Crazy Horse

This is a great documentary about an awesome club in Paris called "Crazy Horse," The film chronicles the dazzling dances, costumes, and the total preparation of the big show, from selection of numbers, clothes, promotion, and dancers. We get a glimpse inside the crazy horse at the behind the scene workers, technicians, managers, and yes we even get to see some of the patrons. This club has a reputation in Paris for having some of the hottest girls and hottest dances. The film received a standing ovation at its conclusion. Unfortunately the film director could not be present for a Q/A session. Worth seeing just for the line of mad hot girls naked throughout the film. ************

This movie was played in Greece thanks to the 13nth Festival of French-speaking Film. It is a documentary about the world famous Paris cabaret "Crazy Horse" where a show featuring very scantily dressed girls takes place. It has been made by an eminent documentary maker and it is a combination of the live show and rehearsals with the everyday day aspects of life of the contributors to the show as well as the discussions between the director, the artistic director, the costumes expert and a representative of the shareholders. It also shows an audition for new girls who want to enter the show.

It has an aura of realism since there is no effort to distance the viewer from what is presented but everything is realistically portrayed. This applies mainly to the sequences where we watch the inside workings of the show creating and show managing process, where the various participants try to make their view and opinions prevail. In the rehearsals we learn about the effort and pain needed to achieve the glamorous spectacle. The spectacle itself is a very artistic and stylish form of soft pornography.

If you have any affinity with dance and are not bored with documentaries and if you are not much of a prude this is a movie to watch.

Crazy Horse (2011) was directed, co-produced, and edited by Frederick Wiseman. Wiseman is a brilliant director of documentaries. His style is to show us only what the camera sees. There's never any voice-over or reference to the filming in any of Wiseman's movies, including this one. Obviously, he controls what is on the screen by choosing what he will film, and then choosing what will be cut and what will remain in the movie. But the film explains itself, without any on-screen or off-screen commentary from Wiseman.

Crazy Horse is a club in Paris that is billed as having the most sophisticated nude review in the world. Nudity above the waist is a given at Crazy Horse. The women are casual about it, and so is Wiseman. There's some "full frontal" nudity, but it's not emphasized. So, if this picture were rated, it would probably receive an R.

The movie actually shows very little of what the audience sees. Most of what we see are the endless discussions and rehearsals that go into making the show seamless, elegant, and professional.

There are only two members of the staff we get to know well. One is Philippe Decouflé, the Director. Mostly we see Decouflé's frustration. He wants to close the show for a few weeks to bring the lighting and everything else up to date. He's held in check by a woman who represents "the shareholders." She says, "I agree but they won't buy it." That's a cop-out-- we know it and she knows it. As far as I could tell, the club didn't close, and the show may not have met Philippe's standards.

The Artistic Director--whose name I never learned--is, by his own admission, obsessed by Crazy Horse. He talks on and on about how excited he is to be doing what he's doing, how important Crazy Horse is in his life, how he and Philippe work seamlessly together, etc. I found most of his comments tedious and repetitious, and I think the movie would have worked better with less screen time for him.

As usual, Wiseman really isn't about wrapping everything up in a tidy package. There are many scenes that represent fragments of ongoing processes. We see what Wiseman shows us, and we don't get the entire sequence from beginning to end. This isn't a good film for someone who wants an informative scholarly documentary. It's impressionistic and non-linear. Interesting, but not fully satisfying.

One surprise for me was the respect everyone seems to have for the women dancers. I somehow had expected that the dancers would be treated more or less like cattle, but I didn't see this.

Another surprise was the gentleness with which prospective dancers were treated at audition. One of the rules of Crazy Horse is that the women should be indistinguishable--the same height, slender, with small- to medium-sized breasts and long legs. So, of course, the women auditioned nude from the waist up. But the attitude of the woman in charge of the audition was friendly and cheerful, and definitely not demeaning. (You could argue that auditioning when your breasts are exposed is inherently demeaning. However, when you are auditioning for a nude revue, modesty simply can't be factored in.)

This wasn't a great film, but I thought it was worth seeing. (I think all Wiseman documentaries are worth seeing--he's a genius.) We saw Crazy Horse on a large screen at the excellent Dryden Theatre in Rochester, but it will work as well on DVD.