find the actors in the frame out of the mess of colour and velvet drapes in the background.
When the film is not mashing together overplayed pop songs, the plotting of the actual story is put through an extreme screwball comedy machine. Unfortunately it takes funny actors and funny dialogue to get some laughs, not shameless sound stings accompanied by excessive camera whip pans.
No one can really sing in the film that well either. Ewen McGregor's voice is not really that bad, but not great either, and a lead in a cinema musical needs to have a great voice. And this film in particular his deep vocal tones just doesn’t fit the needs of the heightened rock opera. His opening ditty, Elton John’s My Song is downright awful. Nicole Kidman is also only passable, but would be crushed into submission by anyone on Broadway, or even Glee. She also doesn’t seem natural as a seductress, she still comes off as a demure prude which most of her other roles have type cast her as.
And so to lay the point down as bluntly as Luhrmann has done with this film, it's simply unwatchable.
But Moulin Rouge lovers rejoice, the Blu-Ray transfer is actually pretty good, and is now available from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Friday, 12 November 2010
Dames
Starring: Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keelor, Guy Kibbee, Zasu Pitts, Hugh Herbert
***
By Alan Bacchus
Warner Bros has packaged yet another fabulous, reasonably priced four pack of Hollywood classics under their label association with Turner Classic Movies, this time, the films of Busby Berkeley, the unique choreographer/director/magician/showman renowned for visually inventive dance sequences.
Dames, a film Berkeley only directed the musical sequences for, finds his usual leading man Dick Powell playing Jimmy Hughes, a broadway actor and producer looking to 'put on a show', but lacking the financial backing to make it happen. Remember this was the time of Great Depression and many of these populist movies pitted big business vs. the common working man. In this case, Jimmy targets his rich Uncle Ezra Ounce (Hugh Herbert) for the cash. Problem is Ezra is a right wing boob and thinks anything to do with the arts, especially shows with 'dames' as immoral. And so the scheme is on to free Ounce's money from his tight reins and to put it to good use, that is, a lavish Busby Berkeley revue full of scantily clad ladies with pretty smiles and long legs.
Like most of the Berkeley pictures, it's 60mins of screwball plotting and one long 30mins musical sequence wherein our young hero finally gets a chance to put his work on the stage. In this case, Ray Enright's direction in especially stodgy compared to when Berkeley's whirling dervish of a camera takes over.
Berkeley wasn't a dancer by trade, in fact he couldn't dance at all. But his eye for design and patterns and composition is what put him in the business of Hollywood musicals. Once Jimmy's show starts, it's truly a magical experience, something no other director then or now could recreate. Even Berkeley would admit the dancing of each individual is not perfect, but watching all the dancers elegantly move in time with one another is majestic.
Two numbers anchor the big grand finale, which of course, takes place in a theatre. The "I Only Have Eyes For You" sequence has Jimmy in song confessing his love to Ruby Keelor's character on a journey through the streets of New York and aboard a subway ride, intercut with expressive fantasy sequences visualizing Keelor's eyes and head in Berekley's grand kaleidoscope style.
The other song, is shamelessly sexist, “What Do We Go For? Beautiful Dames!”, which is Jimmy's answer to a question asked in a dramatized financial meeting in the story within the story. To visualize Jimmy's theory, Berkeley has his camera travelling through the lilly white legs of a hundred dames wearing nighties, and then having them lather up their naked bodies in a hundred bubble baths.
Who can resist that? Luckily the new TCM set has four of these pictures, and even better ones than this gem, specifically 42nd Street, Footlight Parade featuring James Cagney, and The Golddiggers of 1937. More coverage on these pictures to come. Enjoy.
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Starring: Tim Curry Susan Sarandan, Brian Brian Bostwick, Richard O’Brien, Meatloaf
***
By Alan Bacchus
I like musicals, but don’t much care for rock operas, that is, the brand of song and dance motion picture which emerged in the 70’s and featured reworked pop rock tunes instead of traditional broadway style numbers. So this is not really my cup of tea, but if there was one film I could appreciate in this subgenre it would this gleeful, irresponsible and audacious cultish schlockfest.
Susan Sarandan is Janet Weiss, a virginal small town girl betroathed to the equally nerdy and virginal Brad Majors (Bostwick). The night of their engagement they find themselves with a flat tire and stranded in heavy rain. Their nearest respite is an old haunted castle-like mansion off the beaten path. They are quickly welcomed to a group of Transylvanians singing the Timewarp song.
The leader of this cooky gang of strange and swinging group of men, women and trannies is the ultimate tranny Dr. Frank N Furter (Tim Curry), who has just finished creating his own gay version of Frankenstein’s monster, an Apollo-like beefcake figure named Rocky, who will serve as his own personal sex slave. After Frank, in disguise, beds both Janet and Brad, Janet discovers her own repressed carnality and goes sexual haywire. Then Janet and Brad’s old high school teacher Dr. Everett Scott shows up only to get killed and served for dinner to Frank’s guests. Then it turns out the Transylvanians are actually aliens from another galaxy and eventually blast off into space in the castle-cum-spaceship.
Predictable is not the word to describe the effect of watching Rocky Horror Picture, fucked up quaalude trip or ecstasy bomb might be more appropriate. The plot seemingly gets made up as the film goes along, but mostly it’s a parody of classic b-movie sci-fi of the 50’s, with a lot of gay sex.
I forgot how gay the film was actually. And I forgot how liberal the 70’s were, in comparison to the decades of the 80’s and 90’s when material like this would have been scared off by the AIDS epidemic. Few commercial or even remotely mainstream films are as graphic and shamelessly explicit.
For straight dudes, we get to at least marvel at the stunning beauty of Susan Sarandan, her saucercup eyes and ample bosum which is featured prominently in that white cross-your-heart bra she wears through most of the film.
Stylistically, Jim Sharman’s direction and camerawork embrace all the shlockiness it’s trying to parody. There’s little aesthetic continuity going on. Sharman moves between extreme camera lenses, to rough handheld work, to traditional locked off photography. As with the story, anything goes.
Though the Blu-Ray looks sharp on my 42 inches, the small screen is just too small, and insular to really capture the magic of this film. Rocky Horror should be a shared experience, preferably at midnight, in a dingy old rep theatre on Halloween night in ful regalia and chemically enhanced. Happy Halloween!
Rocky Horror Picture Show is available on Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Thursday, 16 September 2010
TIFF 2010 - Passione
Documentary
***
By Alan Bacchus
I loved John Turturro sorely neglected musical Romance and Cigarettes, and so the potential of Turturro’s take on the culture of music of the great city of Naples was a great tease. While not up to the standard of cinematic inspiration of Romance, Passione provides lovers the best slice of Italiana since Dean Martin sang 'That's Amore.'
I exagerrate slightly. Passione is nothing like anything Dean Martin did. It's kind of an unclassifyable experimental hybrid of documentary, musical and music video which acts like an commissioned artwork for the Naples tourism bureau.
In the opening, Turturro steps out in front of the camera to address the camera and tell us what we're about to see. The effect has the flavour of an old documentary, or an old trailer when it was customary for the filmmakers to audience directly.
Naples, Turturro explains to us, is a city which, historically, despite a life cycle war, invasion and volcanic eruptions, has had a rich and unique culture of music. Over the 95mins, Turturro gives us a self-guided tour of Naples through the nooks and crannies of its cobblestone roads, cramped old world streets and on the edges of its magnificent coastal cliffs and beaches, unfolding as a series of narrratively unconnected set pieces. Sometimes, it's interviews with local residents discussing their favourite singers, or a choreographed song and dance routine, maybe a band playing to camera in a garden, or sometimes it's B&W stock footage of a famous Neopolitan crooning on an old Italian variety show.
Lovers of swooning hopelessly romantic Italian music unite, to those inclined it adds up to an orgasm of neopolitan flavour, but for only casually interested parties, its sadly only something we can admire and respect but not fall in love with. We can certainly feel and admire Turturro’s ‘passion’ for the city, but his direction lacks the cinematic inspiration of Romance and Cigarettes which would elevate the film to another level.
Friday, 3 September 2010
Viva Las Vegas
Viva Las Vegas (1964) dir. George Sidney
Starring: Elvis Presley, Ann-Margret, Cesare Davona, William Demarest and Jack Carter
****
By Greg Klymkiw
Elvis Presley made 31 movies as an actor, but you need only one hand to count the number of good movies he appeared in. One more hand will allow you to count five movies that are not especially good, but still manage to deliver some solid entertainment value. As for the rest, mangy dogs all. Some of them have a decent number or two, and The King's undeniable charisma, but they're really a sad waste of his considerable gifts as an actor.
Three years ago, I reviewed a DVD box set entitled Lights! Camera! Elvis! that featured eight Elvis pictures adorned in a fancy (I kid you not!) blue suede box. That year featured a glut of Elvis DVDs that were issued to exploit/commemorate the 30th anniversary of The King's fatal slide off his porcelain bathroom throne. Out of eight movies in the collection, one (King Creole) represented his best picture and another (Roustabout) fell into the category of mediocre, but entertaining.
The other pictures stunk out loud.
Part of me was hoping that even the bad titles might offer some nostalgic appeal, a bit of melancholic magic that’d bring me back to those halcyon days when I first saw them as a kid attending Saturday matinees at a neighbourhood cinema. In fact, through the gentle haze of childhood memories, I recalled that many of the pictures were really wonderful. Alas, they simply didn't hold up to adult scrutiny.
All feelings of bygone warm and fuzziness dissipated pretty quickly once I watched them on the blue suede DVD again. Aside from the nifty packaging and the inclusion of King Creole, all the collection provided was an interesting look at how a brilliant young actor was used, abused and wasted – especially in light of the great work he displayed in a handful of pictures.
Happily, the new Warners Home Entertainment Blu-ray release of Viva Las Vegas is cause for celebration. If King Creole is The King's best picture and Jailhouse Rock is pretty much tied for that honour, but is also his best musical, then Viva Las Vegas which is only a pubic hair or two below Jailhouse Rock as a great musical, then it's safe to say all three pictures tie for the accolade of Best Elvis Movies Ever!!!
Viva Las Vegas features Elvis as singing sensation and stock car racer Lucky Jackson who comes to Vegas in search of stardom on both fronts. He meets and falls head over heels in love with the gorgeous and talented Rusty Martin (Ann-Margret) while the charming, but dastardly Count Elmo Mancini (Cesare Danova) provides the conflict as he too vies for stock car superiority and Rusty's affections. Lucky, of course, wins the race, gets the girl and achieve singing stardom. This, by the way, is no spoiler - it's the only way the picture could go.
Elvis is, of course, cooler than cool, but for once he is evenly matched in a picture with an actress/performer who holds her own magnificently with The King. Ann-Margret blows you away with both her beauty and singing talent. Their chemistry is pure electric and with both of them burning every frame of this picture with their virtuosity.
Viva Las Vegas is a musical that's simply too good to miss.
Able direction from George Sidney (Pal Joey, Kiss Me Kate and Annie Get Your Gun), a fun script by Sally Benson (Meet Me in St. Louis), a great song score and a terrific supporting cast that includes two of my favourite old reprobates William Demarest (as Rusty's Dad) and Jack Carter as the talent show emcee, Viva Las Vegas rightfully takes its throne alongside the best of the best.
Viva Las Vegas is newly released on the Warner Home Video with a stunning high definition transfer.
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Jailhouse Rock
Starring: Elvis Presley, Mickey Shaughnessy, Judy Tyler and Dean Jones
****
By Greg Klymkiw
Make no mistake about it - Elvis Presley was a great actor! While one would be hard-pressed to agree based on most of his post-military titles, cobbled together and foisted at him by the dubious Col. Tom Parker, everything Elvis Aron Presley did onscreen prior to his service to Uncle Sam was really special.
Though King Creole is, without question, the best Elvis Presley movie ever made, a recent re-screening of Jailhouse Rock via the Warners Home Entertainment Blu-ray release, has convinced me that it's only a pubic hair or two below the former title. Rather than calling it Mr. Presley's second-best movie, let's just say it ties with the Michael Curtiz-directed King Creole.
Presley was a natural for the silver screen. The camera loved him and he charged his early work with the same kind of smouldering intensity provided by such greats as James Dean, Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. The difference with Elvis was that he could dance and sing - and man (!) could he sing.
Jailhouse Rock features Presley as Vince Everett, a young man who serves a two-year term in prison for manslaughter (he pounds the bejesus out of a woman beating pimp). While in stir, Vince bunks with cellmate Hank (Mickey Shaughnessy), a former country and western singer who recognizes the talent Vince has and mentors him in all things musical. When Vince is released, he promises to split his earnings with Hank. While out of stir, Vince hooks up with a gorgeous young music promoter Peggy (Judy Tyler, a former regular on "Howdy Doody" and the victim of a fatal auto accident soon after shooting wrapped). Peggy uses her connections to get Vince in the door of a major record company, but he is screwed so mightily, that Peggy begins her own label to promote Vince. Our hero becomes a huge star, but has a thing or two to learn about loyalty and humility as he becomes an egomaniacal knob to both his old prison pal and Peggy. Eventually, Vince gets his much-earned comeuppance and shoots into the stratosphere - clean and pure.
While the picture is a basic rags to riches show business tale, it's full of lots of frank, tough talk, sex (by late 50s standards), two-fisted action, some great music and with the title song, one of the greatest musical numbers ever committed to celluloid. Most of all, the picture has Elvis - giving his role a depth and sensitivity most actors can only dream of delivering.
Director Richard Thorpe was no grand stylist, but the sort of meat and potatoes craftsman who was probably what the doctor ordered for the picture. Thorpe was a grand studio hack who directed almost 200 (count 'em!) feature films over his long career (including the 30s "Huckleberry Finn" and a few excellent entries in the "Tarzan" and "Thin Man" series). Thorpe doesn't let his lack of style get in the way nor detract from the proceedings. He captures the action like a pro and makes sure to keep his camera trained on Elvis in a variety of succulent poses.
Elvis was lucky with this picture. Instead of the usual studio suffocation, he and the team were left to their own devices to create movie magic. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that legendary studio producer Pandro S. Berman was in charge. One of David Selznick's junior producers at RKO and eventually a major talent there before he was snapped up by MGM to work his magic (which, more often or not yielded superb work), Berman produced a great picture.
And thanks to producer Berman, the burgeoning star that was Elvis Aron Presley had a script worthy of his talent, an excellent overall production, a superb supporting cast and solid direction from Thorpe.
Most of all, the picture had that great title musical number choreographed by Alex Romero with Elvis and a whole lot of hunky guys - gyrating with devil-may-care abandon in a splendidly homoerotic mash-up in prison clothes.
And trust me - it doesn't get sexier than that.
Jailhouse Rock is part of a three-film "Elvis Collection" on Blu-ray from Warner Home Video. It features an informative, but occasionally monotonous commentary track and a cool little short on the creation of the title musical number. And, of course, the picture looks great on Blu-ray.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
A Star Is Born (1954)
Starring: Judy Garland, James Mason, Charles Bickford and Jack Carson
****
By Greg Klymkiw
The devastating effects of alcoholism have seldom been captured with the kind of force that permeates director George Cukor's 1954 rendering of this classic tale of a star rising, another star burning out and the bond of love between them.
A Star is Born as a much-beloved screen entity began with David O. Selznick's early attempt at R.K.O. Pictures to tell a true-to-life story about Hollywood. Securing Adela Rogers St. Johns to write the story and subsequently employing a myriad of screenwriters, Selznick teamed up with his good friend George Cukor to bring the world What Price Hollywood? in 1932. It's a solid film with an especially great performance from Lowell Sherman as the alcoholic who feels he is holding back the genius of the woman he loves and subsequently commits suicide to "free" her. Constance Bennett in the female role was good, but not great.
In 1937, Selznick returned to the material and delivered what would be the first picture officially bearing the title "A Star is Born". This fine version, sans Cukor and helmed by the stalwart William Wellman, starred Fredric March as the drunken star and also featured exquisite production value. Alas, Janet Gaynor as its leading lady was simply no match for Mr. March. The film, whilst good, fell short of the greatness it was clearly striving for.
The cinematic marriage made in Heaven for this material occurred when Judy Garland's husband, Sidney Luft, seeking a comeback project for his troubled wife, convinced Warner Brothers to bankroll a musical version of the tale with George Cukor directing and the inimitable Moss Hart writing the screenplay adaptation of Dorothy Parker's 1937 screenplay. The casting of James Mason as Judy Garland's husband was a stroke of genius and for once, the material had two great stars - evenly matched in talent and screen presence.
The simple, well-told tale involves singer Esther Blodgett (Garland) who meets-cute with Hollywood star Norman Maine (Mason) at a ritzy film business fundraiser wherein the completely sloshed actor ends up on stage with a chorus line of performers, one of whom is our heroine. Esther knows who Norman is, and also realizes how drunk he is, but she's both star-struck and charmed and engages him in a fun, silly dance that entertains the audience and, in so doing, allows Norman to retain the dignity of a stalwart performer letting loose (as opposed to being seen as a buffoon).
Eventually, the two becomes friends and lovers and most importantly, Norman becomes Esther's benign Svengali and he uses all his powers to turn her into a huge star. The paternal studio head Oliver Niles (Charles Bickford) gets Esther to change her name to Vicki Lester and further builds her into the studio's most valuable asset.
Alas, Norman's continued drunken antics have made him a huge liability to the studio and his contract is not renewed. People he thought were his friends ignore him, and the slimy studio publicity chief played by the inimitable Jack Carson, tell hims to his face how much he's always hated him and pretended to be his friend because it was his job. This latter blow comes after Norman is off the wagon and leads to him hitting the bottle even harder.
Esther/Vicki rises to the top, and Norman falls further than anyone could have imagined. Loving his wife desperately, but feeling he is holding her back, Norman makes what he thinks is the ultimate sacrifice so she can truly shine.
While there are plenty of musical numbers in the picture - including Garland's knockout rendition of Arlen and Gershwin's great song "The Man That Got Away" - the movie is at its absolute best when Garland and Mason share the screen together. Cukor and his two great actors brilliantly capture the initial attraction, their growing love, the mutual dependency upon each other (positive and negative) - all the ups and downs one expects from characters that are deeply wrought and ultimately, sympathetic because of the simple, delicate humanity with which they're handled.
An extremely interesting aspect to this story is that so many pictures from the Golden Age of Cinema were weepers of the highest order and often used female characters in the position of feeling like a millstone around either their lovers' or children's necks and making huge sacrifices to free those they love from their burdensome presence. "A Star is Born" - especially in this version - is a powerful reversal of this storytelling tradition.
One of the more astounding sequences in the movie is when Esther/Vicky is at the Academy Awards, desperately awaiting to see if she wins, but even more desperate as she wonders and waits where an absent Norman is. Garland's performance here is heartbreaking, but when Norman finally appears at the awards ceremony - completely plastered, Garland's performance reaches stratospheric heights when she deals with how Norman humiliates her.
Mason captures his character's pathetic inner helplessness while Garland displays pure love - not a stalwart attempt at maintaining dignity, but love! A love that means helping her husband at all costs and no matter how much he's made a fool of himself - Garland conveys that it is her love that is stronger than his illness and that sacrifice is perhaps the greatest force of love. In fact, her kind, resolute handling of the embarrassing situation plays as a sacrifice and yet, below the surface, there is the subtext - delivered mostly through Garland's performance - suggesting that for Esther/Vicki, helping someone you love maintain THEIR dignity might be SEEN as a sacrifice, but that she doesn't view it that way. It's what one does when one is in love.
One of the reasons Garland's Blodgett/Lester seems so evenly matched is the juxtaposition between one character's discovery and the other's loss - the latter clearly being the loss of one's way in the world to the point where the only way to move forward is to seek death. Garland discovers, not only her talent, but that she has the capacity for undying love and sensuality while Mason can only empower himself in making a star out of someone even as he has lost all of his lustre.
While there is a certain surface bravery to Mason's sacrifice, there is a cowardice to it as well - a cowardice that is only too human, and in so being, FEELS heroic. His sacrifice, however, pales in comparison to the endless sacrifices Garland makes.
It was my most recent viewing of this film, on the new Warner Home Entertainment Blu-Ray Special Edition release where my eyes were drawn almost inextricably to the eyes of both performers. It was, perhaps the clarity of the format itself that allowed me access to the souls of the characters through these two pairs of eyes. Both Garland and Mason express a myriad of emotions and there's never a false note from either of them. And as truly great as Garland is in the film, we once again have a film version of the story where the actor playing Norman - in this case, Mason - is such a compelling tragic figure that it's impossible not to be deeply moved by him to the point where our heroine becomes somewhat muted in comparison.
Thankfully, though, Garland is only occasionally overshadowed by Mr. Mason and is certainly a match for him. At the conclusion of the film, when she proclaims that her name is "Mrs. Norman Maine" - suggesting, of course, how their souls are inextricably connected for an eternity - we realize just how utterly perfect Cukor's handling of this vital love is.
That said, Mason's last scenes in the magic hour of his final day on Earth, come close to ripping one's heart out of one's chest. The little looks and smiles of love and determination he delivers, wrench such pure emotion from an audience, that it's easy to see how Mason comes close to walking away with the picture. As well, anyone who has suffered from alcoholism either directly or indirectly will realize just how great Mason is in the picture.
It's truly a testament to Mason, Garland and Cukor that alcoholism is treated with all the sad truth the subject requires and most of all, that its viewed as it should be - a disease that can rip the lifeblood out of everyone, not just the individual afflicted with the disease.
A Star Is Born is a classic - end of story.
It might well be over fifty years old, but it feels as fresh and vital as if it had been made just yesterday.
A Star Is Born" is now available on Warner Home Entertainement in''' DVD and Blu-Ray with a restoration that brings the recut 177 minute version - as close to Cukor's original cut (over 180 mins.) before the studio truncated it to 154 minutes soon after its initial theatrical release. You'll also note I have made absolutely no mention of the execrable 1970s film version of the story. The less said about it, the better.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Golddiggers of 1933
Golddiggers of 1933 (1933) dir. Mervyn le Roy
Starring: Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, Warren William, Ned Sparks, Guy Kibbee
***1/2
By Alan Bacchus
The first of one of the most successful and beloved musical franchises in the cinema - the Gold Diggers films, a series of musicals in the 30‘s portraying predatory attitude of the poor against the rich with comedic fervour and eye-popping musical spectacle.
Busby Berkeley provides the staging and choreography of the musical sequences and the great Mervyn Le Roy ('Wizard of Oz') directs this spectacular and topical comedic musical about men and women trying to 'put on a show'. Of course, it was the time of the Depression the mixture of frenetic comic fever with Berkeley‘s distinct kaleidoscope-like visual spectacle makes all of these films classics beyond compare.
While intended for the working class audiences, Le Roy execution of themes of class struggle is just as biting and clever as, say, the sophisticated Renoir films of the same period. The first half of plotting finds poor musician and lyricist Brad Roberts (Dick Powell) struggling like everyone to make a living as an artist in bad economic times. But after hearing him play his own little ditties, bombastic stage producer Barney Hopkins hires him to write his next great musical. But without the money to finance it, Brad miraculously and mysterious ‘finds’ the $15,000 needed to make it all happen.
After Brad is forced to perform in the musical, his identity is revealed as the heir to a rich and respected business family. When his father and brother find out they arrive at theatre to chastise him and bring him home. Enter Brad’s vivacious female dancers who weave their sexual charisma around the stuck up suits in hopes of keeping Brad in the theatre and squeezing as much money out of them as possible.
Surprisingly Le Roy cleverly switches our sympathy from Brad and his desire to buck his family legacy and live the honest life as artist, to his brother Lawrence and father Fanuel, who after being set up as the prototypical 30’s upper class snobs become putty in the hands of the women, and in the case of Fanuel, revealing forlorn love from his past which his greed for money had tried to suppress.
Interspersed between the comic shenanigans are the scenes from Barney’s new show, the tone of each sequences cleverly reflecting the mood of the characters behind the scenes. As typical of the Berkeley style his musical numbers are born from the stage setting of the story, but are played and choreographed 100% for his expressive composition and dynamic moving camera.
In addition to the stunning dance sequences, as a precode film, we can also appreciate the not-so-subtle suggestive subtext. LeRoy takes delight in showing us some rather salacious skin, women undressing freely in front of men, the dances overtly using their bodies to seduce men out of their money, and we even get to see some stark naked bodies in silhouette in one of the dance sequences. The musical segment ‘Petting in the Park” is particularly naughty, dramatizing just as the title suggests making out in Central Park
If anything, the film ends rather abruptly leaving us hanging as to the fate of Lawrence Roberts. But not before we're supremely satisfied with the final Forgotten Man sequence.
Monday, 4 January 2010
Nine
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman
**
By Alan Bacchus
Poor Rob Marshall, it was a major mountain to climb, remaking Fellini’s 8 ½ as a musical, in English. Apparently it was a successful broadway musical in the 80's but its translation back to the big screen puts it directly against the original film as the ultimate test of its success. Daniel Day-Lewis tries his best stepping into Marcello Mastrioanni’s shoes as the creatively tortured director Guido Contini, and his coterie of sultry movie star gals who play the influential women in his life all look perfect, but its Marshall's surprisingly dull musical numbers which cause the picture to fail.
Nine is both a love letter to Fellini, the 60’s, filmmaking, Italy and the sexual freedom of the 1960’s. Guido Contini is a star auteur Italian director revered for his early pictures but suffering from a number of recent failures. As he preps his next picture and with producers, press agents, art directors, actresses, all chasing him around for creative direction, Cotini resorts to his sexual flings to provide him peace.
Unfortunately, Contini is married and naturally his wife objects to in transgressional behaviour. As his mind wanders back into his subconscious to confront all the important women in his life he is forced to reconcile his egotistical life of career self-absorbtion with the potential loss of his wife and family.
The spectre of Fellini’s great masterpiece acts like a suffocating blanket over the first half of the film. The film follows the same narrative path and even recreates word for word and sometimes shot for shot the same scenes as 8 ½. The Cruz/Day-Lewis sexual fetish sequence for instance is a carbon copy of the great scene which has the Mastrioanni’ version of Guido directing his #1 mistress to play a slutty stranger who walks into the wrong room. It’s a tall order not to compare the two, and for Marshall to even close to matching the creative visual gymnastics of Fellini’s cameraworks and sense of swinging 60’s vitality is damned near impossible.
The film finds its own voice in the second half when the film gradually departs from the source material. It’s a different era than the swinging 60’s and Marshall has to make Guido accountable for his indiscretions. And so the film becomes a story of Guido’s emotional crisis, not a creative or career crisis - a fight to save his marriage and win back the only woman he truly loves.
Marshall uses the same visual palette as ‘Chicago’, the musical sequences are distinctly separate from the dramatic sequences. Throughout the narrative Guido’s mind wanders into a memory or moment of imagination visualized with a musical dance sequence. While each of ‘Chicago’s’ sequences had their own unique flavour, there’s an indistinct sameness of most of the ‘Nine’s’ sequences. Marshall inhibits himself by choreographing most of these numbers around Guido’s partially built Romanesque studio set, so for each of Fergie, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, and Day-Lewis himself, walk, talk, sing and dance around the same uninspired scaffolding set. Even the dance choreography is indistinct, most of which are variations of burlesque-influenced sexual teasing.
The only number which jumps out at the screen to get one’s foot tapping is Kate Hudson’s swinging 60’s number, ‘Italiano’, a vibrant and bouncy, like Chanel commercial performed by Lady Gaga. I suspect, even Marshall knows the power of this piece as he repeats it during the end credits.
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