Footlight Parade

I don't have anything original to add to the justified encomia others have lavished on this remarkable movie.

Watching it again tonight, I was, however, struck yet once again by the genius of Busby Berkeley in staging the last three numbers, the "prologues." Most remarkable of a very remarkable trio for me is "Beside a waterfall." It just keeps building and building and building. Yes, of course, some of the shots of the women in the water are very erotic. It was 1933, after all, and before the Hayes Code. Berkeley and Warner Brothers understood that pretty women posed erotically had a real appeal to men,

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I watched the end of this movie again this morning. Perhaps I paid closer attention to this number this time, perhaps I was just in the right "mood." Either way, I marveled at the suggestiveness of so much of it. Those jets of water spurting up - I use the verb advisedly - between the swimming women's legs. All those shots of women opening and closing their legs. It was remarkably erotic on my 46" tv screen. What must it have been like in 1933 on huge movie theater screens in the era before multiplexes????

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But these erotic poses are not JUST erotic poses. The number keeps building and building and building. What will he do next, you keep wondering? Oh, that. But "that" is even more incredible than what has come before. By the time you get to the end of this number, you're exhausted, not just physically and erotically, but imaginatively as well. How could anyone have maintained and built on that suspense for 10 whole minutes? I can't tell you, but Berkeley did.

Third of the three prologues, "Shanghai Lil," is definitely not something that could have been filmed the same way just a year or two later when the Production Code was put in force. We see an opium den, a lot of prostitutes, at least one interracial couple, etc.

Having watched it again tonight, I will add that this is a strange "musical." There is almost no music for the first hour and a half. It's all in the three closing numbers. But what numbers!

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.

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.

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.

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.