DVD/150: THE BAND WAGON (Vincente Minnelli, 1953)

A year after SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, Betty Comden and Adolphe Green wrote another showbiz tale, this time about Broadway, with songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz.

THE BAND WAGON has MGM gloss: directed by Vincente Minnelli with choreography by Michael Kidd, only his second film assignment.

It has a good script, great choreography an attractive cast - Fred Astaire, his British counterpart Jack Buchanan, Cyd Charisse...  but something is lacking - perhaps SINGIN's director Stanley Donen would have suited the backstage story over Minnelli's elegance?

Tony Hunter's film career has dried up so he returns to star in a new Broadway show which Jeffrey Cordova - an actor and director from the Legit theatre - wants to direct.

Cordova rewrites it as a musicalization of FAUST and casts ballerina Gabrielle Gerard; Tony is against both ideas, and his attidude annoys Gabrielle too.

After disasterous previews, Tony saves the show with Broadway pizzaz...

Shelf or charity shop?  This can dance along the shelf for a while longer.  The shoot wasn't too happy - Astaire, like his character, was worried about Cyd Charisse's height as it was their first time working together, Oscar Levant blamed everyone else when he forgot his lines and Jack Buchanan was enduring painful dental work. As I said, it all seems too glossy for it's own good but when the musical numbers start THE BAND WAGON is on a roll - Astaire singing "By Myself" and the dynamic "A Shine On Your Shoes" partnered by Leroy Daniels, the one song written for the film "That's Entertainment" still has the best critique of HAMLET: "When a ghost and a prince meet / and everyone ends as mincemeat".  Astaire and Buchanan are class personified singing "I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plan" and the two dance numbers for Fred and Cyd are just glorious - they swooningly fall in love as they dance in Central Park to "Dancing In The Dark", and in the "Girl Hunt Ballet" - a Mickey Spillaine-esque thriller in dance - for two glorious minutes, Fred and Cyd do one of the most stunning routines ever committed to film - before Fosse, there was Kidd.  Fred was right to be worried, in her sequinned red dress and black opera gloves, her high kicks and leg slides, her hips, arms and back working overtime, you simply cannot take your eyes off her.  All this and Julie Newmar as a dancer too!

 

DVD/150: HUMORESQUE (Jean Negulesco, 1946)

After her Oscar-winning triumph in MILDRED PEARCE, Joan Crawford then delivered another iconic performance in HUMORESQUE, easily holding her own opposite intense John Garfield.

Previously filmed by Frank Borzage in 1920, this time screenwriter Clifford Odets borrowed from the premise of his own play GOLDEN BOY.

Paul Boray, a New York grocer's son, is a talented classical violinist, although success eludes him, but he is pushed on by his devoted mother.

Paul and his pianist friend Sid attend a swanky party; he plays his violin but is antagonistic at the patronising attitude of the hostess Helen Wright, an arts patron who is bored with her retinue of adoring men and her loveless marriage.

Helen is attracted to Paul however and secures him a manager and finally, his success.  Of course they become lovers - much to his mother's displeasure.

But love doesn't bring them happiness, just a lonely Wagnerian ending...

Shelf or charity shop?  For God's sake... it's Joan in a sequinned Adrian gown getting drunk to the Liebestod!  I have always had issues with HUMORESQUE however, Jean Negulseco's direction plods along, taking it's sudsy time to bring Crawford into the film while over-indulging the boorish performance from Oscar Levant as the pianist friend. The amount of screentime afforded Ruth Nelson's sanctimonious and provincial mother is irkesome too - the idea is problematic that the hero should not stray from hearth and home, his emotionally-dead mother and dreary childhood sweetheart; the final image of Paul walking back to the family store one presumes is meant to be heartwarming but it strikes me as singularly awful.  John Garfield gives a steely performance as Paul but needless to say the film comes alive with the arrival of Joan Crawford as the glacial Helen, and she, cinematographer Ernest Haller and composer Franz Waxman deliver two glorious scenes without dialogue - Helen drifting into an ecstatic reverie in the concert hall at Paul's violin playing, totally unaware of the cold stares from his family, and the famous scene as Crawford, alone and intoxicated, becomes one with Wagner, the wind and the sea...