A Roda da Fortuna

Stunning musical about fading star Fred Astaire making stage comeback with the help of friends Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabares. Jack Buchanon is fun as hammy stage actor who teams up with the group. Cyd joins in as haughty ballerina. The songs are first rate. Fred's solos and the girl hunt ballet are good but I prefer the romantic Dancing in the Dark number. The other highlight is Fred cheering up the cast after the first night flops.This was the film that introduced That's Entertainment. It is given a joyous presentation as Jack Buchanon explains what the job of show business is all about.The color is stunning,costumes great,set design good.Surprisingly Cyd's big solo "Two-faced Woman" was cut. It was shown on TCM.

Just saw this again, for the first time in 10 years. What a show! This is unquestionably the last of the great line of MGM – and, therefore, Hollywood – musicals . . . the last real flowering of Arthur Freed's genius at holding together a team of top production talents which had produced such a fine string of musicals. Not a dull spot in the entire movie and tremendous style in Minnelli's direction. Nice to see Jack Buchanan getting a last chance in the spotlight – his top hat routine with Astaire is one of the highlights of the movie. Astaire himself, playing the fading musical star which he was by 1953, has a magnificent opening with two contrasting numbers – the wistful By Myself and the exuberant Shine on your Shoes – tailored to set up his character perfectly. The Girl Hunt ballet is, of course, the dancing highlight of the movie and it is here that the utterly wonderful Cyd Charisse comes into her own. Apart from being arguably the best female dancer in Hollywood history, she was certainly the most beautiful: the scene in the ballet in which she appears on a bar stool and slips off her coat to reveal a dramatic red dress oozes with as much sex appeal as any movie moment I've ever seen.

Director Vincente Minnelli is probably the most important star of the visually stunning film "The Bandwagon". Betty Comden and Adolph Green supplied the book and most of the songs, aided by Arthur Schwartz and Alan Jay Lerner. And the relationships, as anyone who has worked in theater can attest, are unusually understated and true. The primary story-line concerns Tony Hunter, a man who has had failures in film and has now returned to Broadway looking for a good project. His old friend portrayed by Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant have a project in mind. But they make the mistake of hiring an ambitious director who sees in their tale a vehicle for a Faustian allegory filled with deep meanings, fire, brimstone, explosions and necrophiliac lighting. Of course the musical they produce is a total failure; and Tony has been compelled to dance with a hired ballerina, with whom he finds himself falling hopelessly in love. In desperation, he suggests they go back to the original show and not disband. As a result they craft a success, Tony gets his girl and everything ends happily. This I find to be a first-rate MGM production, using its top personnel: cinematography by Henry Jackson, art direction by Preston Ames and Cedric Gibbons, sets by Edwin Willis and Keogh Gleason, Sydney Guilaroff's hairstyles and William Tuttle's makeup, and costumes by Mary Ann Nyberg. The stars of the film are all very professional and likable. Fred Astaire is Tony, Cyd Charisse the ballerina, Nanette Fabray andOscar Levant as ilmic Comden and Green stand-ins, Jack Gardner, James Mitchell, Robert Gist, and many others in small or uncredited roles including familiar faces such as Herb Vigran, Barbara Ruick, Julie Newmar, et al. Some have complained that the musical numbers here seemed a bit static or curiously cold; but this is a musical for once where the numbers look as if they could have been musical numbers onstage; and after chasing this film for decades, when I saw it I was delighted by its stunning visual qualities; and as a theatrical veteran I was also gratified that its human relationships seemed to work, as theatrical portraits by Comden and Green and in the personages who people this very enjoyable entertainment.

There are many shimmering moments in Bandwagon: Fred Astaire (playing a role close to his own life story; he was 53 at the time), the acidic wit of Oscar Levant ('that'll keep 'em laughing!!') tempered by the sunny Nanette Fabray and musical numbers including "Shine on Your Shoes," "I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plan," and a clever novelty trio called "Triplets." But the musical sequence that stands out the most is the one which has no vocal, no dialog, and gently advances the movie's plot of whether or not oil-and-water dancers Astaire and Cyd Charisse can actually perform together (when he thinks she's too tall and she thinks he's too old). Against a Central Park twilight, the film shows its heroes enjoy a hushed walk through a park (only an instrumental refrain of 'High and Low' is heard), after which they step into an empty courtyard (he in a pastel linen suit and spectator shoes, she in a flared white dress and ballet flats; a necessity to keep her from being taller than him on film) and into the pas-de-deux of "Dancing In The Dark." It's an exquisite sequence, which at times resembles courtship, foreplay, and ultimately a romantic climax- all done in dance. It ends, just as smoothly as it began, with the two leads spinning up a short flight of stairs and mounting a hansom cab, without a single hair out of place. Now THAT's entertainment.

Perhaps the finest hour of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse together (although Silk Stockings comes a close second); the 'Dancing in the Dark' sequence says it all about both this film, and the two impeccably classy stars.

There are, of course, other highlights - Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray's acidic writers; Jack Buchanan's overblown producer; Fred's dance with the shoeshine boy, Le Roy Daniels; anything featuring Cyd Charisse - and those wonderful musical numbers, ranging from the anthem 'That's Entertainment' to the hilarious 'Triplets'.

'The Band Wagon' sends up the old film staple plot "putting on a show" and does it brilliantly, thanks to the crackling Comden/Green script. One of MGM's best musical efforts, hugely enjoyable.