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The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
One of the greatest British films and the breakout role for Deborah Kerr
"The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" has often been called the greatest British film ever made. I don't like to rate films quite that specifically, but it is certainly one of the best. It was made by the production company known as The Archers, a joint venture of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who shared producer, director and screenwriter credits in their films, Having begun working for Alexander Korda, they independently made the popular films "49th Parallel" and "One of Our Aircraft Is Missing" before setting up Archer with the intent of eliminating the control of producers and studios. Top actors loved working with them and they built up an informal repertoire company in a short time. They are now seen as an important part of British cinematic history and have been acknowledged as major influences by directors Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola among others.
The film was highly controversial in its day, largely because they decided to include Colonel Blimp in the title (the character's name in the film is Clive Wynne-Candy) and made-up Roger Livesey to look exactly like him in the opening scenes. Blimp was a popular comic strip - usually a single panel - that poked fun at the British establishment as hidebound, narrow-minded and patriotic in a jingoistic way about the Empire. Blimp was not a bad fellow, just stuck in the past and not very bright, given to saying things like, "The government is marching over the edge of an abyss and the public must march solidly behind them". He was always depicted in a Turkish bath, a setting duplicated in the film.
Since Colonel Wynne-Candy is nothing like this with the exception of being uncaring about the consequences of his actions, I can't imagine why they brought Blimp into the title at all
because it caused a storm of criticism of Archer's motivation and timing in making such a picture. By referencing Blimp, they created the impression that they were making a film mocking British patriotism, attitudes and the military, this in the middle of World War II when London was being bombed. Pamphlets were printed against it calling it a disgrace. The Ministry of Information and the Secretary of State for War advised the studio not to make it. Winston Churchill was solidly against it, partially fearing it would be a satire of himself, and forbade Lawrence Olivier, the original choice to play Wynne-Candy, to be in it by not granting him leave from his naval assignment.
When finally shown a rough cut of the film all objections were withdrawn. It was a patriotic film with the only critical element being a warning, spoken several times, that Britain's ideas about a gentlemanly war fought with certain rules combined with a tradition of sportsmanship and fair play had to be abandoned against a ruthless enemy like Nazi Germany. Wynne-Candy himself is a fine fellow, a bit pig-headed at times, but warm, honest and full of integrity and thoroughly English in a positive way. It did roaringly well at the British box office, the third-highest grossing film of the year after #2, "In Which We Serve" (a patriotic film directed by Noel Coward) and #1, "Casablanca".
The film has a remarkably leisurely pace, covering a time period from the end of the Boer War in 1902 to 1943 Britain. What adds to the leisurely feeling is that during its almost three-hour running time there is no extreme melodrama, no big conflict between good and evil and no passionate love affair - none of the things that one would have found in an American film of the period. Its reserve in many situations is typically English. There are humorous moments, but the film could hardly be called a comedy. It's mostly a look at friendship, love and growing older. In fact the story had been suggested by Archer film editor David Lean - yes, that David Lean - from a bit he had had to cut from an earlier film where a character said, "You don't know what it's like to be old", the situation Wynne-Candy experiences near the end of the film.
The film boasts a large cast of great British actors, with Austrian Anton Walbrook playing on and off again friend Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff. Roger Livesey is wonderful as Wynne-Candy, aging smoothly before our eyes with the aid of an expert makeup department. He embodies a headstrong and impetuous young man, a middle aged man at the top of his career in The Great War, and an old man whose experience no one seems to want anymore, each phase realized convincingly. This was the breakout film for Deborah Kerr, who would go on to have an illustrious career for the next three decades. She plays three different characters here, all young women who come to know Wynne-Candy. She's a Victorian favoring more opportunities for women, a fashionable woman with a 1920s bob and a spirited woman in the army's Auxiliary in the 1940s. It's something to see such a famous actress in such an early role (she's 22 here). She performs each role distinctively, never seeming to be the same person and though there are changes in hair and clothing styles she does this from within. It's no wonder she caught the attention of many in the film industry.
One fun thing to catch: at an early point in the film, Wynne-Candy is in the office of Colonel Bettenridge and brings up Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and finds out the Colonel is a fan as well
.The Colonel jokingly turns to his assistant, Major Plumley, and says, "Lovely evening, my dear Watson". Major Plumley is played by future author Ian Fleming. Who had played Watson in the , critically praised British Holmes films of the 1930s with Arthur Wontner as the famed detective.
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Lubitsch. Benny and Lombard score a triumph.
Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not To Be" has an assured place as not only one of Lubitsch's best films, but one of the best films of the classic era. AFI ranks it #49 in its comedy film 100 and it's held in general critical esteem. But this was not always the case. It was greatly misunderstood when it opened in February of 1942. Not just the public but even important critics felt the film was in poor taste mixing comedy, Nazis and the plight of Poland during the war. It seemed bizarre that anyone would set a comedy, even a black comedy in this particular time and place. It even included the bombing of Warsaw in September, 1939.
Early 1942 saw some of the darkest days of World War II. For one thing, Hitler seemed to be winning. The Nazis and their allies controlled most of Europe and Germany had even invaded Russia. Pearl Harbor had just happened, pulling the U. S. into the war. The climate was full of fear and dread and everything was more serious than ever. Making light of all this just didn't go down well with many people. And from Lubitsch, an esteemed director whose films were usually sophisticated romantic comedies set in make-believe kingdoms populated by people like Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier, this was outrageous. Lubitsch, of course, wasn't making light of the situation itself, but using comedy to cut the Nazis down to size; to show them as human beings full of foibles, not unstoppable supermen. The film was not a failure at the box office but it wasn't a big hit either.
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He was ahead of his time. War films during the conflict were generally straight-on action films. After the war they were bigger and more iconic, but not comic. There were a few exceptions. "Stalag 17" had enough darkly comic elements to call it a comic drama but it was released in 1953, eight years after the war's end. Actual comedies set during World War II had to wait until the late 50s and early 60s, and they were generally set in the Pacific with tropical islands in the background, ("Operation Petticoat", "The Wackiest Ship in the Army") not devastated cities. Chaplin had made "The Great Dictator" in 1940, but that was an obvious satire and America had not entered the war.
The film is not a constant laugh fest, either. I would be tempted to call it a suspense/espionage film with comic elements. The serious parts of the film are quite serious. There's no glossing over bombed buildings or the general darkness and tension of the situation. The Nazis are vain and pompous men, on edge themselves and ready to cover any possible slip with a nervous Nazi salute, but they remain dangerous and powerful and most are not comic buffoons. When Carole Lombard as actress Maria Tura is approached by two German soldiers and told to come with them to Gestapo headquarters, there's a genuine feeling that she could be in serious trouble.
It's the first part of the film that is purely comic. Here Lubitsch opens the whole film with a joke about one of the players trying to prove he is convincing in his role, and ends it with another joke. Poland hasn't been invaded yet and there's time to introduce the various members of a Polish troupe of actors with all their foibles and little interpersonal dramas. Benny's Joseph Turaq is vain, a bit of a ham and jealous over his glamorous wife getting sent baskets of flowers from an admirer. Benny had been unsure of accepting such a role in an important film by a noted director. He was mainly a radio star but had made a few comedy films, most notably "Charlie's Aunt" .It took Lubitsch himself convincing Benny that all along he had been an actor playing a comic role, as his comedy was based around him being a particular character and not just jokes.
His wife was played by Carole Lombard who is absolutely wonderful. Her comic timing was notable ever since films like "Twentieth Century" and "My Man Godfrey" and here she does a great deal with facial expressions; watch her first meeting with Lieutenant Sobinski (Robert Stack) as she reacts to his knowledge of what she said in already-forgotten interviews: "What goldfish?" Her character is also shrewd, and knows to act to the Nazis as if her only cares are for nice clothes and a bigger apartment. This was her final film. She died in December, 1941 in a plane crash, returning from a War Bond drive in the Midwest. The public had really loved her and at showings applauded her on screen entrances.
Robert Stack, just 23, was breaking into pictures and this was a big break for him. He is as All-American as Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart playing Polish Lieutenant Stanislav Sobinski. It's surely for the better that he didn't try to put on a Polish accent, but his American speech among a largely European cast stands out more than it should. IThough they note that he had been in England, his accent certainly isn't British. I think they could have rewritten his character as an American volunteer in the RAF (there were such men) to account for his thoroughly American ways. Beyond that he's quite convincing.
Among the rest, Sig Ruman is particularly notable as Colonel Ehrhardt. The character gets a momentous buildup and by the time he enters over an hour into the film, you are expecting a total monster. Instead we get this insecure narcissist who is glad he is known as "Concentration Camp Ehrhardt" but who blames any perceived mistake on hapless Captain Schultz (Henry Victor) who often notes that it was the colonel's idea. Felix Bressart is Greenburg, a "Spear carrier" in most of their productions who always wants to get a laugh. He also yearns to play Shylock and perform his soliloquy at the end of "The Merchant of Venice" and finally gets his chance. Charles Halton's face will be recognizable to fans of classic films. Usually he played a wicked landlord about to foreclose on a mortgage or something similar but here he gets to play a rare sympathetic character as Jan Dobosz, the Producer of the troupe's plays.
After the initial foolishness the film turns serious and it stays serious. Much of the humor of the piece lies in the situation underlying everything, that these people are just actors trying to put one over on the Nazis. Knowing who they really are sets up conversations that are humorous for the audience. There are some overtly funny jokes along the way like when Benny continually mentions "The great Polish actor, Josef Tura" to people who don't recognize the name. The film's balance between humor and terror is subtle, but always present within the story. This is a film not to be missed.
Black Narcissus (1947)
Loneliness, Longing and Madness in the Himalayas
"Black Narcissus" was one of the best of the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger films, made at their postwar peak just before "The Red Shoes". Powell and Pressburger were a major force in British films for a decade after the war and they have influenced many directors today including Scorsese and Coppola. In general Pressburger handled the production and Powell, the directing while both worked on the screenplays. The film is noteworthy for its beautiful Technicolor cinematography by Jack Cardiff, praised by the executives of the Technicolor company, which won an Academy Award as did the film's art direction. The film is also noteworthy for bringing Deborah Kerr to the attention of Hollywood, which immediately led to her signing with MGM.
The Catholic Legion of Decency, a powerful force in those days, threatened to condemn the film unless certain changes were made. They demanded and got a few cuts and one addition. The addition was a different opening text explaining that these were Protestant (Anglican) nuns. Nuns were usually assumed to be Catholic, and in fact many people didn't know there even were Protestant nuns and in a film with an erotic subcontext they wanted this difference noted. The original opening does not state this difference. The cuts were quite minor. A closeup of one of the nuns putting on lipstick was excised. The other cuts were Sister Clodagh's (Deborah Kerr's) flashback to her life in Ireland when she was in love with a young man whom she expected to marry. I had always thought these must be really steamy, but in fact are very tame and proper, even by 1940s standards. The issue then must have been that it suggested becoming a nun as a refuge after a romantic disappointment rather than a calling from God.
Most people are surprised, as I originally was, that the film was shot almost entirely at Pinewood Studios and there was no second unit sent to the Himalayas for exterior shots. The remarkably beautiful and effective Himalayan mountains and valleys were all painted on glass with pastel chalks using blown up black and white photographs as the image source and then added to the film with the matte technique. It's no wonder that the Art Direction department won an Oscar as well. The very few outdoor shots were filmed in Ireland (the flashback scenes) and Sussex (the forest and the rhododendron dell).
Though Powell thought Deborah Kerr too young to play the Sister Superior of the remote mountain outpost, Pressburger thought her perfect for the role and was proved to be right. Her Sister Clodagh is called stiff-necked and obstinate at one point and indeed, she is, but she's also sincere and hard working and serious about her duty. Kerr is able to convey the complexity of her character. Though constrained in a way by her nun's habit, she is able to let you see everything she is feeling and thinking. Only five nuns in total are sent on this mission to establish a convent school and hospital in a building that once served as the house of the local raja's concubines. The establishment of the school was requested and supported by "The Old General", the current ruler of the area and is overseen by Mr. Dean (David Farrar), his agent. Dean is cynical about the whole endeavor and is a disturbing male presence to the nuns with his insouciant attitude and tendency to dress casually.
The new quarters also come with a somewhat off-kilter housekeeper, Angu Ayah, delightfully played by May Hallatt,, who played an equally eccentric character in "Separate Tables". There's also a holy man who sits outside on a cliff day and night and an eight year old boy, the son of The Old General's cook, sent to help in the school and kitchen. Along the way they are joined by The Young General (Sabu) an earnest young man seeking a broad education who, being the son of a noble, seems to have a different elaborate outfit every day complete with its own matching jewels and is given to wearing scents like Caron's Black Narcissus. Finally, Mr. Dean brings in a rather errant local seventeen-year-old girl, Kanchi, who has been coming to his quarters every day. She is played by an almost unrecognizable Jean Simmons, who seldom speaks but adds yet another inappropriately sensual presence to the convent school.
Into this mix the five nuns try to cope with everything from the constant wind and isolated perch on a cliff, to the local populace, about whom they know nothing at all. Five nuns may seem too few for the undertaking, but each is a distinct character and five is enough to get to know. The convent school becomes a pressure cooker of sorts for each of them, its isolation magnifying all of their own problems and insecurities as well as repressed feelings and desires. Each nun is challenged by the circumstances with only the strong Sister Briony seemingly unaffected by the situation. By the end one of them goes mad, climaxing in a scene of great intensity. In the end the nuns leave, defeated by the place just as the Brothers before them who had lasted only five months. Some people have noted that the film was released only months before Indian Independence and say the film is an allegory for the British in India. Though it's unlikely that Powell and Pressburger had an allegory in mind, it is definitely there. The very British nuns simply never can understand or relate to the place in which they find themselves and are truly alien in the middle of a foreign land.
EXTRA NOTE: There really was a perfume named Black Narcissus (Narcisse Noir), the first big success by Caron, in 1906. A musky, woodsy floral scent, it became wildly popular and can still be bought today. It combined a top note of orange blossoms and narcissus with an undertone of rose with a base of vetiver, musk and sandalwood.
Dodsworth (1936)
Remarkably Honest film about human relationships.
"Dodsworth" is every bit the great classic film that it is generally held to be and one of the finest films of the Thirties. Unusual for its time, a decade of musicals, screwball comedies and escapist fare, :Dodsworth" is a serious exploration of the gradual dissolution of a marriage, a drama but not a melodrama. Sam Goldwyn didn't even want to make it at first, thinking no one would want to see a middle aged love story, but when screenwriter Sidney Howard made it into a hit play on Broadway, Goldwyn changed his mind. Goldwyn wanted to only put out high quality films and brought in the best people, including Walter Huston who played the title role on stage.
He gave it to up and coming director William Wyler. Wyler had spent a long apprenticeship at Universal cranking out routine Westerns, but once he left them for Goldwyn, he became an uncannily fine director. This was his first masterpiece in a career of many that led to a record twelve Academy Award nominations as best director and three wins. He was particularly good with actors and fourteen actors and actresses won Oscars under his direction. His ability to do this was a mystery. He had no experience in the theater and had been raised to take over the family's haberdashery in Alsace. He was not well read and more likely to be found motorboating or skiing in his free time. He was known for doing as many as 40 takes to get what he wanted from an actor or a scene and yet was loath to give actors any instruction. Some say he thought their performance would look artificial if he did and that it had to come from them. Others said he just couldn't articulate what he wanted but knew it when he got it. All of his actors simply trusted him and though he was a taskmaker, his record stood for itself.
Sidney Howard adapted his own play for the screen, from the original Sinclair Lewis novel. It's a fantastic screenplay with quotable lines in every scene. In fact, every scene is major in this film, with no filler and it moves along at a brisk pace. Sam Dodsworth is an auto manufacturer who has sold his factory and business in order to retire. He's a solid American type of his era, a man who has been enormously successful but who is down to earth and plain spoken. All his employees turn out to bid him goodbye on his last day. Walter Huston plays him as a man of dignity and patience, but nobody's fool.
His wife, Fran, is played by Ruth Chatterton. She was one of the biggest actresses of her day, up there with Constance Bennett and Norma Shearer, both of whom, like her, are mostly forgotten today by the general public. This was one of her last pictures. Fran is superficial, snobby, frivolous and dying to get away from Zenith, Indiana, the factory town of her husband's automotive business. She wants them to go to Europe. But she doesn;t just want a vacation, saying, "I want a new life, all over from the very beginning. A perfectly glorious, free, adventurous life." Her description of her daily life in Zenith, always surrounded by the same women, shows her to be an adventurous, if foolish spirit and she comes off more sympathetic because of this. Her characterization was a topic of great arguments between Wyler and Chatterton, who saw her as simply evil. Wyler felt that she had to be somewhat sympathetic for the film to work and he was right. This is a story of two people who find they are far more different than they imagined and though Fran is unsympathetic, she is not a villain.
Mary Astor is softer and sweeter than the roles she is famous for as Edith Cortright, an American woman living in Italy. She's far more perceptive and sophisticated than poor Fran and makes a pointed comment when Fran tells her she's turning 35. Fran is in the middle of what later would be called a midlife crisis and fears aging.. Everything she does is an attempt to deny that she's aging and news of becoming a grandmother in the near future really devastates her.
David Niven appears in an early role as Captain Lockert, a man who shows Fran that she is out of her depth on the transatlantic voyage on the Queen Mary. Niven had recently been taken up and given a contract by Goldwyn, a real stroke of luck for the actor who had only recently been an extra. He's good as a sophisticated cad who immediately notes how charming Fran looks in her outfit even though both she and Sam have committed an innocent faux pas by dressing up on the first night. Paul Lukas is every bit the suave European who also pronounces Fran as "charming", which seems to be a code for "interesting." Maria Ouspenskaya makes a great appearance as the Baroness Von Obersdorf, dressed in black and with all the intensity she could muster. She tells it like it is and spares no feelings in her single scene that got her a Best Supporting Actress nomination.
The film is beautifully photographed and Goldwyn sent a second unit to Europe to film scenes of the places visited by the Dodsworths, opening up the film in a clever, if expensive way before the days of frequent location shooting. Much more was filmed but both Goldwyn and Wyler didn't want the film to become a travelog and distract from its real intent. This film is a sincere look at life, marriage and the differences between various people in a way that completely holds up today.
EXTRA NOTE: This is a good film in which to see Ruth Chatterton. As big as she was, most of her films were fairly lightweight and are hard to find in any format. Chatterton was very different from the characters she usually played. After her retirement from films just two years after "Dodsworth," she became an author of several novels, one of which became a bestseller. She was also a noted aviator who flew solo across the U. S. several times and was a friend of Amelia Earhart.
From Here to Eternity (1953)
A Daring and Hard Hitting Film for the Early 50s.
One of the biggest and best films of the 1950's, "From Here to Eternity" matched an excellent cast with a masterful director, good writing and Oscar winning black and white cinematography. In fact it was nominated in thirteen categories and won eight including Best Picture, Director and both Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor. Though Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr did not win in the acting categories, many think they should have, and really, it doesn't matter because they were great whether or not they won an award.
Fred Zinneman was a director actors wanted to work with because he brought out fine performances. He also directed a string of fine films with no misfires, at this point just coming off "High Noon" and "The Member of the Wedding". He directed serious films in general, with the exception of "Oklahoma!", and even that musical has its dark moments. He seemed to be most interested in human nature and in particular, how people with principles act under trying or challenging circumstances. This is as true for Montgomery Clift's Robert Pruitt and Burt Lancaster's Sgt. Warden as it was for Paul Scofield's Sir Thomas More in "A Man For All Seasons" (1966). Zinneman had to fight Columbia President Harry Cohn to get Montgomery Clift, who Cohn felt wouldn't be suitable as a boxer or a soldier. There was also a fight over Sinatra, who Zinneman didn't want but Cohn did. Both worked out well.
The film included subjects that were very controversial and envelope-pushing in 1953, so much so that it would be hard to imagine the impact from the standpoint of today. This was part of a major change in films of the 50s which took on topics unthinkable in the previous decade and a half. There is open adultery between Kerr and Lancaster that includes one of the most famous scenes in movie history as they kiss, in a horizontal embrace on the beach; this was very daring in its time. The military is shown to include corruption, violence and injustice. There is sadistic bullying, violence and murder. Some say there is prostitution, but though Donna Reed's Alma (Lorene) was a prostitute in the novel, here she's a hostess in a club that is presented as above board. This had to be done to meet the Code, though it's done vaguely enough that one can take it as one wishes. These people are not models of behavior, but act as people generally would, warts and all.
Set in Oahu's Schofield Barracks just before Pearl Harbor, the story is told from the multiple viewpoints of various pairs of characters interacting with each other. There are Kerr and Lancaster, Lancaster and Clift, Clift and Reed, Clift and Sinatra, Sinatra and Borgnine and Clift and everyone in his platoon. Clift's role is especially difficult and ambiguous. He brings nearly everyone down on him because although he is a champion boxer, he won't box for his platoon o and is mercilessly hazed. At first he doesn't explain that it's because he blinded a friend while they were boxing. Still, it was accidental and from their viewpoint, he is a soldier who should know that accidents happen. He's "a hardhead" as Lancaster calls him, in fact so intensely that there's more going on here than what shows on the surface. I wonder why a stubborn individualist like him chose a career in the military. Clift gives it all he's got and totally inhabits Pruitt, as usual saying so much simply by his expressions without saying a word.
Lancaster and Kerr are the other centers of the film, and the buildup to their affair is intense. Kerr. Usually a prim and proper lady in films, plays almost totally against type. She's also blonde, which changes her look considerably. She speaks in such good American English that you really don't remember she's British. She comes with a reputation but Lancaster doesn't seem to care, any more than he cares that she's his commanding officer's wife. In her entrance, walking across a lawn toward Lancaster she's practically luminous, I assume it's a trick of cinematography, but she almost seems to be filmed in pale color for a moment. They play cat and mouse for a while, but before long they're headed to the beach for a night swim, which leads to a critical revelation from her that softens her character and makes it clear she's still a lady inside. Lancaster is less than noble, getting possessive and jealous with her and acting put off about her past, but however unfair, he's just acting as many men would.
Sinatra is streetwise, hot tempered, big mouthed,thoughtless and irresponsible, but that's Private Maggio. He's a pest and often a troublemaker but he stands up for people when he sees they're being treated unfairly and seems to have a good heart beneath his obvious problems. He looks hopelessly skinny and you wonder how he's ever going to make it in the Army. He befriends Pruitt and they become drinking buddies at a local social club where Pruitt falls in love with hostess Lorene, played by Donna Reed, like Kerr, against type. With dark hair she seems cynical, particularly about soldiers but eventually falls for Pruitt. Then there's Ernest Borgnine, who is the most frightening film presence since William Bendix, as the bullying Sgt."Fatso" Judson. Only Lancaster can dominate him. He becomes Sinatra's personal tormenter and could have used a little more time on screen for the audience to appreciate how horrible he truly was.
The film explores these people and others, living ordinary lives, carrying out their affairs and schemes, hopes and suffering and the boredom of daily routines. Then the calendar by a wall phone shows that it's Sunday, December 6th and everything is dwarfed and shattered by the attack on Pearl Harbor, an event that trumps all other events. Although the film doesn't pack the same punch it did in 1953, it's still powerful and a must see for any classic film fan.
There are many odd facts and legends surrounding this film, most of all the horse head scene in both the book and film of "The Godfather. Sinatra was at the nadir of his popularity and needed something, anything to help revive his career. But everyone involved in the production said there was no such incident and it was Ava Gardner, Sinatra's then wife and a good friend of the Cohns, who got him the role. Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster may have had an actual affair during the shooting of this film; he said they did but she said there was an attraction but nothing more. The famous beach scene was so risque that the censors made sure that Kerr's swimsuit had a skirt in its design. Photos of that scene were forbidden for being too racy and were not used for the publicity or lobby cards.
Dinner at Eight (1933)
Dinner Is Served
"Dinner at Eight " is the great classic that everyone says it is, however, so much time has passed since its making that I feel I need to comment a bit on its style for those who haven't seen many films of its vintage before. I've seen this film a number of times on television, at repertoire theaters and on video but this is the first time I really noticed how much has changed since it was made. The same goes for other thirties films like "Grand Hotel", to which "Dinner At Eight" was a kind of follow-up. These were early talkies, following on the heels of the late twenties talkies which were mostly musicals that have seemingly totally vanished. The overall effect is more like a filmed play than the way films are today. The camera is fairly static, with only a few closeups. The acting is still stagelike as well, with a certain amount of what looks today like overacting. Many of the actors had been recently recruited from Broadway because they knew how to deliver a line and had voices that could resonate on film. It took a while to develop this new art of talking films as well as to develop more flexible equipment to record the sound and film the picture. Don't get me wrong, it's not all making big faces and twirling mustaches, but it is noticeable.
After "Grand Hotel" broke records as the first dramatic all-star film, MGM wanted another hit and kept several of the earlier film's elements. It is set in a wealthy and glamorous world, something which became a convention of many thirties films and which also allowed for beautiful costumes and sets. Ostensibly a comedy, each of the characters has some very serious things going on beneath the veneer of social grace. By the end of the film many of the character's lives have changed in significant ways. Both John and Lionel Barrymore were in "Grand Hotel" as was Wallace Beery.
Every one of the major actors gets a juicy role and each plays their part well. The shadow of the Depression hangs over all of them. Lionel Barrymore as Oliver Jordan is the harried shipping magnate whose business is slipping and who finds himself in the middle of what we would call today a hostile takeover. His wife Millicent (Billie Burke) is the dithering, air-headed society wife trying to bring off this dinner with the social coup of giving it in honor of Lord and Lady Ferncliffe, who she had met in Antibes. Burke shines in this role, one which she would repeat in one way or another in many films in a way that no one could do better. (She is, by the way, not a social climber as some seem to think. As a wealthy, multi-generation shipping family the Jordans would be well-within high society. But it would always be a social coup to have titled guests).
Their daughter Paula (Madge Evans) is bored with her society boyfriend and thinks she is in love with aging actor Larry Renault (John Barrymore). Renault is running out of money and is waiting to get a big role in a Broadway play, though only he thinks he is the big star he used to be. Another aging thespian, Carlotta Vance (Marie Dressler) is also low on funds and has come to New York to sell her stock in Jordan's company at a most inconvenient time. Dan Packard (Wallace Beery) is a crass, boorish businessman with dreams of being a Cabinet member who sees Jordan's company as easy pickings. His trophy wife Kitty (Jean Harlow) is totally bored and wants some social recognition rather than the bracelets Dan gives her and staying in bed all day eating chocolates. Harlow is an absolute hoot in this role, one that opened future roles for her that would be more rewarding than what she had been doing. Marie Dressler, the most unlikely top box-office draw in Hollywood at that time, and Harlow, the actress one would not expect to be any more than decorative, together practically run away with the film and share the last, famous conversational lines together.
All this is enhanced by a production team one could only dream about. This was David O. Selznik's first production after he moved from Paramount to MGM. With him he brought his protege, director George Cukor, who became legendary in his own right. The witty and keenly observational script was by Frances Marion, Herman Mankiewicz and Donald Ogden Stewart, from a play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. This was some of the top writing talent of the day and because the script is Pre-Code, it openly addresses issues of adultery, compulsive womanizing and alcoholism. Look past the older styles and take in this superb film.
The Sundowners (1960)
Unjustly Neglected but Fine Film
"The Sundowners" was a modest box office hit with a notable cast, distinguished director and eight Academy Award nominations, but despite all that it seems to have been somewhat forgotten over the years. It's not a film you find anyone mentioning anymore. This is too bad because it's a very entertaining film that is very rewarding if you are patient enough. It runs a bit over two hours and the only thing you hear about it that is negative, when you hear anything about it at all, is that it's too long. I can understand that opinion, but I disagree.
Director Fred Zinnemann made mostly serious dramatic films, many of which are genuine classics. They included "High Noon", "From Here To Eternity", "Oklahoma!", "The Nun's Story", and later on, "A Man For All Seasons". "The Sundowners" seems almost like a vacation for him from his usual fare. Still, he brought to it his well-known attention to detail, strong visuals and his ability to draw fine performances from his actors. This film may be on the lighter side but it is not trivial. The screenplay was adapted from a best-selling novel of the same title by John Cleary (who appears in the film briefly near the end as a man who wants to buy the family's horse). There is a deep underlying tension in the Carmody family. It's set in Australia in the 1920's. Paddy is a sheep drover and shearer, traveling in a small wagon from job to job with his wife Ida and his son Sean.
He's a good-hearted man who hates routine, fears settling down as a kind of prison and is very happy in the itinerant life they lead. His wife, Ida, a down-to-earth woman, is more intelligent and observant and feels it's time they settled down on a small farm of their own. She knows they can't go on into their old age this way, while Paddy seems to live for the moment as if he'll always be able to do his hard, demanding work. They also have a son, Sean, now in his mid-teens, who agrees with his mother that he'd like a settled life (and perhaps some friends his own age). The story takes place over a year in the sprawling Outback, bringing a flock of sheep from one place to another, later staying at a shearing station.
The casting is exceptional. Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr are the Carmodys. They had appeared in "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" together and had become good friends. Mitchum accepted second-billing for a chance to work with her again. His earthiness and her ladylike English breeding worked well together as a couple. Kerr, of course, was a versatile actress, as she showed in "From Here to Eternity" and was quite able to play the wife of a wandering drover convincingly. You can absolutely feel her yearning for a settled life. In one telling scene, she looks longingly at a well-dressed young woman on a train stopped at a station as she touches up her makeup; it says everything without one spoken word. Mitchum is fine as Paddy, drinking and gambling and having a good time. But it's Kerr who keeps the money jar, and Kerr who decides he must take a sheep-shearing job he doesn't really want. Still, you can really see their love for each other and it's fascinating to watch them negotiate the ups and downs of their lives.
Michael Anderson Jr. - son of British director Michael Anderson ("Around the World In 80 Days") - holds his own with Mitchum and Kerr and is given as much screen time as them. This is taking a chance with an actual teenager, but he's both winning and believable. One thing I couldn't help but notice, especially with a meticulous director like Zinnemann, was that especially in closeups, he always looked clean, combed and pressed, despite the life his character was living, but film wasn't that concerned with absolute realism at this time. He's a lively and important addition here. Peter Ustinov has a tricky role as Rupert Venneker, a kind of well educated drifter with a mysterious past that may have included being a ship's officer and a soldier in the 17th Lancers. He speaks in grandiose ways and has some kind of charm with the ladies despite less than ideal looks. He befriends Sean as well and shares interesting observations about life with him. His character seems like pure fiction, that it's too much to imagine someone like this helping to herd sheep, but he fits right in somehow and really adds to the film's fun.
There are nice turns by Glyns Johns as the jolly innkeeper and barmaid at the Pastoral Hotel, a role for which she was nominated Best Supporting Actress. Dina Merrill is good as an upper class young woman from Sydney who is having trouble adjusting to the Outback life that came with her new husband. It could have been a more developed role, but I imagine time would not allow for that. Time as it was was two hours, thirteen minutes, and that's fairly long for a film with no big plot to deal with. "The Sundowners" is an episodic film, true to life in its way, just following the Carmodys as they go here, then there. It's true that with this structure, any number of episodes could be cut without losing any plot points, and apparently that would have pleased some people, though viewers overall rate the film highly. But I think there were some reasons for its length.
One was simply the times when it was made. Movies in the late 50's and early 60's were often "Big". Hollywood's answer to the threat of television was to go big: CinemaScope or other widescreen formats, location shooting, international stars, and long, if not even epic length. With a major director, major studio (Warner Brothers) and major stars. A film had to be of a certain length to be taken seriously, plus this was a December holiday release. Also, because it's by Zinnemann, there had to be more reason for it. After all, he could be concise, he directed "High Noon". I think that the length helps to make you feel the feeling of the long, endless wandering that Kerr's character is experiencing, and how fed up she and Sean are getting with it. Without the length, you wouldn't feel what she's feeling. I don't think Zinnemann was simply being undisciplined here.
Finally a word on the film's tone. This could have been a very serious picture. The couple could have been in much more dire straits and their underlying tension could have erupted into violence. On top of that there are dangers from living and working outdoors and possible dangers from other people. Many possible dangerous situations do occur but tend to be resolved quickly and amicably. When two truckloads of drovers almost collide the scene turns into a Donnybrook straight out of a John Ford film where the combatants all make up happily. There's another Ford-like moment when Ustinov pulls a drunk and singing Mitchum out of a local bar. This light tone may, however, have been a reason the film did not win any of its Oscar nominations in the year of "The Apartment" and "Elmer Gantry". Another tipoff that this is, at heart, a family film, is the fine score by Dimitri Tiomkin. It's not like the big, sweeping orchestral scores he was known for, but a smaller ensemble playing folk-like, dance-like music, similar to what are only the lighter moments in some of the many films he scored (like "Here's To the Ladies" from "The Alamo"). This is one of the best family films around, especially because it avoids being too maudlin and presents a fairly realistic take on family life.
EXTRA NOTE: Deborah Kerr had the dubious honor of being nominated six times for Best Actress and winning none until the Academy gave her an honorary one in 1994. Twice her seemingly certain win ended up going to another because of circumstances beyond acting. In 1957 I think she should have been a shoo-in for the award for "The King and I" but it was the year Hollywood welcomed back Ingrid Bergman from her exile in Europe, after being shunned for the Rossellini affair. She won for "Anastasia", a relatively forgotten film. In 1960, Kerr again seemed assured when suddenly it looked like Elizabeth Taylor was going to die and the word went out to vote for Liz. Though Bergman and Taylor were good in their roles I really think Kerr should have won both times.
Grand Hotel (1932)
So Much Goes On at the Grand Hotel
Grand Hotel, always the same. People come, people go, nothing ever happens," observes Dr. Ottenschlag (Lewis Stone). The narrator, who was seriously disfigured in the Great War, tends to frequently imbibe and apparently misses a lot. This is not any hotel, but the best hotel in Berlin in the days of the decadent Weimar Republic, the same general place and time in which "Cabaret" takes place. And at this particular moment the Great Depression hovers over everyone, even those staying at this very modern and deluxe hotel.
There's Baron Felix von Geigen (John Barrymore), impeccably dressed and well mannered but fallen into such hard circumstances that he must resort to becoming a jewel thief to pay off his debts. There's his target, the prima ballerina Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo) who has lost her inspiration and seeming;y only goes through the motions as her career spirals downward in half filled theaters. Bookkeeper Otto Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore) is completely out of place in his run of the mill clothing which has caused the desk staff to assume he wanted the cheapest room in the house. But with a medical prognosis of death in a few weeks or months, he has arrived with all his savings to live it up in a way that would have ruined his health if he had any. General Director Preysing (Wallace Beery) is a wealthy family man whose company is about to go under unless it merges with another which holds as a condition, an agreement with a British manufacturer. Finally there's Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford), a stenographer who in the tough economic circumstances of the day, brings along some artistic photos of herself and a willingness to travel.
It's this ensemble that makes the film, along with its sumptuous sets and a script that involves you and moves things along seemingly briskly in its two hour running time. Each actor gives one of their most memorable performances in this all-star affair. Garbo utters her most famous line in three variations of "I want to be alone" and is perfect as a temperamental, spoiled, impulsive and depressed ballerina. She and John Barrymore, at first wary of each other's big reputations, got along famously and it's all on the screen in their scene in her hotel room. This might have been Lionel Barrymore's most famous role had he not played evil banker Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life". Wallace Beery is the only one (thankfully) who speaks in a German accent, but it fits his stern character. Crawford is able to be warm and sympathetic in a role that could have come off as conniving.
All of this was a big gamble by Irving Thalberg at MGM, but in the end it paid off by becoming the biggest box office picture of 1932 and winning the Best Picture Oscar. All of the principals were big stars, with most of them featured in their own starring vehicles. The conventional wisdom was "Why put more than one or two stars in a picture?" This, the first all-star dramatic picture, showed that the new idea would bring in droves of people who otherwise might not go to many movies. It was an event. (Though there had been all star features that were used to publicize a studio, they were really revues without a plot). Thalberg gave it an extraordinary-for-its-day $700,000 budget and all the top people at MGM. British director Edmund Goulding whose gentlemanly ways could handle the assembled egos, did just that and later went on to direct "Dark Victory". Thalberg assigned the studio's top notch set and costume people including Cedric Gibbons and Adrian.
The characters are fully developed and no one is wholly good or wholly bad, just people in difficult circumstances brought together in this gleaming Art Deco showplace to deal with their troubles. They're all interlinked, even when they don't know it, like Grusinskaya who seems to be in her own world surrounded by her entourage but who is being stalked by the Baron. Within her entourage, character actress Rafaela Ottiano is wonderful as the ballerina's doting and protective maid, Suzette. Most of the actors rejected their roles at first. Garbo thought she was too old (at 26) to play a prima ballerina. John Barrymore was afraid Garbo would be temperamental and difficult. Crawford thought most of her scenes would be cut ( many were, some by the enforcers of The Code and others by various cities depending on their standards of decency). Beery thought he'd be lost amid all these stars but Thalberg told him he would be the only one with a German accent and so would stand out. Everyone came out of the picture with enhanced reputations. This was especially true of Garbo, who after "Anna Christie" had been given some rather mediocre films.
A final note about the acting style, which is far from more naturalistic developments in later years. We're barely out of the 1920s here and "talkies" were only five years old when the picture was made. The style of the time was more like a stage play and more melodramatic at times, so you have to allow for that, but it's a small price for such a great film.
Sense and Sensibility (1995)
One of the Best Austen Adaptations to Film.
"Sense and Sensibility" (1995) is one of the best film adaptations of Jane Austen, well scripted, well directed and well acted. But superficially at least, it had all the makings of a potential disaster. It was the idea of producer Lindsay Doran, who had developed a love for Austen and particularly this novel when she lived in England in the early 1970s. An Austen adaptation had not been filmed since 1940's "Pride and Prejudice" and there was no current vogue for the author. The screenplay was entrusted to an actress who had never written a screenplay. The chosen director had never heard of Jane Austen and his three films had been about Chinese and Chinese-American life and filmed mostly in the Chinese language.
Fortunately the screenwriter was Emma Thompson, who was able to bridge the actor-screenwriter divide and create a script true to Austen's world while making the usual adjustments that translation to the time limit of films demands. It took over four years to write it. She remains the only person ever to win an Academy Award in both writing and acting categories, the acting award being for "Howard's End". Choosing Ang Lee was taking a bigger chance, but Doran and Thompson saw understanding of family life and both warmth and humor in his films and hired him. Austen had a great sense of humor about her society and I think it was important that both the producer and screenwriter had begun in comedy and would not have allowed a stiff, humorless adaptation.
The film has the usual demands that any Austen film makes. There are many characters, often related to each other and these relationships need to be understood to comprehend fully, what's going on. Fortunately here, there are but five primary characters with the rest more peripheral but still affecting the plot in important ways. The two Dashwood sisters, Elinor (Emma Thompson) and Marianne (Kate Winslet), represent sense and sensibility. Though seemingly interchangeable now, the latter term meant a prizing of emotion and feelings over rationality. In this way it was the early stirrings of Romanticism, which would become full blown by the 1820s. Austen was suspicious of sensibility and here illustrates how it often leads to problems. Thompson had to be convinced to play Elinor, who is only nineteen in the novel, but I think the wisdom of her character would have seemed odd coming from an appropriately aged actress and suits Thomson perfectly. This was only Winslet's second film, but her Marianne is just right. Thompson and Winslet play the Dashwoods similarly enough to be sisters and their differences in temperament enough to be unalike, but not so much as to become characures. At a certain moment, Elinore shows Marianne that she feels things as deeply as she, but understands the need for rules of conduct. (The third sister, a child, appears only rarely).
The three male leads each woo the sisters to one degree or another. Hugh Grant had recently broken out internationally in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and further developed his handsome and charming but reticent and occasionally stammering character here as Edward Ferrars. Edward instantly understands the seriousness of the Dashwood's situation and is compassionate. He makes a good impression despite being absent from the screen for long stretches. Alan Rickman had been wanting to break away from the villainous roles in which he had been typecast since "Die Hard" and succeeded in creating a devoted and honorable man in Colonel Brandon. Greg Wise plays John Willoughby, an uncommonly handsome fellow who drives a fast carriage and carries a pocket volume of Shakespeare's Sonnets on him at all times, the very portrait of a Romantic hero. Wise is perfect for the part in both looks and attitude. Most of the supporting characters are done for comic effect, especially Mrs. Jennings (Elizabeth Spriggs) who with her son in law, Sir John Middleton (Robert Hardy) are the gossips and matchmakers of Devonshire. Harriet Walter is absolutely wicked in her snobbishness as Fanny Dashwood but hilarious when she receives a sudden shock. If you're at all inclined, Jane Austen's characters can be looked up online and I'm certain it would help sort them out and make it a more valuable experience, but be careful, some of them delve into the plot too much.
The second problem is in understanding the intricacies of the Regency Period legal system. Austen wasn't writing just comedies of manners but had a serious purpose in describing the effects of the legal system, especially on women. It's virtually the theme of "Sense and Sensibility" where everyone is very subject to it. I can't do justice to it here so here are the briefest points. Inheritance law generally bestowed a large estate on the eldest male heir. Even his younger brothers had to do with minor sums of money and often went into the military or clergy. This was a strong custom but could be overruled (think of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in "Pride and Prejudice") but that was a rare thing. Women could inherit money as Emma Woodhouse had, making her much more independent than the usual Austen heroine. This is what makes Austen so serious. At any given time a chasm could open up under anyone due to the laws of inheritance. Such a situation happens here where the female Dashwoods lose Norland Park, the very epitome of an English Estate and are fortunate to get use of a cottage from a distant relation. Mrs. Dashwood (Gemma Jones) was his second wife and his father had made his will to keep the estate in the male line by allowing Mr. Dashwood the use but not the ownership of the property;. Though this could have allowed him to build a fortune, he died before he could make much of it.. (This is the first scene in the film so I'm not really giving anything away). It could almost be as bad on the men. Both Edward Ferrars and John Willoughby find themselves unable to do as they would really wish due to these laws and customs. Having an "Understanding" is also an important thing here. In this case it means an actual proposal of marriage, not an assumption. A proposal had legal standing and the force of law and breaking it could lead to scandal and a breach of promise lawsuit.
T. The film is shot in cool colors, often soft greens and grays, which help ground it in reality. A temptation would be to make it too pretty with storybook colors - which actually worked in Emma (1996) but that was done purely as a light comedy. Here the cool tones make everything very real looking, emphasizing that the consequences at stake here are serious. The clothing is perfect for the period, even the country dresses at the London ball. This was a time of comfortable garments for women after the exaggerated hairstyles and confining framework of 18th century gowns. The music is by Patrick Doyle, who had scored some of Kenneth Branagh's films and is a good and never overwhelming accompaniment to the film. He wrote his own music entirely for the film, even the songs and dance music, where most film composers would have used actual music of the day, perhaps from "The Apollonian Harmony" or John Playford's "The English Dancing Master". But, likely as a challenge, he wrote convincing period music. This fills the first part of the film, but from Elinor and Marianne's serious discussion onward, the music becomes Romantic-Period influenced film score music.
Overall this film wins on every count and ends just as Austen's did (though it seems a bit tacked on here because there simply wasn't time to add more development). Even if you are not an Austen fan the film is easy enough to understand and dramatically paced enough to make its two hours move quickly.
The Remains of the Day (1993)
Illusions and Lost Opportunities fill The Remains of the Day
Though they had been making moderately successful films since the late seventies, the team of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala broke out into much greater public awareness in 1985 with "A Room With a View". This began their most highly creative and successful period that also included "Howards End." Lesser known films from this time, "Maurice" and "Mr. And Mrs. Bridge" are very much worth seeing and as for "Slaves of New York", well, everyone has an occasional misfire. "A Room With a View" was easy to love with it being a love story largely set in sunny Italy. "Howards End" was a plot-driven piece with numerous characters, intense drama and many sumptuous sets. "The Remains of the Day" was a much more risky proposition, a character-driven film that much of its time can only be described as chilly. Yet it proved to be an audience favorite and another smashing success for its production team.
One reason, of course, was the reteaming of Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in the lead roles after they had wowed audiences in "Howards End". These two together could communicate volumes with facial expressions, tone of voice and even glances, something necessary for a film focused on personalities over plot action and development. Hopkins uses his entire body to express his repressed persona. The story is centered on the Butler and Housekeeper at the great estate of Darlington Hall in England in the 1930s. I capitalized their positions to emphasize that they were not just servants, but served essentially as the Chief Operating Officers of a great estate, the people who oversaw everything. Within the household. These positions were the peak of a career in service. The film almost divides itself in two halves with the first half focusing on Darlington Hall, its running and the politics surrounding it with the second half more about the relationship between Stevens and Miss Kenton.
These two clash a great deal at first, with Miss Keton unafraid to voice her opinion, one which Stevens frequently ignores unless, as in one case, Lord Darlington gives him the same advice. Miss Kenton is warm and friendly, but even when she picks some flowers to brighten Stevens' office, she is rebuffed as he says it would be a distraction. She later teases him that he doesn't hire pretty maids because they would be a distraction as well. This is the relationship around which much of the film revolves. Stevens totally inhabits his role as a butler but to an extent where he cannot get out of it. Even in dramatic situations or when someone offers him a chance to loosen up and act human, he simply can't. He is the perfect butler, remarkably focused, efficient and thorough and has never gone beyond that. It's clear that he is attracted to Miss Kenton and likes her, but her every attempt to break through the ice fails, as once he becomes aware of being drawn out of his role, he immediately retreats into it with politeness and formality.
It's easy to see what he likes in her, but one can wonder what she sees in him. I believe she sees through the facade and admires his steadfastness, his loyalty and dedication, his ability to do a perfect job. She sees that he is a very strong person who lives up to his highest ideals, even if some of them are a bit out of date. She must feel that if she could break through his facade and reach the real person there, he would, with all his capabilities, become a whole person with a life outside his role. But later on she tells him, "They do say that for a great many people the evening's the best part of the day. The part they look most forward to", a comment that seems to baffle him.
The film is told in flashbacks, opening in 1958 as Stevens, having received a letter from Miss Kenton, has decided to go see her, hoping to have her back as Housekeeper, as Darlington Hall has a new owner. The great house was almost slated to be torn down by heirs who found it too expensive to keep up, but was saved by a former American Congressman, Jack Lewis (Christopher Reeve), now retired and intending to live there. He was an important guest in 1935 at a big conference there with English and German aristocrats in attendance with the purpose of keeping Britain and Germany out of war with each other. Some of the English aristocrats are Nazi sympathizers while others, like Lord Darlington believe war could be avoided by allowing Germany to build itself up again. Lewis feels they are out of their depth and are being manipulated by the Germans. It's historically true that there were English fascists and some of the characters are based on historical figures while others play actual persons like Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The actual German intentions are very clear when during a later visit by German ambassador von Ribbentrop, he tells an assistant to list the more important works of art for later reference.
This political world in which all takes place introduces another part of Stevens' character. Throughout the thirties scenes, Stevens is very proud that his post is in a house of great importance, "I like to think great things are decided within these walls". He also works not to overhear the political discussions and to not have an opinion if he does. Of course, that's not his place, he says to Lord Darlington's godson, Reginald Cardinal, played amiably by a young Hugh Grant, who has one of the best comic scenes with Hopkins. Stevens also greatly admires Lord Darlington, a very kind but naive man, assuring critics that he has nothing but the highest goals and intentions. As we see, good intentions do not always make good policy and after the war, Lord Darlington's reputation is ruined, and Stevens realizes that much of his world then was an illusion.
The film has all of the elements that make up the Merchant/Ivory films: detailed and historically accurate sets using several of England's stately homes, excellent cinematography by Tony Pierce-Roberts who did "A Room With a View" and "Howards End" and a complex score by Richard Robbins that seems to capture all the mental and emotional processes lying beneath the surface of things. Though the sets are opulent, it's not in a show-off way and like the rest of the film are a bit understated. That serves the film, a story of illusions and lost opportunities. In a moment that highlights the unbridgeable distance between them, Miss Kenton confesses, "There are times when I think what a terrible mistake I've made with my life". To which Stevens politely replies, ""Yes, I'm sure we all have these thoughts from time to time".
Born to Dance (1936)
Eleanor Powell Dances, James Stewart Sings
Big musicals were quite the thing in the (Tosthirties. Universal had Deanna Durbin, Warner Brothers had Busby Berkeley, RKO had Fred Astarie and Ginger Rogers, and MGM had MacDonald/Eddy, Garland/Rooney and the Broadway Melody series which featured Eleanor Powell. "Born to Dance" is basically a sequel to "Broadway Melody of 1936" which had made a star of Powell. Not only was she in this film, but other carry-overs included Una Merkel, Sid (not Phil) Silvers, Frances Langford and Buddy Ebsen. Jimmy Stewart was a young (27) newcomer, who was in eight films in 1936 including one MacDonald/Eddy and one Thin Man film. This, however, was his only singing role.
As musicals go, this is in the revue tradition, with the lightest of plots tying together a collection of song and dance numbers, comic bits and of course, a big, show-stopping finale. The plot here, mixing sailors and Broadway shows only occasionally flirts with reality. The score, written for the film, is entirely by Cole Porter and includes two of his best-known standards, "Easy To Love", and "I've Got You Under My Skin". Though fun, most of the other numbers are in service of the film and were not written to become popular without it. Composers rarely threw a whole group of top songs into a musical, though Porter himself did late in his career with "Kiss Me Kate".
The songs do all serve their purpose. The opening number, "Rolling Along", introduces all the sailors with a male chorus singing something similar to a college fight song (Porter had famously written Yale's). Powell is introduced quickly after this with an orchestra playing "Easy to Love" as she walks down the street, establishing it as the film's love theme. It will be repeated in a big number in Central Park sung by Stewart and Powell. Powell is dubbed by Marjorie Lane, but Stewart is not. His voice is a bit like Fred Astaire's: a light tenor with an almost wispy feeling at times, singing in a way that is somewhere between talking and really belting out a song.
"Rap, Tap on Wood" is a show-biz style number that gives Eleanor a chance to dance in a lobby where four sailors pop up and not only sing, but also play a flute and three ocarinas. "Hey Babe Hey" with a carousel-like melody, gives all three couples a chance to sing in the same number. This film has not just the usual second couple (Merkel and Silvers), which traditionally is comedic but even a third couple. People here fall in love immediately and for no apparent reason, hence Frances Langford and Buddy Ebsen are a couple. Ebsen was an accomplished tap dancer, but here does some swaying moves like he's made of rubber, creating an odd visual effect..
"I've Got You Under My Skin" goes to Virginia Bruce, who plays a Broadway diva whose penthouse is done up in an all-white mix of Deco and Rococo with a gigantic mirror and a terrace with its own fountain. It's on the terrace that she sings it to Stewart, hoping to win him away from Powell. It's a great setting for a great song. The gigantic finale takes place on a stage version of a battleship with everyone done up in white tails and sequins and the music of "Swingin' the Jinx Away" a razzmatazz, Irving Berlin-style number with jivey sections that mention Cab Calloway as their inspiration. This gives everyone a chance to do their specialty and ends things fittingly with only the shortest of scenes afterward to tie up the ends of the plot.
Within all this director Roy Del Ruth places three extended bits by character actors, all of which are memorable. Barnett Parker was a stuffy butler with few lines in many films, but here he does a funny turn as a model home salesman-interior designer in a pompous British manner. Another Brit, Reginald Gardiner, comes on as a cop in what would usually be a ten second walk-on to interrupt the main characters (think "Singing In the Rain") but instead ends up doing a hilarious impersonation of Leopold Stokowski ("Fantasia") conducting. This bit, his first in films, made him a regular character actor in Hollywood. He's now probably best known for "Christmas In Connecticut". Ruth Troy, popular radio comedian, does a shorter but funny bit as a secretary on the phone with a friend.
Overall the film is pleasant if awfully light. The lightness actually helps as there's no need to develop any plot complexities and doesn't overdo it with too many gargantuan numbers. Some of the lines of banter in the script are genuinely funny. Mostly it's Eleanor Powell just bursting into stardom as one of the screen's best dancers ever. She also has a winning way with her character. She's warm and friendly and much like a girl next door, but also can project sophistication and social grace. Una Merkel is her usual loveable, down to earth character as the lead's friend. Stewart was himself just breaking out and had even been given some villainous roles up to this point, but here amid all the foolishness seems genuinely in love with Powell. A good, if not great musical with two great Cole Porter classics.
Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)
The Two Great Tap Dancers of the Thirties Together At Last
It needed to happen. Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell were the two top tap dancers in the country. They simply had to dance together in the same film. MGM had revived their "Broadway Melody" title from the original 1929 musical as Powell's personal vehicle in 1936 and 1938 and she had become an instant star. The first film was so big that it erased the possible bankruptcy that the studio had been facing. Astaire had just completed his RKO contract and was looking for something new. Fortunately MGM jumped on the opportunity to team the two, something that otherwise may have never happened. The dance greats were originally intimidated by each other and were very deferential at first to the point where it was becoming unbearable. Powell finally said, "Look, we can't go on like this. You're Fred, I'm Ellie. We're just two hoofers". The ice was broken.
MGM had always given an opulent budget to the "Broadway Melody" films and this was no exception. Cole Porter wrote most of the songs specifically for the film (with "All Ashore" by Roger Eden and "Jukebox Dance" by Walter Ruick the exceptions). He gave it two of his best, "I Concentrate On You" and "Begin the Beguine", a rare foray for him into a song with a tropical rhythm that became one of his most popular standards. MGM was known for giving Powell large and spectacular sets in which to dance, but this time they outdid themselves with the famous and absolutely gigantic, gleaming black set with its mirrored stars and floor. The set, costing $150,000, extended upward sixty feet and an orchestra behind the chorus is so far back that you can hardly see them. It's the most perfectly glamorous set for this extraordinary dance number, one of the most famous in film.
The film was planned to be shot in Technicolor, but I'm glad they didn't as this is one of the great black and white sets of all time. They also wisely chose to keep the focus on Astaire and Powell and did not overwhelm them with too many extras. The eight minute number includes singers and a dance chorus, but most of the time is spent with just the two in remarkably precise parallel tap dancing in two sections, a costumed flamenco-inspired dance followed by a change of clothing into a white tux and a flowing white dress that peaks with them dancing to no music at all, and you don't even miss it.
Oh, there is a plot. Of course it's a fairly light one, this time based on a case of mistaken identity, a plot device used before in some of the Astaire/Rogers films at RKO. In this case it's Fred's Johnny Brett and George Murphy's King Shaw whose identities are confused, leading to the usual situations. Murphy keeps up with Astaire in their opening number, "Please Don't Monkey With Broadway" and he's great with Powell in "Between You and Me", a big Hollywood waltz danced on a white set with a broad staircase. Powell's dancing here is elegant and graceful but beneath that is a considerable amount of athleticism to perform it, which you hardly notice. Murphy had been Powell's dance partner in "Broadway Melody of 1938", though other series regulars like Buddy Ebsen and Robert Taylor were not carried over. Taylor had performed the role of Powell's love interest as Murphy was not seen as romantic material. Here, Fred is the love interest, though that's played so lightly that a true romance hardly seems to exist, omitting the romantic tension that often existed in an Astaire/Rogers film. For most of the film they seem to be just good friends and the dance numbers are never romantically about them beyond a shared giggle after the "Jukebox Dance".
Assisting them are Frank Morgan as his usual befuddled self, this time as producer Bob Casey. There's a funny running joke involving dates with young gold diggers and an ermine cape. His partner Bert Matthews (Ian Hunter) is the man who really runs the business and has a yen for Powell's Claire Bennett. He's fine in such a thankless role. Florence Rice is underused as usual as Casey's secretary, Amy (she was excellent in a similar but larger role in MacDonald/Eddy's "Sweethearts"). Still, the film is let down by a rather dull script that lacks the wit and zingy one-liners that made Astaire's RKO films sparkle. There's also the issue of some really odd specialty numbers that seem to show that Vaudeville still had some influence. This is true of a number of thirties and forties musicals, not just this one. Everything's going along just fine and suddenly here's a woman (Trixie Firschke) balancing a ball on her head and juggling plates. There's also a comic soprano (Carmen D'Antonio) whose main talent seems to be making faces, as her singing is dubbed by the same soprano who sings "Begin the Beguine" (Lois Hodnott). The ultimate and untoppable example of this type of act was the three contortionist Ross Sisters who appeared in 1944's "Broadway Rhythm", a film that coincidentally starred George Murphy.
But every time Astaire and Powell are on, together or solo, it's five stars. They dance in a cute, friendly way at a restaurant with an outdoor terrace (" Juke Box Dance"). MGM regular Herman Bing makes an appearance as a silhouettist here. And once they're at the premiere of the new Broadway show they really cut loose. "I Concentrate On You" is done in masks and a set that suggests Venice with Parker in a black tutu and Astaire in a Harlequin-sleeved suit with a short jacket. Here they do balletic leaps in perfect time with each other. It's also lucky that the theater had a duplicate set of all the costumes in Fred's size, smaller and more slender than Murphy, who he is standing in for. Couldn't they have written him as Murphy's understudy to account for this? It's not important but still it's very noticeable. When "Begin the Beguine" finally arrives it's a symphony of black and white on the most dazzling of reflective floors. It makes up for any of the film's earlier lapses. I actually wish it had been even longer.
Song of Scheherazade (1947)
Forties Technicolor, Rimsky-Korsakov's Music and Eve Arden Provide Lots of Fun
This film was one of my favorites when I was in junior high school in the early 60s and a local TV station played it somewhat regularly on their four-o-clock movie, perfect for after school viewing. After that it seemed to vanish forever and I had even forgotten its title until by chance it turned up on Turner classics one day. It's a really fun film, very colorful and full of the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, who is its main subject in what is not a biopic so much as a fantasy about the composer's days as a Russian naval cadet who falls in love in Cadiz, Spain. I've been a fan of the composer even back in those afternoon TV days. I've read his fascinating autobiography "My Life In Music" and have written reviews of many CDs of his works. Don't worry, I'm not going to go on for paragraphs about his life and music. I just want to make two things clear. Rimsky-Korsakov actually was in the Russian navy and as a cadet, did make an almost three year voyage (from late 1862 to May, 1865) on the clipper ship, Almaz and did visit New York and Rio as is mentioned in the film. The ship never docked in Spain and everything else in the film is made up. Secondly, all of the music in the film, even short background music as when the cadets report on deck, is by the composer, that being the March from Tsar Tsaltan.
The audience of the 1940s would have been familiar with most of this music. People in general were much more aware of classical music, at least its big, tuneful hits, than they are today. The most featured music here is from his symphonic suite, "Scheherazade". Its third movement, subtitled "The Young Prince and the Young Princess" was a very popular romantic orchestral number, second only to the finale of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto. Everyone knew "The Flight of the Bumblebee", though few would have known that it came from an opera. Another opera excerpt. "Song of India" had been a huge hit for Tommy Dorsey in a jazz arrangement. The big dance at the party is set to "Capriccio Espagnol", another piece the audience would have known.
It's interesting that this film can be appreciated straight on as a romantic film as many people do, but also can be viewed as a camp classic. After all, it's a post-war 40s over-the-top Technicolor musical and dance fest with colorful costumes and an elaborate Kismet-like finale. It also includes an operatic singing doctor, a villainous prince with a bullwhip and Yvonne De Carlo dancing in exotic costumes. IHere she's seen early in her career when Universal was mainly using her for her looks and featuring her in roles that allowed for exotic costuming. Her next film was "Slave Girl", so you see what she was up against. She managed to escape into film noir and British comedies and, of course, "The Munsters" (1964-1966). In 1971 on Broadway, she introduced "I'm Still Here" in Stephen Sondheim's "Follies". Then there's Eve Arden, who is the real highlight of the film as De Carlo's mother. This was something she wasn't thrilled about, being only fourteen years older. But she has a great time dropping droll and witty comments in her deadpan way as she had been doing since her first film, "Stage Door:(1937). Here she is the life of the party, chewing through scenery left and right and providing the energy that keeps the film going.
The critics hated the film, considering it kitsch totally beneath their consideration, but the public loved it and made it a big box office hit grossing 2.1 million, which would make it the 13th biggest film of 1947. The critics were too hard on such an unpretentious film that wants nothing more than to be entertaining. It had an odd origin back in World War II when the U. S. and U. S. S. R. found themselves unlikely allies against Hitler and American movie studios were shopping around for upbeat Russian material. A pair of producers bought the rights to Rimsky-Korsakov's music from the Soviet government and had screenwriter Walter Reisch write a screenplay. Reisch had been a highly regarded screenwriter in Vienna and at Berlin's UFA, where he often worked with Billy Wilder. Both fled to America when Hitler took power and occasionally continued to work together. Reisch wrote "Ninotchka" and "Gaslight" among many other films. The plan had been for MGM to film it but they lost interest and the would-be producers let the music rights and screenplay go to Reisch. He took it to Universal, who even let him direct it (the only American film he would ever direct).
"Song of Scheherazade" has an outstanding cast who also give it more life and character than one would usually expect. Jean-Pierre Aumont plays the composer with great charm. He never became a big star in Hollywood, but appeared in many films in both America and France including "Lili"(1953)., "Gigi" (1958), "Day For Night" (Truffaut/France) and Merchant/Ivory's "Jefferson In Paris" (1995). DeCarlo was not known as a dancer but had danced in nightclubs since 1940 and was coached by noted dancer Tilly Lesch and was able to handle the balletic finale. Brian Donlevy does a light version of his usual tough guy roles. Lyric tenor Charles Kullman was borrowed from the Metropolitan Opera and is surprisingly fun in his role as the ship's doctor. Child actor Terry Kilburn, now twenty, is Midshipman Loren, whose humorous escapades also enliven the film. Go into this film with expectations of fun and you'll have a good time.
The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)
One Last Dance With Fred and Ginger.
"The Barkleys of Broadway" was intended to be a quick follow up to Fred Astaire and Judy Garland's big hit, "Easter Parade". Arthur Freed planned to use mostly the same people. Charles Walters, who had worked with Judy as far back as "Presenting Lily Mars" and "Girl Crazy" and had directed "Easter Parade" would carry on with the new film. Sidney Sheldon would assist Comden and Green with the screenplay. The cinematographer would be Harry Stradling. Then it became apparent that Judy, often a no show at rehearsals, would not be able to do it due to her health problems. Freed had a brilliant idea: why not reunite Astaire with Ginger Rogers? This made it much more than just another musical. By the postwar 40s, people could look back and see that the Astaire/Rogers partnership was truly one of the wonders of the thirties and bringing them back for a new film would be a chance to see these legends together again, and this time in color. Besides, the pair's last RKO film had been "The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle", a strictly historical biography in which Fred and Ginger didn't play their usual characters and danced only in historic styles. It came off a little like an Astaire/Rogers film without Astaire or Rogers. Clearly this would be a one time opportunity to say farewell to them properly.
It's a really good film and the dancing is terrific, especially the romantic dance finale set to "They Can't Take That Away From Me", a beautiful last dance for one of the movies' greatest couples. The film was made by MGM, so the budget was large, and it was produced by the famous Freed unit, who brought the film musical to a high point at this time. Fred and Ginger play the Barkleys, a famous musical comedy duo on Broadway. They frequently bicker and argue, something some fans object to compared to the usual romantic plot. It's very clear though, that this bickering is more of a surface disturbance compared to the deep love they share, though when Astaire looks angry he seems to flash lightning bolts almost too threateningly. As Dinah Barkley, Ginger feels a need to prove she is a fine dramatic actress and not just a partner for her husband Josh, a situation that mirrored her feelings early in their partnership.. In 1933 she had a comedy role in "42nd Street", a singing spot in "Gold Diggers of 1933" and then "Flying Down to Rio" which paired her with Fred for nearly a decade. These feelings of being a mere accessory ended after she made the dramatic film, "Kitty Foyle" in 1940 and won an Oscar for her performance.
She is talked into doing a dramatic turn as the lead in a play about the young Sarah Bernhardt by French playwright Jacques Barredout, ably played by Jacques Francois in his only American film. The Barkleys' work with playwright Ezra Miller, a sardonic fellow with numerous female acquaintances (who seem to get along surprisingly well together). Ezra's role replaces that of the secondary couple but here he has to do the whole thing himself. To fill the role is the larger than life Oscar Levant, a noted classical concert pianist, composer, acerbic wit and author. Levant appeared in a number of films, notably "The Band Wagon" and "Rhapsody in Blue" where as a noted friend of George Gershwin, he played himself. He's a bit let down by the script, which is not as witty as he was naturally. But he does get a chance to show off his pianism with a fast "Sabre Dance" and an abridged first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Tchaikovsky.
Billie Burke is her usual balmy self as society woman Mrs. Livingston Belney, but isn't on screen nearly enough to make much of the role. Redhead Gale Robbins has a comic role as an actress from the South who Ginger detests after she becomes her understudy. She was well known then from Broadway, radio and a few film appearances. She got to sing a number in Astaire's "Three Little Words" a year later. Also note Hans Conreid as the artist who paints a portrait of the Barkleys. He was more of a stage and radio personality at this time but would become well known for his many television appearances.
MGM wisely set it in the current day and did not try to emulate the thirties. The film was shot in widescreen format and in beautiful color (the war against television was beginning). The first surprise is Ginger's red hair, which seems to go through several shades in this film, though that may be the lighting. Though Ginger was a natural redhead she usually was a blonde in her films, so we're actually seeing her closer to her natural look. She looks really great throughout in many elaborate forties outfits. Fred was nearly fifty by now and his appearance has aged but you wouldn't guess it from his dancing which is as perfect as ever. He has a big solo dance as usual and in this case it's "Shoes With Wings On", one of his best-known numbers with special effects that were amazing for their day and which still look impressive now.
The film begins with a real blunder. Fred and Ginger are dancing the "Swing Trot" but they are behind the large opening credits. You can hardly see them. This is what the audience came for, and it's obscured by the production credits. Was this supposed to tantalize us? The error was finally made up for in "That's Entertainment III" where it was shown without the text. There's a funny Scottish number with both Fred and Ginger affecting an exaggerated brogue. "Manhattan Downbeat" is the biggest number with a medium sized chorus and a moving beltway on the stage. It's nice though not truly memorable.
The music is the weakest part of the film. Though there were forgettable tunes in every one of their films (think "The Yam"), for the most part the Astaire/Rogers films were known for their fine music by the likes of Kern, Berlin, Porter and Gershwin. Many of the greatest songs of the American Songbook were debuted in their films, songs like "Cheek to Cheek", "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Let's Face the Music and Dance". Every show has its serviceable songs, songs that are fine when watching the show but which are never heard outside of it, and not intended to become hits. But that's what all the songs are here. Composer Harry Warren wrote "I Only Have Eyes for You" but otherwise his songs tended to be cute tunes like "Jeepers Creepers", "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby". Even with Ira Gershwin writing the lyrics the inspiration just isn't there to create a new standard.
The movie needed a notable song. You couldn't bring Astaire and Rogers back and not have a major song in the picture. Knowing what they had wasn't on that level, they did the next best thing. Fred had sung Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away From Me" to Ginger on the ferry from New Jersey to Manhattan in "Shall We Dance", but they never got to dance to it. The finale, where it would have been the romantic number, was instead a rather bizarre ballet. Here they finally get to do that dance. Alone on stage, just them, before a subdued purple curtain with Ginger all in white like she was in the "Swing Time" finale, they sum up everything they could do in a ballroom dance in perfect step. It's a beautiful dance that makes up for every minor shortcoming of the film and gives them the farewell they deserved.
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939)
Fred and Ginger's Farewell to RKO
Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger's final film at RKO, "The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle" is so atypical of their other films that it is usually seen as a curiosity or to complete a personal goal of seeing all ten. By no means should it be the first as it's a historical biopic where the characters and dances are based on historic originals. It is, of course, a good picture on its own merits. I was originally disappointed when I first saw this film years ago, that Fred and Ginger were unable to be the characters they had developed over the years and could not dance in their usual way. This was only because it was their last film of their legendary run at RKO and I would have preferred that it be more typical. Had it been made somewhere in the middle there would have been no issue at all. Seeing it several times since then I find that they aren't too far from their usual personas and their joy and perfection when dancing even in historic styles is as wonderful as ever. In fact, it's really interesting to see them dance differently. Ginger's comic solo "Clown Dance" is remarkably athletic with its high kicks., deep bends and cartwheels. The usual romantic dance is made up for by an exquisite dance at the Cafe de Paris with Fred in a military uniform and Ginger in a flowing dress.
After six spectacular successes beginning with 1933's "Flying Down to Rio ", the duo's films began to stumble after "Swing Time". I don't believe, as some do, that the public was tired of them, though that may be a partial factor. The times were changing, and sophisticated dance orchestras were giving way to brassy BIg Bands. "Shall We Dance" made only half the usual profit, but it had replaced the traditional exquisite romantic dance with a muddled and overcrowded finale in which the two danced together for less than two minutes. "Carefree " tried them as a screwball comedy team, but Astaire was no Cary Grant in this respect, and the psychiatric theme and dream sequence seemed kooky to many fans. Among their films, it alone actually lost money. Thus RKO decided to try them in a period picture to give the public something different.
The natural subject was the great dance team before Fred and Ginger, Vernon and Irene Castle, who were an absolute sensation in the 1911-1918 era that saw the peak of Ragtime and the beginning of the Jazz Age. The Castles helped popularize both styles and also styles of and dress. As a happily married and respectable couple, they popularized close dancing with the Two-step, Turkey Trot, Tango and most notably the Fox Trot, which was still being danced in the 1950s. They appeared in silent films and wrote a wildly popular dance instruction book, "Modern Dancing". Irene became a fashion icon in Vogue and introduced more flowing dresses and in 1913, "The Bob", a short, almost boyish hairstyle that caught on until it became all the rage of the Twenties. Goodbye to stiff brocades, tight corsets and long hair worn with large and elaborate hats. They had their own dancing school and nightclub and, as shown in a clever montage, gave their names to everything from Cigars to cosmetics and clothes. They were also early "Moderns" with both in favor of women's suffrage.
RKO went all out for the picture giving it a lavish production which shows in every scene which is fully mounted with elaborate sets, full of extras. This puts it in a different world than the usual Astaire/Rogers pictures, which operates more like a fantasy world. Here the world portrayed is the one we normally inhabit. The plot is more important as well. Usually the plot is some delightfully silly thing to fill in time between dances. Here it is the story of ballroom dancing's first superstar couple and it requires sincere acting which both Astaire and Rogers deliver. They had already agreed that this would be their last film and Rogers was looking forward to an acting career which would start with a bang the following year with "Kitty Foyle", her Academy Award winning role.
RKO gave the film not to Mark Sandrich, the usual director of the Astaire/Rogers films, but to H. C. Potter, who had been a successful director on Broadway who had only begun directing films in 1936. He did a good job managing the often crowded scenes and keeping everything moving along briskly (almost too briskly - the film seemed a bit short to me, as I didn't feel I knew the Castles that well). All the dancing was in the actual style of the Castles so there's no jumping out of the era to dance in a more current style. (This was popular in biopics of the 40s and 50s where period and dancing rarely match). The script is more faithful than usual to the actual events of the Castles' lives and careers with some leeway given for a cute meeting and a rougher time in Paris than they actually had. As a movie not a book, it requires a certain amount of drama. The central cast is Astaire and Rogers assisted by Edna May Oliver and Walter Brennan. Oliver plays the Castles' agent-manager, Maggie Sutton in her usual authoritative and commanding way, but here she gets to play nice, a change from Miss Prost or Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Her character is based on actual manager Elisabeth Marbury, an important literary and theatrical agent who opened the way for women in this area and whose clients included Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. The film simplifies her as simply a strong and determined woman, notably changing the character name so as not to portray an actual person.
Walter Brennan is the Castles' friend and manservant, Walter. This early in his career he was less identified with Westerns but still is Walter Brennan, a bit countryish and cantankerous in a comic role. He doesn't lay it on too thick here as he did in later days. In a neat bit of casting, Lew Fields, famous comic and theater producer plays his younger self. He had been one of the biggest names in vaudeville teamed with Joe Weber. Age 72 when the film was made, he gave Vernon Castle his first break, a small role on stage which Castle built into an act. Irene Castle herself was brought onboard as a consultant for the film and she rivals the situation Disney had with P. L. Travers consulting on "Mary Poppins". She made the naive assumption that the film, based on her book, was about her, a natural mistake. This was Hollywood. The film was a vehicle for Fred and Ginger, not a documentary. Once Hollywood gets ahold of a property, it can turn it into anything. In this case RKO was very accurate in most respects, but she wanted every detail to be accurate. She approved of Astaire but not of Rogers.
Ginger, an actress, knew what she needed, which most of all was to be recognizable. She refused to dye her hair brunette like Castle's or to truly bob it (they restyled her hair to a mass of curls in back, not really a bob). Irene hated the costumes worn in the non-dance segments, which Ginger had insisted be updated to look more Thirties, while the dance costumes were recreations of costumes actually worn by Irene. She also objected to Ginger not wearing a hat in one scene where she had actually worn one and seriously wanted it reshot. She took a larger paycheck in compensation but disowned the film. The film was very popular in the end, but the production costs, which included scenes with biplanes, ate up much of what would have been profits in the usual Astaire/Rogers film. Despite that it did make a profit. A historical picture made an odd swan song for cinema's great dance partnership, but it wasn't the very end. They would make a final film together for MGM in 1949.
Carefree (1938)
Light Fun With Fred and Ginger
"Carefree" is the penultimate Astaire/Rogers film at RKO and the last in which they appear as the characters they had developed in their films together, as the next film would be based on historical figures, Vernon and Irene Castle. It's one of their shortest films and also one of their slightest, with only four musical sequences. Written by the team who wrote "Bringing Up Baby" for MGM, It has a plot based on a silly, screwball comedy-like notion, though it lacks the intensity and rapid-fire dialogue of those films as well as their wit. It's funny, but in a different way. It had been sixteen months since "Shall We Dance" and I can only imagine that the film was somewhat shortchanged because "The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle was already in preparation.
Amanda Cooper (Ginger) is supposed to marry Stephen Arden (Ralph Bellamy) but doesn't seem to love him. Bellamy gets her to see his psychiatrist friend, Dr. Tony Flagg (Astaire), who is supposed to help her realize she loves Stephen. We already know she won't marry Bellamy as his role is always as the guy the female lead shouldn't marry, but just to be sure, the film introduces him almost blindly drunk and in the middle of a bender over being rejected again by her.. This appears to be something everyone is used to, but it's not followed up, as for the rest of the film he's always sober. In an almost surreal scene, Fred humorously plays "Jingle Bells" on the harmonica while his assistant, Cooper (Jack Carson) walks Arden in circles to sober him up. Fred, who actually played piano and drums was actually playing the harmonica here and in the golf scene.
There's a good comic supporting cast with Broadway's Luella Gear in her first film as Amanda's Aunt Cora in a Helen Broderick type role as a plain looking woman with a droll sense of humor. She's funny every time she's on. She has great fun putting down mutual friend Judge Travers, sternly played by Clarence Kolb, whose face and voice will be familiar to fans of classic films and television. She and Carson get a very funny scene together after she eats a bizarre combination of food to encourage dreaming. Franklin Pangborn even has a nice bit as a skeet shooting judge at the Medwick Country Club, where much of the film takes place. The country club is a great set, a Colonial style half-flagstone building with stone walls and terrace and white woodwork. It's far from the Art Deco sets of the earlier films with their polished floors and gives the film a more casual air. In fact, for the first time, Fred never dons top hat, white tie, and tails and appears nattily dressed in more casual clothes, reflecting his actual tastes, Fred and Ginger get along quite well after a brief misunderstanding and the plot eventually revolves around Fred trying to undo the suggestion he gave her under hypnosis that she doesn't love him and in fact, hates him. Also, as a psychiatrist, there is no explanation why he can dance so well, something always covered by his usual role as a professional dancer in the earlier films.
The music is by Irving Berlin, but it is a bit of a let down after "Top Hat" and "Follow the Fleet". Fred's famous dance while driving golf balls is set to music with a hint of Scotland, memorable for Fred's golf skill more than the music itself. As usual, Fred came up with the unique idea. "The Yam" was such an inane song that Fred refused to sing it, letting Ginger do it solo. It was saved by making it a big number with everyone at the country club dance joining in. "I Used To Be Colorblind" is rendered somewhat underwhelming, being shot in black and white instead of the color sequence they had planned. It renders lyrics like "I never knew there were such lovely colors" rather pointless. Would it have been that expensive? The dance, of course, is excellent and ends with them frozen at a 45 degree angle. The romantic dance is set to "Change Partners" the only song to gain popularity, and this dance with its Svengali overtones is the highlight of the film. "Change Partners" is a good song but it's still no "Cheek To Cheek".
This film actually has drawn some criticism from people who seem overly serious about an Astaire and Rogers film. Some say the film misrepresents psychoanalysis and the profession in general. I'm certain it does! No real psychiatrist would act like Tony Flagg, falling in love with patients and acting like a stage hypnotist. No one seeing this film would think it was accurate about psychology. At the time it was made, people knew hardly anything about psychology because the Depression was still on and no one but the wealthy could afford it. Then there is another problem. At a critical moment, Ginger has to be accidentally knocked unconscious so Fred can reverse the hypnotic suggestion almost like breaking a spell in a fairy tale. This is not a representation of domestic violence as some claim but an old plot device. Could I say, "Lighten up?" A comedy this fluffy doesn't merit being taken that seriously. In some ways it may be a little too light and silly and the music too unmemorable for a series of films that included some of the greatest classics of the Great American Songbook. That's about the harshest criticism you can give it. But though it's not "Swing Time", it's still a delightful Astaire/Rogers film worth seeing.
Shall We Dance (1937)
Fun despite its overblown finale
"Shall We Dance" is a bit of an outlier among the Astaire-Rogers RKO films. It only did half the business of "Swing Time", and though it grossed over two million worldwide, by their standards that was not a big hit. The film, which is generally quite good, was. I believe, a letdown for the audience in its final act. Still, it has some great tunes by Gershwin including the Academy Award winning, "They Can't Take That Away From Me". It also was experimental in trying to mix ballet and popular dance.
Neither Astaire nor Gershwin liked the idea of mixing the two disparate worlds of dance, but went along with it in the end. Director Mark Sandrich had directed some of their most successful films ("The Gay Divorcee ", "Top Hat", "Follow the Fleet ") and knew the style and tone so well that in all other ways it's a normal Astaire-Rogers film. It was their producer, Pandro S. Berman's idea to mix jazz and ballet. Hollywood, then considered mere popular entertainment, would occasionally attempt something that might raise the bar of critical opinion, though Hollywood ideas of art were often middlebrow and often consisted of fancier sets or more violins. The year before, Rodgers and Hart had done that very thing successfully on Broadway with "On Your Toes ", whose jazz ballet, "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue", heavily influenced by Gershwin, had been rapturously received by the New York audience and critics. Berman would have known this. It may have seemed like a new era was dawning on Broadway, but "On Your Toes" was a one-shot hit by Rodgers, who went back to more standard Broadway fare, though he kept the idea of a big modern dance number in "Oklahoma!". Ironically. "On Your Toes" had been written not for Broadway but for the next Astaire-Rogers film, which Fred turned down as being too outside his usual image and too artsy for his audience. Astaire and Gershwin were old friends from their New York days when together they had big successes with "Lady, Be Good" and "Funny Face" in the 1920s and Fred was happy to work again with him.
Most of the film is a delight. Of course the plot is silly and Fred finds love at first sight for Ginger (as he always does), only this time he's only seen pictures of her. In a clever segue, a flipbook of Ginger dancing with a partner becomes the real thing. He is "Petrov," the great Russian ballet dancer in Paris, though actually he's Peter P. Peters, an American. Ginger, as usual, spurns his advances, and though we know how it all will end, we're just here to see them dance anyway. She's Linda Keene, a popular American tap dancer, also in Paris. Fred is being pursued by a former member of his dance troupe who left to marry an English Lord ( Ketty Gallien as Lady Tarrington). To throw her off, Fred and the owner of the ballet troupe, Jeffrey Baird (Edward Everett Horton) claim he is secretly married to another dancer, who everyone takes to be Ginger.
Most of the film takes place aboard the British ocean liner, Queen Anne, and then in New York once it lands there. This is a perfect milieu for Fred and Ginger who have the biggest staterooms imaginable and get to wear the fashionable clothes one would find among first class on the Normandie or the new Queen Mary. There are plenty of opportunities here for humor and the continued spread of the rumor of their marriage. (Though exactly why is Ginger knitting baby clothes?). It's in this film that Jerome Cowan shows why he became such a well known and dependable character actor. He works really well in comic bits with Horton. Later he creates an early version of a deep fake which causes Ginger great consternation. Add Astaire regular Eric Blore as a proper hotel floor manager and you have a cast that really knows how to handle this kind of light fare and make the film so enjoyable.
The dance numbers before the finale are as excellent as one would expect. Fred's big solo tap number takes place in the ship's engine room where he dances to the rhythm of the pistons accompanied by an impromptu group of black workers singing and playing instruments in "Stop That Bass ". In an "impromptu" dance number (in their films most of Astaire and Rogers dances are presented as if made up on the spot), Fred and Ginger entertain at a party in a rooftop nightclub with "They All Laughed". 'Beginner's Luck " is heard twice aboard the ship, at first as a comic tap number by Fred and later as a love song to Ginger with a romantic moonlit ocean behind them. The most popular song, "They Can't Take That Away from Me" is sung by Fred to Ginger on a ferry to Manhattan on a foggy night and is absolutely lovely. It's a beautiful example of the mystery of Fred Astaire's singing. By all 1930s standards Astaire hardly had a voice at all. This was an era of either powerful operatic singers or mellifluous radio crooners and Astaire's light tenor was neither. Yet his versions of his great movie songs are so effective, so perfect, that despite many other versions, you always want to go back to him. He could convey through his voice a feeling of absolute conviction and sincerity that few could match.
There is always a comedy number and a romantic number in these films and the comedy number here is the great "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" and it leads into their famous duet on roller skates, a feat that must have required much rehearsal time, since Astaire always insisted that the dances be filmed whole and complete and not snippets edited together. This should be followed by their romantic dance, the high point of most of their films. Not always at the end, it's where everything comes together and the two, dancing in perfect harmony, see they are meant for each other. This dance is usually danced apart from everyone else, just them in some extraordinary Art Deco set being absolutely exquisite together.
That's what the audience came to see but it's not what they got. Copying "On Your Toes", everything leads to the big jazz-ballet at the end and Ginger is barely in it. Instead the film opts for a clever, sometimes humorous number with loads of ballerinas in tutus and chorus girls wearing masks of Ginger's face. It might have been fun near the beginning but is both too much and too little here, going on too long and with too little of the real Ginger. Gershwin's introductory music is Stravinskian with a nod to Khachaturian and goes back and forth afterward between the swing of"Shall We Dance" and softer connecting segments. Only when "You Can't Take That Away From Me" comes in is the music truly memorable. It would have made a perfect romantic dance number for Fred and Ginger, but he dances it briefly with Harriet Hoctor and that's it.. Fortunately they made up for this oversight in 1949's "The Barkleys of Broadway".
Fred dances in a somewhat balletic style and does a pas de deux with Broadway dancer Harriet Hoctor. Hoctor had danced a ballet version of "An American in Paris" in 1929 and had appeared in numerous shows including the Ziegfeld Follies where George Balanchine created "Night Flight" for her. She was going to be the lead in the film when Ginger at first didn't want to do it, and this was a consolation. Without intending any reflection on her, she's simply not Ginger. Her specialty was performing a deep backbend en pointe which looks elegant when filmed from the side, but positively weird when shot straight on. Later Ginger joins in and she and Fred take a few turns to "Shall We Dance", but it's a weak gesture compared to what they could do. The whole number, to me, is a bit of a mess. This is likely why the fans gave it bad word of mouth.. It's for everyone to decide for themselves. For me, the finale may be off, but the movie is still a winner.
Follow the Fleet (1936)
Fred and Ginger face the music and dance in "Follow the Fleet".
"Follow the Fleet", the fifth teaming of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers has a reputation for being overly long and a bit dull and that's true, but Fred and Ginger triumph over the film's shortcomings and perform some of their best dance numbers yet. Being released between "Top Hat" and "Swing Time", the pinnacles of the Astaire-Rogers films doesn't help either. RKO seems to have often underestimated Fred and Ginger, placing them in supporting or co-starring roles to other actors, despite the success of "The Gay Divorcee " and "Top Hat", which they carried themselves. This goes back to their debut in "Flying Down to Rio" and may represent institutional laziness and not wanting to deviate too much from what worked before.
At least here they are the central couple of the film as Bake Baker and Sherry Martin but are stuck with an involved subplot of a troubled romance between Randolph Scott and Harriet Hilliard (as Connie Martin, Sherry's sister). Scott is much better in a more comic role as Fred's sailor pal than he was as the inheritor of a high fashion house in "Roberta". Hilliard may have been a good singer in her husband Ozzie's band, but her two songs here aren't very memorable. She's also not well served by a script that makes her look delusional and grasping. She meets a sailor (Scott as Bilge Smith) at a dance hall and they go to her place for coffee and talk a while and suddenly she's assuming matrimony and hurt when he doesn't seem to go along with her plans. This subplot is rather heavy and serious for the film and takes too much time to resolve. Even Fred and Ginger are hindered by a script that makes most of their usually witty conversation into bland exchanges like "Glad to see you" and "Gee."
The biggest change is that Astaire is a sailor in this film, not simply a Broadway star and well-to-do man about town as he has been thus far in his films. This was producer Pandro S. Berman's idea, lest the old guise wear thin on Depression Era audiences; give them someone they can identify with. Fred does okay as Seaman Bake Baker only because the script makes him the former successful dance partner of Sherry Martin (Rogers) who only joined the navy because she turned down his proposal. This also conveniently takes care of why a sailor can dance so well and allows him to be mostly his usual suave self. Onboard his ship he conducts his own swing band, gives dance lessons, performs tap routines and seems to have plenty of free time; but hey, this is an Astaire-Rogers film, so of course he does. Their films seem to take place in the real world but are so filled with improbabilities that it's really a kind of semi-magical world that you simply don't question.
The light tone of their most successful films is lacking here. The plot is not only drawn out but also leaden in its seriousness and lack of fun. It's missing the humorous characters created by the likes of Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes or Helen Broderick. Astrid Alwyn's role as a flirtatious society woman could have been made more comic, but at least there's one good comic scene with her and Fred. Lucille Ball is back after non-speaking appearances in "Roberta" and "Top Hat" and has a small supporting role with a name (Kitty Collins) and dialogue. She gets a truly funny line here putting down a wolfish sailor, though it would have worked better if the sailor had been a young, fresh-faced actor.
But then there's Fred and Ginger. That's who we came here to see, and thankfully they get lots of screen time and get to provide all of the light and humorous parts of the film themselves. Every time they are together the film brightens. They do some of their best dances here. They also get some great Irving Berlin songs. It was wise to retain Berlin after "Top Hat" and in later years he said that Astaire inspired him to do some of his best work. If not adapting a Broadway hit, studios had staff songwriters who wrote songs that they would assign to films at some future date. But from "Top Hat" on, all the music in these films was written specifically for Astaire and Rogers by the best in the business including Kern and Gershwin.
The first number is, "We Saw the Sea", one of those humorous songs that Berlin was so good at, like "Oh How I Hate To Get Up In the Morning". This is Fred's first of two solo tap numbers, both aboard ship. The jazzy "Let Yourself Go" is the first dance with Ginger and features them in a dance contest, which they naturally win. Ginger's dancing here is wonderfully athletic and fluid, more so than anything thus far in their films. She also gets her only solo tap dance in any of their films in a tryout scene reprising "Let Yourself Go " which occurs as a theme a number of times, as Berlin knew a hit when he wrote one. "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" is one of the best Astaire-Rogers comic dances, having them getting increasingly out of step with each other as the dance progresses. It illustrates their increasing misunderstandings within the plot and also gently contrasts with their usual perfection as a dancing pair.
Sailor or not, at some point Fred has to don his natural screen apparel of white tie and tails. This, of course is the romantic dance number between Ginger and Fred, the one in which he usually wins her affections through grace and style. Its power is ever so slightly diluted here, being added as in a show-within-a-show, rather than happening organically within the plot. Fred has already won Ginger and they are putting on a show to raise money for a cause. Still, it's one of their greatest dances to one of Berlin's most sophisticated songs, "Let's Face the Music and Dance". The romantic dance number was always elegant and sublime and is the high point of any Astaire-Rogers film. It had a special appeal for Depression audiences who witnessed little of either in daily life.
It's danced on a magnificent Art Deco rooftop set designed by two of the best, Carroll Clark working under Van Nest Polglase, multiple Oscar nominees for such disparate films as "Top Hat", "The Gay Divorcee", "Citizen Kane" and "Mary Poppins". The dance is part of an entire scenario of two people meeting at a moment of shared desperation and begins with a few sways, progressing into a series of stylized parallel moves before turning into one of the most intricate dances of the team's many. It was filmed, as usual, in one, full figured take, an Astaire hallmark that allows the audience to see the entire dance as it might be on stage. With Astaire and Rogers you always got a real performance. Also, by not having many cuts and camera angles, it creates a still and hushed atmosphere that accentuates the exalted nature of the dance. (Though filmed in one take, twenty takes were filmed so Astaire could choose the best; they never edited together the best parts of different takes). It's more than worth sitting through the rather humdrum plot to see Fred and Ginger in some of their best numbers ever on screen.
Swing Time (1936)
If you only see one Astaire-Rogers film...
"Swing Time" is often cited by critics and fans as the best of the Astaire-Rogers films and it's worthy of the esteem in which it's held. It's the film where everything fell into place, where everything worked. A group of the most talented people were involved, from Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, Howard Lindsay and Alan Scott, Hermes Pan, George Stevens and many others. RKO had had a bad habit of making Fred and Ginger into members of the supporting cast while giving the audience some boring couple's romantic problems as the main focus of the plot. Perhaps it was because as dancers, RKO saw them as more of a specialty act. It seemed to afflict every other film for a while. But here, as in "The Gay Divorcee" and "Top Hat", they realized that people came to see Fred and Ginger, not anyone else.
The plot is like most Astaire and Rogers plots, something that doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. Though their films seem to be set in the real world, they're so full of contrivances, coincidences and things that just don't seem possible that they exist as a semi-magical world of their own and you don't question anything that happens. One example here is the incredible wardrobes that both Rogers and her pal Helen Broderick sport, even though they are a dance instructor and a receptionist. This plot isn't quite as silly as some of their earlier films and doesn't rely on the old trope of mistaken identity. It does, however, introduce Fred's character as overly fashion conscious, vain and such a compulsive gambler that he forgets it's his wedding day. Howard Lindsay, one of Broadway's biggest talents from "Anything Goes" to "The Sound of Music", provided an adequate script that keeps things light and doesn't get bogged down in plot developments. In fact, all problems resolve themselves very quickly in the end, though it's very bleak before then, setting the scene for perhaps their greatest number. Lindsay was assisted by Alan Scott, who having worked on "Top Hat" and "Roberta" (and later on "Shall We Dance: and "Carefree"), knew just the right tone and dialogue that was right for these films.
Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields wrote the songs with Astaire and Rogers in mind and came up with a number of great tunes, the best of which was "The Way You Look Tonight". The great love song is surprisingly introduced in a humorous context but is effective nonetheless and a perfect example of one of Kern's sublime melodies. The other great comic number, "A Fine Romance": is set in a forest full of snow, illustrating the current state of affairs between the two. "Pick Yourself Up" develops from a polka into a tap number with athletic dexterity. As with Irving Berlin's scores for their films, Astaire and Rogers inspired Kern and Fields to some of their best work. "Waltz In Swing Time" was arranged using Kern's themes by orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett. Kern, who had begun in operetta, wasn't able to write swing music and had Bennett do it.
Astaire and Rogers are assisted by an able cast of players. Helen Broderick is best as Ginger's friend Mabel, and brings the same droll sense of humor to "Swing Time" as she did to "Follow the Fleet. Victor Moore is Astaire's comic tagalong pal Pop, but I thought Mabel deserved other than this gnomish fellow as an implied romantic interest. Fortunately the plot doesn't require her to marry him. George Metaxa is often criticized for his portrayal of orchestra leader Ricky Romero. He's such an awful, superficial European with no redeeming qualities that it was impossible for me to think that Ginger could see anything in him. But really, that's the writing which makes him so awful and doesn't give him a chance to be anything else. Betty Furness (more famous as the spokesperson for Westinghouse in the 1950s and 60s) is appealing in her role of Margaret, Fred's fiancee back home. Her father is played by director Stevens' real father, Landers Stevens.
There were two perfectionists involved in this film. Astaire himself, of course, spent eight weeks preparing and rehearsing the dances in his films, an ordeal that brought some of his partners to tears, though as he noted in an interview, "Ginger never cried." The reason the dances look spontaneous and effortless is because they were rehearsed so many times until every move and nuance was absorbed. Astaire was always given de facto directorial power over the dance sequences and it was he who made them special by having them filmed full body with no cuts if possible and no fancy editing. With Fred and Ginger the audience got a real performance, not some movie trickery. This was especially true of the big romantic dance in each film, which always took place in some exalted space with Fred and Ginger alone.
The second perfectionist was director George Stevens. The usual director for these films, Mark Sandrich, did a good job every time, even with some of the weaker scripts. But Stevens, one of the great directors of the classic era, got the most out of every scene and kept things moving. He did this by insisting on a large number of takes to choose from, even in relatively unimportant scenes. This was true here in the romantic dance finale, "Never Gonna Dance", which had over 40 takes. It is danced in one of the most impressive of the grand Art Deco sets of all their films, a huge nightclub with shiny floor, mirrored curtains and an enormous, black split staircase. After singing the title song, the pair seem to be simply walking away but slip into a synchronized rhythm that begins with "The Way You Look Tonight" and slips into the "Waltz in Swing Time" before they twirl up the staircase for an exuberant series of twists and spins to the blue notes of the title song again. Fred, of course, is in white tie and tails and Ginger is beautiful in a slender white gown and together they show that they are meant for each other, a couple in perfect step.
The film, and especially the last dance are frequently cited as the highest achievement of Astaire and Rogers at RKO. That's a pretty heavy competition and it's difficult to choose when there are numbers like "Night and Day", "Cheek to Cheek" and "Let's Face the Music and Dance", but I won't disagree either. They seem to express every emotion in a dazzling variety of styles within this single number. It's certainly my favorite.
EXTRA NOTE: "Bojangles of Harlem". This number is problematic nowadays. It is Fred's tribute to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson". John Bubbles, and the tradition of black tap dancers. In it he dresses like Bubbles' Sportin' Life character in "Porgy and Bess", a character which Gershwin personally chose Bubbles to play. Fred's face is darkened and it's usually described as "Blackface", something that certainly makes audiences squirm today. But blackface was a grotesque, clownish horror with big white painted lips and eyes and coal black makeup. This is not that. Fred wanted to honor black tap dancers and surely thought to emphasize what he was doing by appearing a little like them. When Fred was twenty, John Bubbles took him on as a student. The dance is filmed the usual way, from a distance, and nothing about the presentation emphasizes the makeup. He really looks just like he always does, just darker. He looks like Fred Astaire, not an insulting caricature. The real question is the style of dancing, which isn't really like Robinson's at all. Robinson was famous for his "Stair Dance" and tended to dance from the waist down, back upright. He waved his arms a bit, but basically danced with his feet. Fred isn't dancing like that. He's dancing more like Bubbles, who used his full body while dancing. Hopping and skipping, and even did a version of the Moonwalk (he was acknowledged as an inspiration by Michael Jackson). The fact was that Robinson was practically a superstar in the thirties, known by everyone for his numerous appearances with Shirley Temple in her films. Bubbles was known to fans of tap dance but did not have the wide recognition of Bojangles. Bojangles was chosen as the dedicatee because audiences knew who he was. As a result, the number becomes a tribute to the whole tradition of black tap dancers. Clips of both men are viewable online. Check them out. You'll be glad you did.
Top Hat (1935)
Fred and Ginger shine in "Top Hat"
"Top Hat" is rightfully considered one of Astaire and Rogers greatest films with some of their best known dances and some great songs by Irving Berlin. It's also almost a perfect example of their movies with a very light plot (Fred commented that it seemed to have no plot at all), eccentric supporting characters, dramatic sets and great outfits for Ginger. Critics of the day thought it was a bit too like "The Gay Divorcee" with its mistaken identity plot device and practically the same primary cast (only Helen Broderick replaces Alice Brady as the female second lead). All this is true, but you come to these films for great music and dancing, not the plot. The film has baffled some people who come to it expecting a big "book musical" like those of the 1950s and '60s. But "Showboat" had been a one-of-a-kind in 1927 and it took Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" in 1943 to give the longer, more-serious musical that most people know, its true beginning. In the mid '30s most musicals were still revues like those by Ziegfeld and George White and were anything but serious.
This was Irving Berlin's first score for Astaire and Rogers and he would go on to do "Follow the Fleet" and "Carefree". Berlin had been writing hit songs since "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1910, but had been experiencing a dry spell after a run of hit songs in the 1920s. "Top Hat" revived his career and his spirits and he and Astaire became good friends. All of his songs for this film became big hits and in September,1935 all five were in the national top 15. The dances are memorable and include the park bandstand dance in a pouring rainstorm for "Isn't This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught In the Rain"), their comic number with romantic overtones in which Ginger dances in a riding costume. What may be their most famous dance, "Cheek To Cheek" is set in an elegant ballroom and is the big romantic dance of the picture. Fred's JerryTravers has certainly won Ginger's Dale Tremont over with this dance, but plot intricacies prevent her from responding with anything but hatred.
It's in "Cheek To Cheek" that Ginger wears the feathered dress that has over time, become famous for shedding its feathers during the dance, something featured in film documentaries and special features on DVDs and Blu-rays. Ginger had collaborated in designing the dress with her favorite designer, Bernard Newman, and was adamant about wearing it, even when director Mark Sandrich and RKO executives didn't like it. Sandrich even told her to wear a dress from "The Gay Divorcee" as if audiences wouldn't know they'd seen it before. Even Fred didn't like it as clouds of pale blue ostrich feathers fell off at every turn. With her mother backing her up, Ginger remained adamant and additional sewing was done to hold the feathers in place and it was finally approved. The result was, as we know, magnificent, with only a few feathers coming loose. Fred gave Ginger a gold feather for her charm bracelet to let her know it was in the end a good choice.
The final dance, "The Piccolino", is modeled after "The Carioca" in "Flying Down To Rio" and "The Continental" in "The Gay Divorcee" and is like them, a large scale number with a big chorus of dancers dancing to Latin-tinged music on a large, opulent set. Musicals were expected to end with a lavish number and the original trailer for "Top Hat" shows only excerpts from this dance as if that alone would guarantee an audience. It's an unusual style for Berlin, but he could write anything. It's fun, with the chorus sections very Busby Berkeley-ish, with swirling patterns and the dancing often shot from above. Fred's first solo dance is the tap number, "No Strings (I'm Fancy Free)" danced in producer Horace Hardwick's (Edward Everett Horton) hotel room and it's aggressively vigorous and loud for reasons of moving the plot along. The character, Jerry, seems to be a bit of a jerk here and even Fred complained about playing a guy like this, "...without charm, sympathy or humor". He has great fun in "Top Hat. White Tie and Tails" with a large male chorus suitably attired, who he dispatches with his cane.
Erik Rhodes and Eric Blore add comic bits with their exaggerated characters, similar to "The Gay Divorcee". Rhodes is Alberto Bedini, a dandyish clothes designer who is similar but less silly than Tonetti in the earlier film. Blore expands upon his perfect gentleman's gentleman, this time serving Horton's stuffy fussbudget Horace with comic results. Helen Broderick adds many funny wisecracks to the comedy. A nod must be given to the extravagant Venice set, which took up two soundstages and is the setting for the second half of the film. Where the film's beginning in London was kept mostly realistic with lots of second unit location photography, Venice is obviously artificial and owes its look to Broadway rather than Italy. The age of location shooting was still far in the future and wouldn't have looked right for this film anyway. "Top Hat" is fun, breezy and the film where the Astaire/Rogers film took its full form.
Roberta (1935)
Fred and Ginger shine, even back in supporting roles
It's hard to understand what producer Pandro Berman and RKO were thinking when they relegated Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to the second (comic) couple status in "Roberta", as if they hadn't just scored a massive success in their first starring film, "The Gay Divorcee", one of the ten biggest films of 1934. In Hollywood, this could look like they had failed their audition, but everyone knew how big a hit their previous film had been. They were, at least, given equal billing with Irene Dunne, and they would never find themselves in supporting roles again. The film often gets trashed for this reason, but that's not fair either.
"Roberta" is a bit of an experiment, mixing a romantic story with a soprano lead like those popularized by Jeanette MacDonald with an Astaire and Rogers dance film. It also is centered on the world of high fashion - there are three fashion shows here - something that was in vogue in thirties films. It does give both Dunne and Rogers a chance to wear some great clothes. There are some terrific songs by Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach. These included songs from the Broadway musical from which it was adapted, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "Yesterdays", "Let's Begin" and "I'll Be Hard to Handle". Added to these were "I Won't Dance" rescued from a rare Kern flop ("Three Sisters") and a song written by Kern for the film, "Lovely To Look At".
Irene Dunne was a major star at this point, and in fact had been since her Oscar nominated performance in her second film, "Cimarron" (1930). She was known at this point for dramatic roles, but would really shine in screwball comedies, for which she is most remembered along with a late career role as the Hanson family mother in "I Remember Mama" (1948). She had never sung in a film before but had trained to become an opera singer and had made a name for herself in Broadway musicals. RKO's motivation was probably to try to make her a singing star on film as well, though her only other singing role was as the female lead in the 1936 version of "Show Boat". The operatic style was common to films of this era and may take some getting used to by audiences today. She sings all three of the film's most famous songs.
Dunne is full of her usual charm and screen presence and gets an early chance to show her comic timing. She is one of those major stars of the Classic Age who is not so well known today despite her five Academy Award nominations. This may be because some of her most acclaimed films became much better known in later remakes, which became the ones most audiences now see. These include "Love Affair" (1934), "The Age of Innocence" (1934) "Show Boat" (1936) and "Anna and the King of Siam" (1946). She sparkles here as she would later with Cary Grant in "The Awful Truth" and "My Favorite Wife".
Square-jawed Randolph Scott plays her love interest, John Kent, a football player who inherits his aunt's fashion house. His contribution is just not on the same level as the others and he tends to fade into the background, all 6'3" of him. Of course his character is written as a kind of stoic farmboy type from Indiana, so that may be partly to blame. Still, he's better in his earlier, humorous Gary Cooperish incarnation than later when he cleans up and tries to help run the shop. Though he continued to make a variety of films it was as the star of Paramount's Zane Grey and later westerns that he would be best known.
Helen Westley plays Aunt Minnie (a.k.a. Roberta), owner of the eponymous fashion concern. Known for playing mean, intimidating characters (even to Shirley Temple in four films), she gets to play a sweet and endearing character for once. Claire Dodd is not quite so lucky, and plays her usual sharp-tongued, self centered "other woman", in this case trying to win Scott away from Dunne. I couldn't understand the reason for the character of Aunt Mimi's friend, the rotund Lord Henry Delves; he comes and goes and then vanishes, having no effect on the plot whatsoever. In the stage version Sidney Greenstreet had that role. Bob Hope had the Astaire role on stage, so it must have been quite different. Fred and Ginger sparkle not only when they dance, but also as the supporting characters who keep things buoyant. Fred is his usual confident and charming self as Huck Haines, a bandleader who is sure his "Indianans" are ready for Paris. Ginger is hilarious as his old flame, Lizzie Gatz, now posing as the chanteuse "Countess Scharwenka". The milieu of the film takes place not only in the world of haute couture but also in the world of Russian nobility in exile, which includes a number of cast members.
The great tap number, "I'll Be Hard to Handle" was shot in one take, only possible after Astaire's usual six weeks of rehearsal. This was Astaire's preferred way to do things. He wanted the audience to see a real dance, not a bunch of separate takes spliced together. The complex dances with Ginger were always kept to as few cuts as possible for the same reason. Both Fred and Ginger look like they're having a lot of fun here. They danced on a wooden floor for their only time and all their taps were real. In all other films the taps were inaudible and had to be dubbed later on by Fred and Hermes Pan. Pan (Hermes Panagiotopoulos) would be Fred's assistant dance director in all of the films with Ginger at RKO. "I Won't Dance" is equally fun and the multi-talented Astaire is actually playing the piano intro. The "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" number after they briefly reprise "Lovely To Look At" is the high point of the film, as their romantic dance always was. This is barely over two minutes long, but what they could do in that short time is inspiring.
EXTRA NOTE: Fashion plays a big role here and the costumes for the fashion shows as well as the actresses were all designed by Bernard Newman, recommended by Dunne, who herself was a fashion icon. Ginger Rogers wore one of her own dresses in the "I Won't Dance" number, originally bought for her trousseau and designed by Newman, who also designed the notorious feather dress in "Top Hat" in collaboration with Ginger. Most of the fashions have that costumey, over-the-top look that you see in thirties films. It's amazing that women had the patience and time to dress so elaborately. Look for a 24-year-old Lucille Ball near the end as one of the fashion models in the final big show. She's disguised a bit as a platinum blonde and wearing a huge feathered cape and gets an extra close-up in which she shines. This was her first RKO film, but she was still uncredited as she had been in over a dozen films thus far.
The Gay Divorcee (1934)
Fred and Ginger star in their own film for the first time
After the positive public response to Fred and Ginger in "Flying Down to Rio", RKO promptly gave them their own picture after overcoming Fred's initial reluctance to start a new partnership. He had only recently left the one with his sister Adele, with whom he had danced since childhood, due to her getting married. He had been in the Broadway musical, "The Gay Divorce" and had wanted dancing partner Claire Luce carried over for the film, but RKO had Ginger Rogers under contract. The resulting film established Astaire and Rogers as one of those perfect pairs, like William Powell and Myrna Loy, brought together by Hollywood chance casting. It also established many of the conventions of the future Astaire and Rogers films.
Though there are always exceptions from film to film, the world of Astaire and Rogers is a special world of its own. Fred and Ginger's world looks somewhat like reality but bears little relation to it. It's usually quite opulent, allowing for elaborate sets and costumes, something common to thirties films. It's the Depression, and many films are set in a wealthy milieu because people wanted to spend a little time in a world where there were no money problems. The romances are contrived and unlikely, the plots often silly and the workings of the world are somewhat magically unrealistic in the ways things happen. If you think about them afterward much of what went on makes no sense. Fortunately, we came for the dancing.
In their musicals Fred is usually a professional dancer, to explain how he dances so well. The dances are presented as actually happening in the context of the film as opposed to musicals like "Carousel" where suddenly a bunch of fishermen dance like pros. Fred and Ginger are frequently at odds at first, with the question being how they will eventually find love. Usually it's because Fred is too aggressive in his pursuit of Ginger, as he is here, or even a bit of a jerk as he is in "Top Hat". In any case it's up to him to make his case, which he usually does in the big romantic dance number. Ginger. On her part, could also be a bit obnoxious to Fred, but once they finally understand each other she's as gracious as she is beautiful. That's another of the inner tensions of the pairing. Fred is a rather unassuming-looking fellow and Ginger is usually gorgeous in fashionable outfits, though she always retains enough of the girl-next-door to remain approachable. Here, she's still not convinced, even after he sings "Night and Day" to her. But after they dance, she discovers what they always discover, that they are in perfect synchronicity.
There are always solo dances by Fred. That was one of his conditions of entering a partnership. Here they are rather brief and conventional, but over time, Fred, being the commensurate artist that he was, would create dances that became more inventive and unique. Fred and Ginger usually have a comic dance together before the big romantic number. That's not true here. Here that's given to Edward Everett Horton and an eighteen year old, almost unrecognizable Betty Grable. Talk about unlikely, what could be less realistic than Grable suddenly talking to Horton and asking him to dance? This is, "Let's Knock Knees and it turns into a fairly big number with lots of extra dancers. It was a big break for Grable, but it would still take a few years, a star-making turn on Broadway and a new contract at Fox to make her the big name that she would become. Horton has a substantial comic role and makes the most of it in his inimitable fussy way.
There are two big musical numbers, "Night and Day" and "The Continental" The film is based on the hit Cole Porter musical, "The Gay Divorce" which opened on Broadway in November, 1932. The name change was due to the Motion Picture code censors who said a divorce itself could never be called gay (meaning lighthearted). Erik Rhodes (Tonetti) and Eric Blore (the Waiter) were also in the Broadway show, reprising their roles for the film. Of the eleven songs in the show only "Night and Day" was kept, though it also had "After You, Who?". The rest of the songs were written for the film by two separate teams of songwriters.
"Night and Day" takes place in a deserted beach pavilion, yet another convention of the Astaire-Rogers films. They always have the place to themselves for the big romantic number. If not totally alone like this, it's a space of their own off to the side as in "Top Hat". It's their own, special space, private and elegant, and so sublime that ordinary reality dare not intrude. These artful, seemingly effortless dances are the heart of the Astaire-Rogers musicals, what the audience came to see most. They were also filmed the way Fred wanted them to be filmed. No wild effects, no closeups of dancing feet or quick cuts; the dances are shot from just a few angles in relatively long takes, showing the whole body. This gives them a spaciousness and a serenity compared to Busby Berkeley's style.
The comic secondary cast provide excellent support. Alice Brady, a major star of Broadway, plays a balmy and befuddled Aunt Hortense with great fun, only slightly less air-headed than Billie Burke. Erik Rhodes plays the co-respondent (a man hired to impersonate a lover in a divorce case) as a not-so-bright dandy with spats, a cane and a boutonniere, who enters singing an air from "Rigoletto" and utters the classic line, "Your wife is safe with Tonetti, he prefers spaghetti". He's likable and somewhat naive as well when he phones his wife and believes the manly voice in the background is his nine-year-old son whose voice has changed. The character was very popular but was so hated by the macho Mussolini that the dictator had the film banned in Italy. Eric Blore is excellent as the waiter who must practice perfect patience as he waits for Horton to order dinner. He becomes a key character near the end of the film.
The climax of the film is "The Continental", an extravagant production number that goes on over 17 minutes. As this is only Fred and Ginger's second film, it copies "Flying Down to Rio" in having a production number featuring a new dance with a big chorus set to a lightly Latin rhythm as its finale. It's much less herky-jerky than "The Carioca", a credit to director Mark Sandrich who keeps things running smoothly (and directed for more Astaire/Rogers films). Though longer, it doesn't seem as endless as "The Carioca", which kept me asking, "There's more?" This is achieved by some clever black and white costuming and extremely buoyant choreography of a huge number of dancers. Fred and Ginger dance as well, twice in fact, but each time the chorus pulls away to give them their own space. There's also a Berkeley influence here from overhead shots to closeups of the chorus, focusing on one young couple.
The Continental, like the Carioca, was promoted by the studio to be the latest dance craze, but what were they thinking? The Carioca looked like twins conjoined at the forehead and the Continental required whispering and kissing, which would never have worked with an average crowd at a nightclub. Besides, who could even figure out what the dance steps were? On the plus side the song won the first Academy Award for "Best Song" at the 1935 (7th) presentations. The more classic "Night and Day" was written for the Broadway production and was thus ineligible. This is one of the best Astaire-Rogers musicals and one only wishes for a couple more songs and another dance by the stars. By the way, you'll notice, from the location of the steering wheel, that though set in London, Ginger is driving an American car. That's because it was her own 1929 Model J Duesenberg, which still appears at car shows today.
Flying Down to Rio (1933)
Introducing Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
"Flying Down to Rio" would be a minor thirties musical known only by fans of the decade and genre if it hadn't included the introduction of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as dancing partners. But it's not their film. They occupy the traditional role of the second couple, who generally provide some comic relief. They get in some funny comments, but they could also dance, and even though they do not dance together all that long, the public saw how well they worked together and they became the talk of the town.
We're lucky that Selznick believed in Astaire, even after the famous disastrous screen test: "Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly balding. Also dances". It sounds like one of those too good to be true Hollywood stories but Selznick later referred to it, so we know it was real. Astaire, of course, had been dancing with his sister as a child in vaudeville and later as major stars on Broadway. He was already 34 here, just beginning his movie career. He had recently been lent out to MGM for the Crawford/Gable film, "Dancing Lady" where he appeared as himself, dancing one number with Crawford, essentially a specialty number. Here he is integrated into the cast where his natural charm shines through every time he's on. He's Gene Raymond's friend and the accordion player in his band. Astaire actually could play the accordion.
Ginger was already an up and comer in films (getting billed above Fred) having broken out in the Warner Brothers/Busby Berkeley backstage musicals, "42nd Street" and "Gold Diggers of 1933". In the first she was "Anytime Annie," making funny cracks with Una Merkel. In the second she sang "We're In the Money", including a verse in pig Latin. Here, she's the singer in the "Yankee Clippers", a dance orchestra that plays hotels. She sings the first song, a pre-Code number that goes, "Music makes me do things I shouldn't do", and sings it in a black gown with a sheer lower half that reveals her legs. Her role here is smaller than Fred's but their chemistry together is evident in every scene they share.
Then there's the rest of the movie. The film was made as a Dolores del Rio vehicle with Gene Raymond as the male lead. At this time, del Rio was a major star as she had been in the silents. You can clearly see why. She's absolutely stunning, commanding the attention of the screen every time she's on. I can't judge her acting in such a light vehicle, but she;s certainly beautiful. She grew up a Mexican aristocrat in a family of great wealth and that shows in her role here as a member of Brazilian high society. It's unfortunate her slight accent caused her to be cast only in exotic roles, but this led her to become one of the greatest actresses in Mexican cinematic history so it was her gain and Mexico's..
Raymond was being groomed as a blond, athletic leading man and had a number of successes since "Red Dust" with Harlow and Gable. Blond leading men were rare in the classic film era, where dark haired men were the rule. He's fun here, playing the wayward son of a super-wealthy family who doesn't approve of him leading a band. This is never followed up as a plot point and there are no scenes with his family. I believe it is there to make him an acceptable suitor for del Rio, who happens to be in an arranged engagement to a wealthy Brazilian.
This is Julio (Raul Roulien), who happens to be good friends with Raymond's Roger Bond. He gets to sing "Orchids In the Moonlight" to del Rio and plays an important part in the movie's end.
You can see where all this is heading. There's also a silly conflict-subplot added about some Greeks who want to take over the hotel where the band is playing, but it's so unnecessary that most of the time they appear only as shadows. The film is nicely set up with an opening sequence at the Hotel Hibiscus in Miami. There a hilarious scene takes place as Fred and Gene are off, flying Gene's small plane, and are late for the orchestra's evening show and broadcast. Band members, especially Gene, have also been seen fraternizing with the clientele, greatly upsetting Hotel Manager Franklin Pangborn and his assistant, Eric Blore. It's always fun to see either of these two do their bit, and Blore went on to appear in four of the major Astaire/Rogers films.
The film exists mainly for its two big production numbers, "The Carioca' and "Flying Down to Rio". Both are big numbers with lots of dancers. Each is also a bit odd in its way and each goes on a bit long and is edited in a way that does not always flow smoothly. You would think RKO might want to start a new dance craze with the Carioca, but it's a bizarre jumble of dance steps danced with the dancers foreheads touching. It looks odd, must have been difficult, and certainly wouldn't have caught on (though the song was popular). It's set in a sumptuous, white, two-level hotel supper club & ballroom set that looks enormous. It must be, because scores of dancers dance in it, three different singers sing the song, and in the middle Fred and Ginger finally decide to dance. They;re absolutely wonderful and fortunately aren't forced to keep their foreheads together the whole time. But that ends too soon as more and more chorus dancers join the number until you're wondering when it's going to end.
The "Flying Down to Rio " number must have been conceived as a response to Busby Berkeley, because it employs dozens of chorus girls with many closeups of their faces, a Berkeley trademark. On a dance floor or even an elaborate set with waterfalls, they dance, sway, sing and smile , even from the tops of airplane wings,. They are supposed to be flying over the hotel to offer entertainment to the guests, but how the guests could appreciate or even see them is never answered. Some of the costumes are risque even for the pre-Code era. It's all fun with a memorable tune, but it lacks the precision of Berkeley and the effect is undercut by the fact that no planes are actually flying.
Astaire gets a brief dance with del Rio and a nice, but again too short example of his amazing tap dancing. Nevertheless he and Rogers came out of this picture as stars and immediately got their own picture, "The Gay Divorcee".
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Life when every action counts
"Only Angels Have Wings" is an excellent film in its own right, but it has picked up an extra reputation among film buffs as the archetypal Howard Hawks film. In setup, plot, cast and atmosphere it is everything that Hawks embodied, at least in his action and western films. This especially includes his love of aviation, which this film shows in abundance. It takes place among a group of commercial fliers and all of the action sequences involve planes.
Hawks discovered aviation at an early age when his indulgent grandfather treated him to flying lesions. He participated in barnstorming shows while still in high school in Southern California. When the United States entered World War I he entered as a lieutenant in the Signal Corps but soon was brought to France in the Army Air Corps teaching young men how to fly planes. This, I believe, was where he experienced what would become the elemental Hawks movie theme, the way a group of men bond and act together under pressure to pursue a goal. The pressure was not one simply of time or financial risks, but one which included death as a possible, if not likely, outcome.
Hawks was not on the Front, experiencing direct attacks, shelling, gassing or battle, nor were his films set in that type of deathly situation.. He experienced the war from a relatively safe distance, but had constant contact with men who would be in direct conflict in the skies and who were completely aware of what they were training for. Certainly, some of his trainees must have died as a result. It was here that he experienced how the men acted together, often humorously and in high spirits under which lay a stern realization of the likeliness of losing their lives or their friends. He saw how simple and focused men had to be in times of action when everything they did counted. He saw how stoic and. Quiet they were and realized that this was what real heroism was about.
All of this made it into this film. He had witnessed the ostracism of a pilot who had parachuted out of a burning plane, leaving his copilot to die, which became one of the elements of this film. What is slightly odd is that this is not a war film, but a film about a group of American fliers in Chile, near the Andes, whose goal is to fly enough mail runs through the treacherous mountain passes to secure a contract for their small company. This also includes setting up their friend, Dutchy, the old man who owns the hotel, bar, and is the money behind Grant's aviation company. Yet they have all the seriousness, dedication and professional attitude that they would have had in a wartime situation. There is a job and it has to be done.
The second element is the Howard Hawks' woman. The women in Hawks' films are not just pretty or decorative, nor are they damsels in distress. They are usually independent and out somewhere on their own, a situation very unusual in the thirties, a decade when some restaurants and bars would not allow an unaccompanied woman to be seated. Hawks' women come and go as they please. Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur) has just quit a show in far away Valparaiso and decides to stay a while in Barranca, the small seaport town where everything takes place. In all his films, the screwball comedies included, the women act as the equal of the guys and are accepted as part of the group. They often have sassy lines and are confident of themselves. This carries over into virtually all of his films from Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn to Angie Dickinson.
Hawks immediately immerses you in Barranca as Bonnie roams the crowded waterfront after disembarking from her ship. The atmospheric setting is emphasized in all the goings on by the locals, especially when she looks in at a local bar full of music and dancing. Later she's the musical center herself at Dutchy's bar, taking over from Geoff Carter (Cary Grant) at the piano singing, "Some of These Days". Grant's Carter is stern and no nonsense. Even Dutchy tells him, "You're a hard man, too hard". He has little use for a relationship either, because the women he's known can't take the worrying and stress every time he flies. Still, a romantic interest develops between the two, slightly complicated by the surprise arrival of Carter's last ex, Judy (Rita Hayworth), now married to another pilot. It's a romance film and a comedy at times but also an action film and it's that part which predominates. Hawks always keeps the film from suddenly turning into a love story, with Arthur disappearing for significant lengths of time.
The actors are all at their best. Grant had recently emerged as a top talent in romantic comedies and played debonair bon vivants, but was developing a tougher action-oriented character successfully in films like this and "Gunga Din ". He's definitely not his usual self; Geoff is cynical, and a demanding boss, cold and forbidding at first. Jean Arthur often played likable American girls and that's how she plays Bonnie. She seems almost a bit too naive when she offers to buy drinks to the two men who have been following her around the docks, but they are Americans, and that seems good enough for her. She is immediately accepted as part of the gang at Dutchy's, and it's no secret why she let her ship leave.
There was some amount of tension between her and Hawks, as he wanted her to play Bonnie in a less wholesome, more sexy way, a thing she said she couldn't do. In later years, after seeing Lauren Bacall in "To Have and Have Not", she apologized to Hawks, saying she now understood what he wanted. There's a line late in the film that demonstrates this. She says to Geoff, in her sweet way, "I'm Hard to get, Geoff. All you have to do is ask me". Then imagine Bacall doing it. That's the difference. Still, Arthur's Bonnie is a vibrant part of the film, and it benefits from her presence.
Rita Hayworth, only 21, appears as Judy MacPherson, Geoff's last girl. Harry Cohn was grooming her as a future star at Columbia Pictures and had put her in many minor pictures and got her in this one. She's still a secondary character but she gets some good scenes, especially with Grant. She also had the fully developed Hayworth look that the camera loved so well. Sig Ruman gets to play the comic character (the Walter Brennan role in many Hawks films) and is much more loveable than the evil Nazi's he played during the war. Richard Barthlemess, who had been in Hawks breakthrough film, the 1932 "Dawn Patrol" is again a flier here. Thomas Mitchell plays "Kid Dabb", who is reaching the end of his flying days as he is losing his vision. It's a great part for him, having just really become really known from "Stagecoach".
This film works on every level. Even the set of Dutchy's place is wonderfully executed with broken-slatted bamboo shades and lots of clutter everywhere. It's a great black and white set, oozing with atmosphere. Hawks fills the film with lots of real stunt flying, especially later in the film. Of course some of the models are very obvious, but this is 1939 and you'd never fault a film this good on something like that.
Metropolitan (1989)
A visit to a rarely seen world
There's no film I know of quite like "Metropolitan", which proceeds in its quiet way to present a group of collegiate age debutantes and their escorts who take in a middle class West Side youth seemingly by chance, though actually, group member Audrey has had her eye on him for a while. Though the subject matter was guaranteed to elicit little interest from the general public, the film was quite a hit on the independent circuit, not only taking in over thirty times its production cost worldwide, but receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. The film simply follows a group of young people involved in the debutante season (The Sally Fowler Rat Pack) for a few weeks around the holidays. In most films something big would happen that would set off a dramatic plot, but here, aside from some almost beneath the surface romantic complications, nothing in particular happens.
Even with the introduction of Tom, the outsider from a different class, the film does not veer into a scathing indictment of the privileged classes or become the biting satire it might have in other hands. First of all, though poor by comparison, Tom is a middle class youth not someone truly from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. With the exception of his raincoat in topcoat weather, he quickly blends in with the others once Nick helps him with his wardrobe. His pose as a follower of the eighteenth century utopian socialist Fourier is more defensive than truly held and it is soon forgotten. (Fourier believed that once perfect socialist harmony was attained, the oceans would turn to lemonade. You must remember that he's purely eighteenth century, and people then were still given to fantastic conjecture). Stillman presents these people with great sympathy and warmth. They may come from money but they're just people, with all the usual insecurities, doubts and desires. The film is an observation, not really a satire.
There's a certain dreamy aspect to Metropolitan, beside the fact that it mostly takes place at night. Made in 1990, it's certainly not contemporary, but is set in an undefined period of yesterday. This was intentional. Stillman had wanted to place it in the mid 1960s but there was no budget for proper period detail. At times, judging by the clothes and settings, it could even be the 1950s. Other times it could be the early 1970s. The important thing is that it's before the public had cell phones and computers, before common drug use, a time when it's clear these kids - and they all look so young - copy their parents in how they look and act. The dreamy feeling is enhanced by the simple and genteel fades to black that separate scenes.
The action takes place at the after hours get togethers at the sumptuous apartments of the members always-absent parents, one of the issues of the children of this class. There, what they do is talk. Talk is what the film is about and these people really indulge in it in a way that I doubt is at all common anymore. They've clearly been attending college classes and even branch into discussions of art. These kids speak in long, grammatically correct sentences full of subordinate clauses and analysis. They are led in this by Charlie Black, the intellectual of the group who is its center of gravity, the one who keeps the nighttime chat from drifting into petty gossip. If Tom represents Stillman's entry into this society, Charlie, I sense, is closest to Stillman himself. He is aware of their class and its situation: that they are carrying on upper class traditions that at one time, in the age of the young Edith Wharton, were very solemn and important but which now seem unimportant and unrelated to the real world. He talks in speeches to a generally receptive audience, but with a young person's sense of drama.
The real heart and soul of the group is Nick Smith, a charming, assertive, cynical fellow, almost straight out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. He's the one who talks Tom under his wing, fixes up his wardrobe, and accepts him as a full member of the gang. He also dispenses advice that is usually based on realistic evaluations of a situation and which are often spot on. He's no more perfect than anybody else and can get himself into trouble at times. Still, he's the real spark here, whose presence livens every gathering. The young women are varied in their approaches to life from the hedonistic Cynthia to Audrey, who reads Jane Austen novels and would probably be more comfortable in Austen's more formal and mannered society. What transpires is somehow very compelling, beyond even what it should be. It may be the acting of these inexperienced actors. Their delivery seems very authentic. I found them just as I remember young people talking together at this age with some hesitation as they try one thing after another in discovering who they are.
Stillman has been compared to two others. At first it was Woody Allen. It's Manhattan, a well to do crowd, some jazzy music here and there, and lots of talk. While this is superficially true, it has a totally different feeling than an Allen comedy, which wou;d contain more obvious jokes, have more biting satire and often a more dramatic turn of events. Besides, these aren't Allen's people. His is a well-off crowd, but they're usually well-paid professionals, often with ties to show business, not old money. The other is Jane Austen and this is much closer to home. He's Tom, to an extent, not vast old wealth himself but still accepted by them because of his attending the right prep schools and Harvard. Austen's family was relatively poor compared to the gentry with whom they mingled, but they were accepted as part of them because of her
father's profession as a clergyman. Both were given an entrance to a society in which to make observations. Stillman, in fact, wrote the well-received screenplay for Amazon's film adaptation of Austen's "Lady Suzan", as "Love and Friendship". In the end these are decent, likable people trying to figure out their place in the world and it's easy to feel for them as they try.