For whatever reasons -- and I tend to think it had something to do with the recent departure of the autocratic Peter Martins -- the dancers on Saturday danced with an all-out attack and unusual enthusiasm in three Balanchine ballets: Apollo, Mozartiana, and Cortege Hongrois.
Apollo is an homage to the academic ballet tradition, and the first work in the contemporary classic style, but it is an homage to classicism's sensuous loveliness as well as to its brilliant exactitude and its science of dance effect.
--Edwin Denby, "The New York Herald Tribune," Oct. 23, 1948
Apollo was originally choreographed by Balanchine in 1928 -- his first major ballet -- and never has it seemed more modern than it did on Saturday. Balanchine stripped down and simplified everything, from the costumes to the scenario, emphasizing both the god-like and human aspects of Apollo and his muses: Terpsichore, Polyhymnia, and Calliope. Balanchine worked closely with his friend Stravinsky on the score and as emotional as I find Apollo and other Balanchine ballets I also find them full of reason and austererity, which makes them even more beautiful. As Charles M. Joseph wrote in Stravinsky and Balanchine: a journey of invention (Yale University Press, 2002): Like the myth itself, Apollo engenders a transcendental beauty that touches the core of our spirit in ways that are at once personal and universal.
Set to Tchaikovsky's orchestrations of four compositions by Mozart, it is one of Balanchine's most bountiful creations, and he has achieved it with most uncommonly narrow means. Mozartiana is the world in a bubble.
--Arlene Croce, The New Yorker, Aug. 10, 1981
I have said about other Balanchine ballets that the whole world is in them and I think that that is true of both Apollo and Mozartiana, the difference is that the former is at the beginning of Balanchine's world while the latter is at the end; it was one of his last important ballets, both for himself and for his muse of many years Suzanne Farrell. The ballet has four girls from the School of the American Ballet (started by Balanchine when he first came to America) at its beginning and four women later who represent a later part of life. And there is a gigue danced by a solitary male dancer and a theme and variations danced by the male and female lead. It is a ballet about life, as Balanchine was coming to the end of his. The problem today is that most dancers find the off-balance and asymmetrical turns choreographed for Farrell extremely difficult to pull off. But Saturday Sara Mearns did as good a job as I've seen anyone since Farrell do. And Chase Finlay did well in the part originally done on the relatively slight Ib Andersen, for whom much of the gravity was removed.
I wrote about Cortege Hongrois (post of Oct.16) recently and I was most impressed this time with the speed and ferocity of the dancers' attack. The corps is divided into two groups, one traditional (with the women on pointe) the other doing a version of ethnic folk dances. They seem to be in a way competing with each other for speed and spirit, with Balanchine as he often did, exploring "classes" and individuals and couples in various combinations. The music is from Glazounov's full-length Raymonda and the ballet itself is an exciting and playful tribute to Marius Petipa (who did the first Raymonda choreography), with Balanchine holding off the ballerina's most famous passage -- the plunging releves-passes -- until almost the last minute.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Monday, January 29, 2018
The Blind Alley by Jake Hinson
For fifty years this film [Pushover] hasn't gotten its due. Perhaps because it stars Fred MacMurray as an antihero manipulated by a dangerous woman it was labeled a rip-off of Double Indemnity, but this label says more about the laziness of film critics than it does about the film itself. Pushover is a major achievement, a spectacular film noir that deserves reassessment
--Jake Hinson, The Blind Alley
Even those of us with a certificate of completion for the online multimedia course "Into the Darkness: Investigating Film Noir" from Ball State University will learn a great deal from the facts and insights in The Blind Alley (Broken River Books, 2015); Hinson's analysis of Pushover in the context of director Richard Quine's career is particularly noteworthy.
I first came across Hinson's writing in Eddie Muller's on-line magazine, "Noir City," where he wrote a useful analysis of W.Lee Wilder's career (not included in this book, unfortunately). The most interesting pieces in The Blind Alley are about relatively obscure actors (Art Smith, Ted de Corsia), actresses (Barbara Payton, Martha Vickers) and directors (Felix Feist, Cy Endfield) who made significant contributions to the noir universe. And there are new and interesting views of the film noir work of more well-known actors and directors, including Tom Neal, Sterling Hayward and Orson Welles, as well as the writers --such as Cornell Woolrich, "he was the master of the set-up" -- whose stories and novels were sources for film noir.
The Blind Alley passes a crucial test for me: does it have things to say about films I've seen and haven't seen that make me want to see them again or for the first time. A fair number of these films are available on video but many of those that are not sometimes turn up on Turner Classic Movies. My minor quibble with the book is that the copyediting is occasionally sloppy, which happens too often these days, even with major publishers.
--Jake Hinson, The Blind Alley
Even those of us with a certificate of completion for the online multimedia course "Into the Darkness: Investigating Film Noir" from Ball State University will learn a great deal from the facts and insights in The Blind Alley (Broken River Books, 2015); Hinson's analysis of Pushover in the context of director Richard Quine's career is particularly noteworthy.
I first came across Hinson's writing in Eddie Muller's on-line magazine, "Noir City," where he wrote a useful analysis of W.Lee Wilder's career (not included in this book, unfortunately). The most interesting pieces in The Blind Alley are about relatively obscure actors (Art Smith, Ted de Corsia), actresses (Barbara Payton, Martha Vickers) and directors (Felix Feist, Cy Endfield) who made significant contributions to the noir universe. And there are new and interesting views of the film noir work of more well-known actors and directors, including Tom Neal, Sterling Hayward and Orson Welles, as well as the writers --such as Cornell Woolrich, "he was the master of the set-up" -- whose stories and novels were sources for film noir.
The Blind Alley passes a crucial test for me: does it have things to say about films I've seen and haven't seen that make me want to see them again or for the first time. A fair number of these films are available on video but many of those that are not sometimes turn up on Turner Classic Movies. My minor quibble with the book is that the copyediting is occasionally sloppy, which happens too often these days, even with major publishers.
Turner Classic Movies Feb. 2018
I have eased up a bit on recommending movies that I have already mentioned several times, but if you have a question about a particular film please let me know. Meanwhile, I recommend anything directed by Anthony Mann, Nicholas Ray, Raoul Walsh, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, Vincente Minnelli, Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock.
On Feb. 1 is Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember (1957): elegant, emotional, terrific use of widescreen and color.
On Feb. 2 is Chaplin's Limelight (1952), a moving meditation on love and death.
Feb. 3 has Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951) and John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
Feb. 5 has Marcel Ophuls powerful documentary about France in WWII The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)
On Feb. 10 is Michael Powell's The Red Shoes (1948)
Feb. 11 has John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Josef Von Sternberg's exquisite Shanghai Express (1932) and Leo McCarey's wonderful comedy about marriage and remarriage The Awful Truth (1937).
Feb. 13 has Jacques Demy's beautiful and sad musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), followed on the 14th by Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).
On Feb. 15 there is Anthony Mann's intense Western The Naked Spur (1953) and on the 18th is Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
F.W. Murnau's lovely Sunrise (1927) is on the 21st and Minnelli's melodrama Some Came Running, with its excellent Elmer Bernstein score, (1958) is on the 23rd.
Otto Preminger's superb courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959) is on the 27th.
On Feb. 1 is Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember (1957): elegant, emotional, terrific use of widescreen and color.
On Feb. 2 is Chaplin's Limelight (1952), a moving meditation on love and death.
Feb. 3 has Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951) and John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
Feb. 5 has Marcel Ophuls powerful documentary about France in WWII The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)
On Feb. 10 is Michael Powell's The Red Shoes (1948)
Feb. 11 has John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Josef Von Sternberg's exquisite Shanghai Express (1932) and Leo McCarey's wonderful comedy about marriage and remarriage The Awful Truth (1937).
Feb. 13 has Jacques Demy's beautiful and sad musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), followed on the 14th by Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).
On Feb. 15 there is Anthony Mann's intense Western The Naked Spur (1953) and on the 18th is Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
F.W. Murnau's lovely Sunrise (1927) is on the 21st and Minnelli's melodrama Some Came Running, with its excellent Elmer Bernstein score, (1958) is on the 23rd.
Otto Preminger's superb courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959) is on the 27th.
Friday, January 26, 2018
Raoul Peck's We Are Not Your Negro (2016)
The most dangerous thing in America is a nigger with a library card.
The Wire, season 2, episode 10 (written by Ed Burns).
Raoul Peck's passionate and intelligent film is about James Baldwin and race relations in America, where the election of an African-American president did not solve everything the way Robert Kennedy (quoted in the film) thought it would. Baldwin himself found Kennedy's statement particularly condescending, "We've been here for 400 years and now they say that if we are good we can be president!" Baldwin was not always taken particularly seriously during his life (he died in 1987) because he was not only African-American he was also homosexual and an intellectual who lived a good part of his of his life in France. When he returned to America to fight for civil rights he found himself shunned by the NAACP for his homosexuality but he continued to write, give speeches and make public appearances. His last, unfinished, book about Medgar Evers, Malcom X and Martin Luther King, Jr. is used for the narration of Peck's film, read effectively by Samuel L. Jackson, who lets the words speak eloquently for themselves.
Baldwin spent his early years in the Harlem public library, reading nearly every book that was there, until he was given a special dispensation to use other branches of the library. Much of Peck's film consists of his speeches and appearances on TV. At one point when he was on the Dick Cavett show another guest, philosopher Paul Weiss, came on and asked Baldwin why he was so focused on race, since a black and a white philosopher would have more in common than a black philosopher and a white factory worker. Baldwin, mildly amused, said he understood that, but the problem was that most white people would not; the "Negro problem" is more of a white problem. Baldwin's analyses are often intelligent, with a sure knowledge of history and popular culture, though I don't agree that all Western films are as simple as he sees them (though many are). Peck shows images from John Ford's The Searchers, in which the Indians have great dignity. Nor does Peck mention Ford's Sergeant Rutledge, in which a black cavalry unit is portrayed quite positively. In any case, when was the last time there was a serious discussion of race on late-night TV? And where is a James Baldwin when we need him, in these polarized times?
The Wire, season 2, episode 10 (written by Ed Burns).
Raoul Peck's passionate and intelligent film is about James Baldwin and race relations in America, where the election of an African-American president did not solve everything the way Robert Kennedy (quoted in the film) thought it would. Baldwin himself found Kennedy's statement particularly condescending, "We've been here for 400 years and now they say that if we are good we can be president!" Baldwin was not always taken particularly seriously during his life (he died in 1987) because he was not only African-American he was also homosexual and an intellectual who lived a good part of his of his life in France. When he returned to America to fight for civil rights he found himself shunned by the NAACP for his homosexuality but he continued to write, give speeches and make public appearances. His last, unfinished, book about Medgar Evers, Malcom X and Martin Luther King, Jr. is used for the narration of Peck's film, read effectively by Samuel L. Jackson, who lets the words speak eloquently for themselves.
Baldwin spent his early years in the Harlem public library, reading nearly every book that was there, until he was given a special dispensation to use other branches of the library. Much of Peck's film consists of his speeches and appearances on TV. At one point when he was on the Dick Cavett show another guest, philosopher Paul Weiss, came on and asked Baldwin why he was so focused on race, since a black and a white philosopher would have more in common than a black philosopher and a white factory worker. Baldwin, mildly amused, said he understood that, but the problem was that most white people would not; the "Negro problem" is more of a white problem. Baldwin's analyses are often intelligent, with a sure knowledge of history and popular culture, though I don't agree that all Western films are as simple as he sees them (though many are). Peck shows images from John Ford's The Searchers, in which the Indians have great dignity. Nor does Peck mention Ford's Sergeant Rutledge, in which a black cavalry unit is portrayed quite positively. In any case, when was the last time there was a serious discussion of race on late-night TV? And where is a James Baldwin when we need him, in these polarized times?
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Paddington 2, directed by Paul King
I don't want to overpraise Paddington 2 just because it is not as cynical, meretricious and condescending as the American animation of Pixar and Disney, but it is, at the very least, a personal film of the British director, Paul King, and not the corporate product of multiple directors, as is often the case with American animation. Of course Paddington 2 is mostly live-action, lacking the claustrophobia of full animation and integrating the animated title bear without the show-off effects of most computer animation today. I liked the gentle humor of the movie -- rather like the output of the British studio Ealing in the fifties -- with its excellent timing and deadpan dialogue, as in one scene where the villain finds neighbors searching his house in their pajamas.
Ironically, Paddington the bear comes across as more human than the actual humans in the movie. And there is too much campiness and overacting in some of the portrayals, especially Hugh Grant as the villain and Brendan Gleason as the prison cook, even if the effect is to make Paddington seem even more human, as someone "who will look for the good in everyone and find it." Of course the best humor is always the most serious and Paddington 2 portrays, in a low-key manner, an England that probably has mostly ceased to exist, an England of steam trains and pop-up books, where communities stick together, where refugees (Paddington is from Peru) are accepted and embraced and "a nice cup of tea" can overcome one's troubles.
Ironically, Paddington the bear comes across as more human than the actual humans in the movie. And there is too much campiness and overacting in some of the portrayals, especially Hugh Grant as the villain and Brendan Gleason as the prison cook, even if the effect is to make Paddington seem even more human, as someone "who will look for the good in everyone and find it." Of course the best humor is always the most serious and Paddington 2 portrays, in a low-key manner, an England that probably has mostly ceased to exist, an England of steam trains and pop-up books, where communities stick together, where refugees (Paddington is from Peru) are accepted and embraced and "a nice cup of tea" can overcome one's troubles.
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
W. Lee Wilder's Once a Thief 1950
About the daily drudgery of life. In Once a Thief, the bland everyday world is fraught with peril.
--Wampa 12, The Film Noir Bible, 2003
Directed by W. Lee Wilder (brother of Billy) and photographed on some of the same Los Angeles locations as Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and D.O.A.(1949), Once a Thief is a grimy, low-budget film about desperate people. Margie Foster, played by the gritty June Havoc, can't find another factory job in San Francisco so she takes up shoplifting and then flees to Los Angeles and finds a job as a waitress. She is conned by sleazy Mitch Moore (Cesar Romero), who runs a bookie joint with a dry cleaners as a front and after stealing all Margie's money and promising to marry her he gives the cops an anonymous tip about her shoplifting, which he finds out about when he tries to pawn a stolen watch she foolishly had held on to. Margie breaks out of prison and confronts Mitch, killing him accidentally as they struggle with a gun.
Margie's best friend is played effectively by Marie McDonald, as Flo --, McDonald in real life had seven husbands and died in her forties of a drug overdose -- who remains loyal to Havoc when Romero steals Flo's money under the pretense of getting a good lawyer for Margie. The movie is filled with character actors --Iris Adrian, Lon Chaney Jr., et al. --who play the lower-class denizens of Los Angeles with little past and less future. Margie herself is typical of those moving to California, from a farm "in the middle of nowhere," after the war, with the hope of jobs and opportunity.
--Wampa 12, The Film Noir Bible, 2003
Directed by W. Lee Wilder (brother of Billy) and photographed on some of the same Los Angeles locations as Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and D.O.A.(1949), Once a Thief is a grimy, low-budget film about desperate people. Margie Foster, played by the gritty June Havoc, can't find another factory job in San Francisco so she takes up shoplifting and then flees to Los Angeles and finds a job as a waitress. She is conned by sleazy Mitch Moore (Cesar Romero), who runs a bookie joint with a dry cleaners as a front and after stealing all Margie's money and promising to marry her he gives the cops an anonymous tip about her shoplifting, which he finds out about when he tries to pawn a stolen watch she foolishly had held on to. Margie breaks out of prison and confronts Mitch, killing him accidentally as they struggle with a gun.
Margie's best friend is played effectively by Marie McDonald, as Flo --, McDonald in real life had seven husbands and died in her forties of a drug overdose -- who remains loyal to Havoc when Romero steals Flo's money under the pretense of getting a good lawyer for Margie. The movie is filled with character actors --Iris Adrian, Lon Chaney Jr., et al. --who play the lower-class denizens of Los Angeles with little past and less future. Margie herself is typical of those moving to California, from a farm "in the middle of nowhere," after the war, with the hope of jobs and opportunity.
Monday, January 8, 2018
Leo McCarey's Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
McCarey has always been a favorite director of mine because of his ability to combine romantic passion with the pain and comedy that often goes with it, especially in The Awful Truth (1937) and An Affair to Remember (1957). Once Upon a Honeymoon adds the problematic element of international politics. The film is unusual for its time in even mentioning the plight of Jews under Hitler but when Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant are put briefly in a concentration camp the place seems more inconvenient than anything else, though Rogers had given her passport to a Jewish maid so that the maid could escape with her children. The film is at its best when Rogers and Grant are developing a romantic interest in each other, as Rogers gradually realizes that marrying an Austrian baron is not the best way to escape being a burlesque queen from Brooklyn, and McCarey allows the two actors to improvise spontaneously in Paris and on a boat to America.
It took the German émigré Ernst Lubitsch to make an effective comedy about the Nazis, To Be or Not to Be coming out the same year as Once Upon a Honeymoon. Though I give credit to McCarey for having the Nazis in Once Upon a Honeymoon speak German throughout (rather than an accented English) Lubitsch's film deals with actual Germans and Poles attempting to outwit the Nazis, not the Americans in McCarey's film who rely on the American embassy to free them from the Nazis because, after all, O'Toole and O'Hara are not really Jews.
It took the German émigré Ernst Lubitsch to make an effective comedy about the Nazis, To Be or Not to Be coming out the same year as Once Upon a Honeymoon. Though I give credit to McCarey for having the Nazis in Once Upon a Honeymoon speak German throughout (rather than an accented English) Lubitsch's film deals with actual Germans and Poles attempting to outwit the Nazis, not the Americans in McCarey's film who rely on the American embassy to free them from the Nazis because, after all, O'Toole and O'Hara are not really Jews.
Friday, January 5, 2018
Mank: The Wit, World and Life of Herman Mankiewicz
The authorship of Citizen Kane has become one of film history's major controversies.
--Richard Meryman, The Wit, World and Life of Herman Mankiewicz (William Morrow and Company, 1978)
The obvious answer to the Kane dilemma is that Herman Mankiewicz wrote the film and Orson Welles directed it.
--Richard Corliss, Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema (The Overlook Press, 1974).
Film is a collaborative art, with the director as first among equals (to use the term for Augustus from the Ara Pacis) and the mostly forgotten battle between film critics Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris was about this issue. But a comparison between the filmographies of Mankiewicz and Welles will make clear that Welles deserves most of the credit for Citizen Kane while the rest of it goes to Mankiewicz, Gregg Toland (cinematographer) and Bernard Hermann (music). Welles did not generally write his own screenplays but worked closely with Mankiewicz, just as Ford, Hawks, and Hitchcock supervised the work of their writers. Meryman talked to most of those who worked on the film who were still around in 1978, including original producer John Houseman, and came to the conclusion that the screenplay was a collaboration and it is impossible to sort out who wrote exactly what.
Meryman's biography of Mankiewicz is not mainly about the films -- like many biographers of screenwriters he does not tell us which films he's seen and their relationship, if any, to Citizen Kane (Corliss does find some) - but mostly chronicles the dissolute life of Mank, who came from the New York theatre world and the Algonquin roundtable and, like others from that milieu (Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, et al.) came to Hollywood for the money, condescended to movies, and drank and partied himself to death, his supposedly witty comments forgotten.
--Richard Meryman, The Wit, World and Life of Herman Mankiewicz (William Morrow and Company, 1978)
The obvious answer to the Kane dilemma is that Herman Mankiewicz wrote the film and Orson Welles directed it.
--Richard Corliss, Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema (The Overlook Press, 1974).
Film is a collaborative art, with the director as first among equals (to use the term for Augustus from the Ara Pacis) and the mostly forgotten battle between film critics Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris was about this issue. But a comparison between the filmographies of Mankiewicz and Welles will make clear that Welles deserves most of the credit for Citizen Kane while the rest of it goes to Mankiewicz, Gregg Toland (cinematographer) and Bernard Hermann (music). Welles did not generally write his own screenplays but worked closely with Mankiewicz, just as Ford, Hawks, and Hitchcock supervised the work of their writers. Meryman talked to most of those who worked on the film who were still around in 1978, including original producer John Houseman, and came to the conclusion that the screenplay was a collaboration and it is impossible to sort out who wrote exactly what.
Meryman's biography of Mankiewicz is not mainly about the films -- like many biographers of screenwriters he does not tell us which films he's seen and their relationship, if any, to Citizen Kane (Corliss does find some) - but mostly chronicles the dissolute life of Mank, who came from the New York theatre world and the Algonquin roundtable and, like others from that milieu (Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, et al.) came to Hollywood for the money, condescended to movies, and drank and partied himself to death, his supposedly witty comments forgotten.
Monday, January 1, 2018
Mark Sandrich's Shall We Dance, 1937
The choreography was frontally planned, with full head-to-foot framing -- no closeups, no overhead shots. One has the impression of watching every moment from an ideally placed seat in a theatre.
--Arlene Croce, The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book (Galahad Books, 1972).
My six-year-old daughter Victoria loves her tap-dancing class so we all decided to watch Fred Astaire this New Year's Eve (she had not yet seen any of his films): she loved Shall We Dance and so did I. One of the reasons was that I thought Victoria would enjoy the somewhat vaudevillian humor as well as the dancing. And she did, especially the verbal routines of Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton. A musical comedy is often a tricky balancing act: for some there is not enough singing and dancing, for others there is too much. I didn't see many musicals when I was a kid, but even when I was a teenager I groaned when the comedy stopped and the music started. Now, especially in Astaire films, there is for me never enough dancing and singing. Not everyone likes Astaire's singing, but I love the way he doesn't try overly to interpret a song but just presents it, leaving most of the interpretation to us. Astaire was quite familiar with the music of George and Ira Gershwin --who did the music for Shall We Dance -- from Broadway, having starred in two of their shows.
Of course there is nowhere near enough dancing, but what there is is glorious, especially "They All Laughed," when Rogers and Astaire start off as antagonists and gradually become a dancing couple. I rather like the crazy plot of this film, where Astaire as a ballet dancer and Rogers as a tap/jazz dancer gradually merge their styles and where the two have to get married and then divorced in order to convince people that they are not married then end up together after he searches for her in a sea of dancers all wearing a mask of Rogers. What dancing there is is quite varied, from Astaire solo in the engine room of a ship to Rogers and Astaire dancing beautifully on roller skates in the park. Mark Sandrich directed stylishly, on art deco sets, letting Astaire and Hermes Pan, his regular choreographer, stage the dances.
--Arlene Croce, The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book (Galahad Books, 1972).
My six-year-old daughter Victoria loves her tap-dancing class so we all decided to watch Fred Astaire this New Year's Eve (she had not yet seen any of his films): she loved Shall We Dance and so did I. One of the reasons was that I thought Victoria would enjoy the somewhat vaudevillian humor as well as the dancing. And she did, especially the verbal routines of Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton. A musical comedy is often a tricky balancing act: for some there is not enough singing and dancing, for others there is too much. I didn't see many musicals when I was a kid, but even when I was a teenager I groaned when the comedy stopped and the music started. Now, especially in Astaire films, there is for me never enough dancing and singing. Not everyone likes Astaire's singing, but I love the way he doesn't try overly to interpret a song but just presents it, leaving most of the interpretation to us. Astaire was quite familiar with the music of George and Ira Gershwin --who did the music for Shall We Dance -- from Broadway, having starred in two of their shows.
Of course there is nowhere near enough dancing, but what there is is glorious, especially "They All Laughed," when Rogers and Astaire start off as antagonists and gradually become a dancing couple. I rather like the crazy plot of this film, where Astaire as a ballet dancer and Rogers as a tap/jazz dancer gradually merge their styles and where the two have to get married and then divorced in order to convince people that they are not married then end up together after he searches for her in a sea of dancers all wearing a mask of Rogers. What dancing there is is quite varied, from Astaire solo in the engine room of a ship to Rogers and Astaire dancing beautifully on roller skates in the park. Mark Sandrich directed stylishly, on art deco sets, letting Astaire and Hermes Pan, his regular choreographer, stage the dances.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)