Prologues

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.

Stage musicals are having a rough go of it due to the rise in popularity of movies. So musical director Chester Kent (James Cagney) moves to producing prologues, which are short live musical stage productions that are presented in movie theaters before the movies are shown. Chester's prologues are a huge hit but the pressure of having to come up with new ideas is getting to him. To make matters worse, a rival prologue director is stealing many of his ideas. Now he has three days to come up with three brand new prologues and prevent their being stolen in order to land a big contract.

First-rate Busby Berkeley musical from Warner Bros. with a terrific cast and the wonderful choreography Berkeley was known for. Most of the musical numbers are saved for the last half-hour but they're all great. James Cagney and Joan Blondell are lots of fun. They always had perfect chemistry. There's also a lot of snappy pre-Code lines, particularly from Blondell. Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are also enjoyable. Nice support from solid character actors Frank McHugh, Guy Kibbee, Arthur Hohl, and Hugh Herbert. Fast-paced and highly entertaining. Essential for fans of Berkeley or the great leads.

Clever, gritty, witty, fast-paced, sexy, extravagant, sleazy, erotic, heartfelt and corny, Footlight Parade is a first-class entertainment, what the movies are all about.

The realistic, satirical treatment gives a fresh edge to the material and its pace and line delivery are breathtaking. To think that they only started making feature talking pictures 7 years before this! The brilliance of the dialogue cannot be matched anywhere today, especially considering that "realism" has taken over and engulfed contemporary cinema.

This film was made at a time when the Hayes code restricting content was being ignored and the result is a fresh, self-referential, critical and living cinema that spoke directly to contemporary audiences suffering through the depression and the general angst of the age. I'd recommend watching any film from this period, that is 1930-1935, for a vision of what popular cinema can potentially be.