Das gibt's nie wieder

This got big notice when it came out in the mid '70s. With the advent of VHS, you could provide the public with something like this: a collection of great song-and- dance scenes from classic films. In this edition (there were two more to come), we see highlights of MGM musicals from the 1920s through the 1960s. Most of them were the '30s through the '50s.

MGM had many of the musical stars but not all, so you don't get Shirley Temple, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Julie Andrews and others. However, you do get a ton of great performers like Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Mickey Rooney, Esther Williams and others. To use a cliché, this is a must-have for music fans. In addition to the above stars, who are remembered in some of their best scenes, you have the incredible sets of the Busby Berkeley movies.

At over two hours, there is a lot of great material in here.

There is nothing in this film--or more accurately, documentary--that doesn't do *exactly* what the title promises. It's hard for it to fail, really, considering the material it's working with. THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! sets out to be a joyous celebration of everything that was fun and sparkly and happy-making in the MGM musical, with the added bonus of having the stars (the BEST, brightest, eternal ones) that were there themselves telling us all about it.

Well, it works. No two words about it. These clips of song-and-dance routines that will stay with us forever were made with one sole purpose--to entertain. And entertain they do. From 'Singin' In The Rain' through to 'Showboat', 'High Society', 'Seven Brides For Seven Brothers'... the film is a catalogue of the best and brightest of MGM musicals, and the stars. Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly deliver tributes to each other, Liza Minelli and Mickey Rooney talk about the magic that was Judy Garland, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds and Peter Lawford--with a lovely stint by Bing Crosby and a hilarious interlude by James Stewart--bring us through the decades singing and dancing. The clips picked were great, of course. How could you go wrong with segments dedicated to Astaire, Kelly and Garland? The clips were all perfect, with some rarer items popping up like Cary Grant singing 'Did I Remember?' and enough of the classic ones to make one feel like pulling out all the tapes and watching them through again.

There are a couple of things that keep me from giving this documentary top marks. Firstly, a general complaint that really isn't quite fair: seeing these clips just don't compare to watching them in their original films and the proper contexts. I hope that people who watch this film as an introduction to movie musicals actually go out and rent them afterwards, because there really isn't anything more brilliant than SINGIN' IN THE RAIN or ON THE TOWN. Secondly: it would have been much more engaging if the actors invited to speak on the programme hadn't so evidently been reading off pre-written scripts. Some fared better than others, with Taylor being the spaced-out worst, and Stewart acquitting himself admirably with his trademark drawl and charm. Astaire and Kelly are both still immeasurably attractive onscreen, but even they can't quite pull off the image of camaraderie the words they speak impart to their previous relationship. (Not to say that they were rivals--the opposite extreme isn't true either. They were simply professionals, and acquaintances.) It'd have been just that much more fun if these legends had been allowed to speak off the cuff.

All said, if you want to introduce someone to the magic that was the movie musical, there's really no need to go further than THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!. It's a catalogue of stars and talent, song and dance, and extensive proof that we won't ever see the likes of all this again. More's the pity for those of us who weren't there when film history happened, all to the songs of Berlin and Gershwin and the toe-tapping of Astaire and Kelly...

This is it! This is the Holy grail of musical documentaries, the very definition of the term "They don't make 'em like this anymore.." everyone is here and in the subsequent 2 sequels. Oh, to see this in a movie theatre! 20 foot tall Gene Kelly performing "Singing In The Rain"! Busby Berkeley as his extravanganzas were meant to be seen! Definately worth watching even of you see it on video! A time capsule, a treasure. (sigh... Hollywood...)

In a departure from my normal practice, I will not be awarding "That's Entertainment!"a mark out of ten. There seems little point in rating a film when ninety percent of it consists of clips taken from other films. This film is not a straightforward documentary history of the Hollywood musical. It was made by MGM as a celebration of MGM musicals, and studiously ignores anything made by that studio's rivals. Clips of song-and-dance numbers from some of those musicals are introduced by a number of the stars who appeared in them, such as Debbie Reynolds, Frank Sinatra and Mickey Rooney.

This compilation was probably made because of the way the cinema was changing in the mid-seventies. Although the early part of the decade had seen two particularly fine examples in "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Cabaret", by 1974 the traditional cinema musical was on the decline. There was also a move away from shooting on sets towards shooting on location. Some of the introductory scenes are shot where the musicals themselves were filmed, on MGM's famous backlot which, by 1974, was starting to look very shabby and dilapidated. (It was to be demolished for redevelopment shortly afterwards).

The first part of the film was not particularly interesting, largely because so many of the featured clips were taken from films which are now forgotten and even thirty-five years ago were probably little-known. I also wondered why so much attention was given to Esther Williams, who certainly looked good in a swimsuit but was a very limited actress and whose choreographed water-ballets must have looked hopelessly cheesy by the seventies. One thing that I did learn, however, is that the musical genre was so popular in the thirties and forties that many actors, who today would not be thought of as musical stars, were press-ganged into service, regardless of vocal talent (or the lack thereof). We therefore see clips of the likes of James Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford and Clark Gable performing in some very obscure old films. (Stewart and Taylor also serve as presenters). Of these, it is Gable who acquits himself with the greatest honour, but his musical career never took off, apparently because his fans felt that all that singing and dancing was a bit sissy and out of keeping with his he-man image.

Things liven up in the second half of the film, because it now starts to concentrate on the really famous musicals for which MGM is still remembered today. The smug, self-congratulatory tone is still present, but the studio can be forgiven a little self-congratulation when it is talking about films as good as "Show Boat", "Seven Brides for "Seven Brothers", "An American in Paris" and "Singin' in the Rain". These last two, of course, both starred Gene Kelly, who also acts as a presenter. Kelly and Fred Astaire, with their very different styles of dancing, were often perceived as rivals, so it was a good idea to have Kelly present a tribute to Astaire and Astaire present one to Kelly. The most moving moment comes when Liza Minnelli presents a tribute to her mother, Judy Garland, who had died a few years earlier.

"That's Entertainment!" was obviously popular, because it was followed two years later by "That's Entertainment II"". (There were to be two more similar compilations, "That's Dancing!" in the eighties and "That's Entertainment III" in the nineties). The appeal of films like this at the time was probably their nostalgia value for the older generation who could remember the original musicals. Today they seem more like a curiosity, albeit an entertaining one.

In the mid-seventies, when MGM as a producing force in studio history was pretty much dead, a couple of researchers started to put together a compilation of the greatest moments from the birth of the talkie to Gigi's glut of Academy Awards at the end of the 1950s. The idea of this first 'That's Entertainment!' was to showcase the cream of the musicals, using a number of MGM's former contact stars (Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney et al) to link segments together.

The result was so breathtaking and brilliant that two further sequels followed; one almost immediately, and the third after a gap of twenty years, in time for MGM's seventieth birthday. This first compilation shows us sequences from 'An American In Paris', 'Singin' In The Rain', 'The Harvey Girls', 'Hollywood Revue', and on, and on. It has special segments devoted to Astaire, Kelly, Garland, Garland with Rooney, and, er, Esther Williams. It should give any viewer the appetite to seek out full movies they haven't seen, and to reflect with affection on those they have.