Yolanda et le voleur

I'd always been curious about this one, especially considering its rather unhappy reputation as a major disappointment in the Fred Astaire/Vincente Minnelli canon, and it's fairly easy to see why. Turner Classic Movies scheduled it recently and I tuned in to watch something that certainly made me glad Technicolor was invented but which fell somewhat short of its intended mark.

The story is absolute piffle, almost redeemed by Mildred Natwick's genuinely funny portrayal of a dotty aunt. (Check out the sequence where she welcomes Yolanda home from her years at a convent school.) M-G-M stalwarts Leon Ames and Frank Morgan (Was he in every single class "A" Metro production from the late Thirties through the early Fifties?) lend reliable support with the little they're given to do. And Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer get (only) two opportunities to display their dancing compatibility. Astaire, of course, managed to complement all of his dancing partners with his patented style and grace (even the miscast Joan Fontaine in "A Damsel in Distress") but, as a matter of personal opinion, I think that Ms. Bremer runs a very close second to the gorgeous Cyd Charisse as one of his most elegant and beautiful co-stars. She's too old for her role in this one, admittedly, but she's nevertheless quite charming and a prime object for the luscious Technicolor cinematography of Charles Rosher.

The real star of this misbegotten show, however, is the opulence of the very artificial art direction, set decoration, and costuming. It's Hollywood at its most baroque and Minnelli keeps his cameras gliding through it all as if on angels' wings. If you're not looking for one of the Arthur Freed's unit's bona fide musical classics, this one will provide a phantasmagoria of color and motion that's rarely been equaled.

If Yolanda and the Thief isn't the damnedest thing ever committed to film, it's hard to say what is. Vincente Minnelli took a wisp of whimsey from Ludwig Bemelmans and turned it into this overblown fantasy musical that pushes the flap of the envelope wide open.

Most musicals – the best of them, anyway – grow out of show business lore and derive their pluck and sass from the raffish traditions of show-must-go-on troupers. But Yolanda and the Thief invents a Latin-American Ruritania (called Patria, or fatherland) out of stereotypes which verge on the offensive but stay simperingly coy. It's a kind of squeaky-clean utopia of the clueless Lost Horizon sort run by a benevolent family of oligarchs called the Aquavivas.

Their only daughter (Lucille Bremer), having reached her majority, leaves the convent school where she is allowed to wear full Hollywood makeup. The vast family fortune becomes hers to administer with the help of a dotty aunt (Mildred Natwick, and the best thing in the movie). Alas, the good sisters have not equipped her to cope with the wicked ways of the world, as personified by a couple of American con-artists (Fred Astaire and Frank Morgan) who arrange an introduction and plan to abscond with a sizeable chunk of her assets. Astaire poses as an angel for the impressionable girl, and almost gets away with it, except he – inevitably – falls for her. Plus, on the fringes of the action, a real angel operates....

Harmless enough piffle, but get a load of the musical numbers. Full-tilt phantasmagorias that look like Busby Berkeley on acid or crystal or absinthe, they get bigger and more grandiose and ever loonier, with colors so brash that sunglasses are in order (was this the first head movie?). The set and costume designers must have had field day, what with Minnelli extending them a carte blanche they certainly never had before and would never have again until the debut of the music video. But the songs stay resolutely uninspired, which takes the starch out of the dancing (even much of Astaire's). It's safe to say nobody strode out of the theaters in 1945 whistling snappy tunes from Yolanda and the Thief.

It's not exactly fun to watch but you can't take your eyes off it, either. A one-of-a-kind Technicolor extravaganza, it makes you wonder how – not to say why – it ever got made. Astaire's reputation must have taken a nosedive after its release, and as for Bremer? She makes you long for Ginger Rogers – even the very late Ginger Rogers.

It's impossible to hate any film with Fred Astaire, Frank Morgan and Mildred Natwick giving their considerable all, but it's awfully hard to like any film with such forgettable songs (out of Harry Warren's bottom drawer), forgettable dances inspired by them from choreographer Eugene Loring (except for the promising percussive *introduction* to an ultimately dreary number called "Coffee Time") and a script that never pays off on a single one of its satiric possibilities.

At it's best, the old "studio system" of production by second guessing and committee could produce masterpieces. At its muddled worst, it produced things like YOLANDA AND THE THIEF and blamed them on the cast. Coming at about the middle of Fred Astaire's long film career, and early in Lucille Bremer's four year one, it couldn't ultimately hurt Astaire who would be back on top in three years with EASTER PARADE (interesting that his brief "retirement" in response to this turkey is not remembered in the same way Bette Davis's similarly motivated walkout from another studio is for his being "difficult"), but it did nothing to promote Bremer's career despite what looked like acceptable dancing and at least minimal acting skills and a certain homogenized beauty.

Chief blame would appear to lie with Irving Brecher's script from Ludwig Bemelmans & Jacques Thery's nasty little fairy tale of a story. Trading on the worst stereotypes of the evils of a Convent education (not that a too sheltered education isn't a bad thing), Bremer's "Yolanda" is too naive to be believed and a victim looking for a crime. Only those ALMOST as naive in the audience will not recognize Leon Ames's "Mr. Candle" character immediately for what he turns out to be, and the simple (even expected) plot twists which could make his character and Mildred Natwick's "Aunt Amarilla" interesting are never forthcoming.

Only Natwick's self centered monologue when Bremer returns to her home from the convent rises above the rest of the script and is very funny - creating hopes for what follows that never pay off. The final scene of the film is so perfunctory you get the impression the studio told Minnelli to wrap up filming regardless of what was left to do - but fans of the British sci-fi sitcom "Red Dwarf" may be amused to note that the central gimmick of the scene (and the film's only moment of misdirection or real irony) was stolen years later as the basis for a Red Dwarf episode in its first season.

Among things which ARE of interest in the film: the man who went on to become the great Broadway dancer and choreographer, Matt Mattox, is buried somewhere in the innocuous mess as an unbilled "featured dancer." One wonders if the (uncredited) "Dilettante" played by an actor calling himself "Andre Charlot" is any relation to the great British producer who introduced Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie to U.S. shores for the first time in the 1920's?

This is a totally misconceived musical fantasy that never knows what direction it's heading in. Parts of it are sticky-gooey religious drek with heiress Yolanda Aquaviva (Lucille Bremer) graduating from a convent to take her place at the head of the country's richest family. The other story thread concerns grifters (Fred Astaire and Frank Morgan) entering the country (it looks like Bolivia) to escape the American police. With assistance from an archangel (Leon Ames)the stories meet.

Mildred Natwick, as the loony aunt, comes off best in a delightfully comic performance. Ames and Morgan have almost nothing to do. Astaire, with his worst toupee in a major film, seems bored. Bremer (of the twitchy eyes) has almost zero acting talent. The color cinematography and set decoration will knock your eyes out, but as the scenes run from obvious artsy sets to real back drops, there seems to be no consistency or authorial vision.

Aside from a few comic moments (which belong to Natwick) the only things that saves this film from total failure is the musical number "Coffee Time." The set up is a carnival where Astaire and Bremer get pushed into doing a dance together. The oddly syncopated "Coffee Time" catches the viewer off guard because it's so damned good and quite arresting.

The number is introduced by three girls who clap in counter beat to the slightly South American sounds of the main melody. Then swirls of dancers join in, also clapping their four-beat counter tempo. Finally Astaire and Bremer take the spotlight and for a few moments they both come alive as they dance across the amazingly psychedelic floor of black and white wavy streaks. This is a great song/number stuck in a lousy film.

After the song, we resume the dreary narrative. I have no idea what director Vincente Minnelli was trying for, but nothing works. It's not a fantasy, it's not funny, and the religious angle is a total dud. Thank heaven for Mildred Natwick, the color cinematography, and "Coffee Time."

This is an extraordinary film for 1945. The story, a fantasy, is sort of sappy and the music is forgettable. Frank Morgan and Fred Astaire play themselves. And yet there is an overall quality about the film, a box office disaster, that makes it highly enjoyable. Perhaps it's the way Vincent Minelli handled the production. Perhaps it's Lucille Bremer's almost dazzling beauty. The dance numbers are a whole cut above the usual tap dance routines we expect with Astaire. The special effects are haunting at times.

It's Astaire's "Invitation to the Dance." Well worth watching.