Prologues

James Cagney is best known for his tough characters- and gangster roles but he has also played quite a lot 'soft' characters in his career. This musical is one of them and it was the first but not the last musical movie Cagney would star in.

Cagney is even doing a bit of singing in this one and also quite an amount of dancing. And it needs to be said that he was not bad at it. He plays the role with a lot of confidence. He apparently had some dancing jobs in his early life before his acting career started to take off big time, so it actually isn't a weird thing that he also took on some musical acting roles in his career. He obviously also feels at ease in this totally different genre than most people are accustomed to seeing him in.

The movie is directed by Lloyd Bacon, who was perhaps among the best and most successful director within the genre. His earliest '30's musicals pretty much defined the musical genre and he also was responsible for genre movies such as "42nd Street". His musicals were always light and fun to watch and more comedy like than anything else really. '30's musicals never were really about its singing, this was something that more featured in '40's and later made musicals, mainly from the MGM studios.

As usual it has a light and simple story, set in the musical world, that of course is also predictable and progresses in a formulaic way. It nevertheless is a fun and simple story that also simply makes this an entertaining movies to watch. So do the characters and actors that are portraying them. Sort of weird though that that the total plot line of the movie gets sort of abandoned toward the end of the movie, when the movie only starts to consists out of musical number routines.

The musical moments toward the ending of the movie are also amusing and well done, even though I'm not a too big fan of the genre itself. Once again the musical numbers also feature a young Billy Barty. he often played little boys/babies/mice and whatever more early on in his career, including the movie musical "Gold Diggers of 1933", of one year earlier.

A recommendable early genre movie.

8/10

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An opium den, a dirty little boy (actually a midget), prostitutes galore, a violent fracas in a dive, a motel for sexual shenanigans, scantily clad babes with cleavage a lot, a boozer falling down the stairs, a racially mixed clientèle in a bar with Asians, Africans, and Anglos treated equally, does this sound like a film playing at the local shopping mall? Wrong. These are all scenes from a 1933 musical.

The first half of "Footlight Parade" is preparation for a musical extravaganza which occupies the last half of the film. Chester Kent (Cagney) is about to lose his job and does lose his playgirl wife as a result of talking pictures squeezing out live stage musicals. His producers take him to see a popular talky of the day, John Wayne in "The Big Trail." Before each showing of the flick, a dance number is presented as a prologue. Shorts, news reels, serials, and cartoons would later serve the purpose. Kent gets the idea that a prologue chain would be the road to salvation for the dwindling live musical business. Kent is basically an idea man along the lines of choreographer Busby Berkeley. Could it be that Cagney's character is patterned after Berkeley? Could be.

In preparation for the prologues, Kent learns that his ideas are being stolen by a rival. He uncovers the traitor, fires him, then unbeknown to him a new leak is planted in the form a dazzling temptress. His assistant, Nan Prescott (Joan Blondell - soon to be Mrs. Dick Powell) has the hots for Kent and is determined to expose the wiles of the temptress. A new singer from Arkansas College shows up in the form of Scotty Blain (Dick Powell) who turns out to be a real find and is paired with Bea Thorn (Ruby Keeler). The resulting three prologue musicals, which couldn't possibly have been presented on any cinema stage of the day, are as fresh and enjoyable today as they were over seventy years ago, "Honeymoon Hotel," "By a Waterfall," and "Shanghai Lil."

Of special note is the song and dance of tough-guy James Cagney. Like Fred Astaire and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Cagney's dancing appeared natural and unrehearsed, although hours went into practice to get each step just right. Not as good a singer as Astaire, Cagney's singing, like Astaire's, sounded natural, unlike the crooning so popular at the time. It's amazing that one person could be so talented and so versatile as James Cagney.

Most critics prefer the "Shanghai Lil" segment over the other two. Yet the kaleidoscopic choreography of "By a Waterfall" is astonishing. How Berkeley was able to film the underwater ballets and to create the human snake chain must have been difficult because it has never been repeated. The close up shots mixed brilliantly with distant angles is a must-see. The crisp black and white photography is much more artistic than it would have been if shot in color.

Though not nearly as socially conscious as "Gold Diggers of 1933," "Footlight Parade" stands on its own as one of the most amazing and outrageous musicals ever put on the big screen.

I am thankful for these so-called 'backstage musicals'; beyond their superficial charms, they have deepened the ways we imagine. Without knowing it they have provided us with some of the best essays about the endeavor to express, to make visible, the unfathomable contours of the heart.

Once more we have a film about a filmmaker fighting to stage a vision, here a preshow as opening act for the first talkies. He's a grunt, always storming in and out of rooms, yelling directions, now and then pausing to show the steps to the troupe or scream at a phone; but always fretting about new ideas to stage. He's played by James Cagney, whom we know best from tough-as-nails gangster roles. It's very apt casting. Cagney had many expressive talents, and a violent energy with the intuitive power to carry these into a performance.

But none of the ideas he comes up for the show seem like they've been very well thought out, they're all unfinished premises rushed with one foot out the door, so it's all a mystery how this strong-willed hack can give coherent shape to creative chaos. What kind of show he'll be able to put together. Money is staked on him, fortunes.

He's surrounded by three women, one for each number he's called to improvise. One is an ex-wife out for leeching money, another is his loyal secretary secretly in love. All three are fighting to seduce or be seduced, money is at stake again, and the art made with them.

It's all very enjoyable thus far, the rapid-fire banter and atmosphere of festive uproar. But it's not that it truly soars until we actually get to see on the stage how the various tribulations, that from our end so far seemed random and meaningless, were in fact shaping the vision that we get to see.

We drive back and forth around town to see these; the first number is about newly weds in the 'Honeymoon Hotel' with marriage slyly perverted as illicit sex that ends with bedroom eyes and mock happiness which we know will not last, and didn't for him, the other is a scene from everyday life on the street transformed on stage into the most gaudy spectacle with wood nymphs frolicking beneath cascading waters.

The third is the most stunning, because it substitutes for the internal processes that yield one happy end within another, both on the same stage. We knew our man was the author of these visions, the dreamer as it were, but was content so far to pull the strings from behind. Here an accident of fate forces him to get up on that stage and act out the part he was intuitively drawn to create: the number is about this man seeking out the woman of his dreams in a sort of smoky, semi-conscious stupor, and again the unforeseen circumstances - in this case, war - that keep love from them. Eventually he tricks both fates and us, the camera, to fulfill the dream.

So the happy end meant to take place in reality is pure Hollywood fiction, while the pure Hollywood fiction of the song and dance number reveals from machinations inside the soul a true purpose outside.

It is excellent stuff about the makings of images choreographed from the heart. Their power to articulate is this; art that reflects, salvages purpose from a life that appears incoherent, yet also reveals capricious fates of our own making that we have set in motion by simply living our part. Clearly this grunt could not have staged what he did, even with expert craft, if life around him had not seduced inspiration out of him.

Footlight Parade is among the best of the 1930's musical comedy extravaganzas. A snappy script and an all-star cast including Jimmy Cagney, the lovely Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, and Ruby Keeler make this film a cut above the rest. Directed and choreographed by the creative genius Busby Berkeley, this film will have you grinning from ear-to-ear from start to finish.

Busby, of course, is the undisputed master of the Hollywood musical with "Gold Diggers of 1933" and "42nd Street" to his credit (as Dance Director). Footlight Parade is graced by hundreds of scantily-clad chorus girls, a Berkeley trademark. The elaborate dance numbers were shot with only one camera and Busby was the first director to film close-ups of the dancers. His obsession with shapely legs and "rear-view" shots is amply demonstrated here. The overall effect is highly erotic and mesmerizing.

Our boy Jimmy Cagney plays Chester Kent, a producer of "prologues" or short musical stage productions that were performed in movie theaters to entertain the audience before the talkies were shown. He's surrounded by crooked partners, a corporate spy, and a gold-digging girlfriend. Although Cagney had a solid background in vaudeville, this was the first film in which he showed his dancing talents. Joan Blondell is memorable as Cagney's wise-cracking, lovestruck secretary. And Ruby Keeler is adorable, as always.

The film climaxes with three outstanding production numbers, "Honeymoon Hotel", "The Waterfall", and "Shanghai Lil", each one a masterpiece and not likely to be duplicated in today's Hollywood where so-called "special effects" have replaced creative cinematography.

Claudia's Bottom Line: Clever and erotic, with some of the best musical production numbers ever put on celluloid. A thoroughly enjoyable Depression era romp.

Not so much a musical as a mating call set to music. But then what else could be expected from three back-to-back production numbers from that carnally-obsessed choreographer Busby Berkeley. "Beside the Waterfall" alone has enough 'flowering o's', half-dressed chorines, and suggestive camera angles to make Hugh Hefner blush and send Dr. Freud into terminal overload. Then too, who else but the mad Mr. Berkeley could convert the complicated matter of sex into a mere conjugation of overhead geometry. There's also "Honeymoon Hotel", a celebration of the no-tell motel, with marching phalanxes of hormonally driven couples all named Smith, and led by a demonic cupid looking like an early Billy Barty. The sight of his tiny legs chasing after a fleeing Amazon is enough to drive Harpo Marx to distraction and cause the audience to doubt the laws of physics. While bringing down the curtain is the marching madness of "Shanghai Lil", where Berkeley proves-- in case you ever doubted-- that race, creed, and bad make-up make no difference to a Chinese bordello. It's sort of an early gathering of the UN, where people from all over come together to discuss the world's number one topic. All in all, there's enough sheer pizzaz, flash, and animal energy in these numbers to light up a thousand dark movie houses.

Sure, Warner Bros. tries to cover the orgy with the fig leaf of two cheerful innocents played by a sappy Dick Powell and a virginal Ruby Keeler. But it doesn't work, because everyone else gets in on the fun, including that human buzz-saw Jimmy Cagney and everyone's favorite sassy dame Joan Blondell. Director Lloyd Bacon proves too he knows what to do, giving us an eyeful of Blondell endlessly rolling and unrolling her hosiery, while the writers pepper the conversation with suggestive one-liners. Yeah, it's a great movie-- good enough to help bring down the heavy hand of censorship the following year, and put an end to damp dreams like "Beside a Waterfall". But not even the Watchdogs of Public Morality could stop Berkeley's deliriously suggestive pageantry that would live on at even that most repressed of studios, MGM. Sure, Astaire-Rogers may have been more graceful and a whole lot more chaste, no doubt producing more sheer polish-- still and all, don't let this unabashedly pagan celebration pass you by. As they say around the owl cage, it's a real hoot.