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Archive for the ‘Cyd Charisse: screen goddess’ Category

Ziegfeld Follies

13 Jun

Ziegfeld Follies – directed by lots of people including Vincent Minnelli. Song and Dance Musical Scrapbook. 110 minutes Technicolor 1945.

★★★

The Story: None. Flo Ziegfeld in heaven reminisces into being a last great follies. When it is over, he reappears as the other slice of the sandwich. The filling is a compendium of talent then under contract at MGM.

~

Some of these acts lie dead in the water. Others dogpaddle around. All of them are with Olympic grade performers, including Esther Williams who actually was Olympic grade. She tumbles under water smiling valiantly amid the kelp in a piece that feels forced, and, of course, is just that, as we are forced to believe that when she swims off-camera she wouldn’t dream of taking a breath of air there.

Judy Garland plays The Great Movie Star giving an interview, but the chorus boys have more life to them than the piece. Not even Garland, full of vaudeville fun as she was, can energize the flaccid material. For once, though, she is properly costumed and it’s good to see her looking so grown-up, cute, and soignée.

Red Skelton’s immediacy is funny as a TV pitchman for a brand of gin. And Victor Moore brilliantly convinces himself and each of us watching that he is being reduced to desperation by his blowhard lawyer, well played by Edward Arnold. It looks like an old Orpheum Circuit skit, and it probably was one. As does the piece with Fanny Brice playing a housewife who has to recover a winning sweepstakes ticket given by her husband to the landlord, William Frawley. The skit was must have been funnier on the stage; Brice must have been funnier on the stage, she probably relished her audiences, they in turn enriching her. Hume Cronyn surprises you by his deftness as the comic husband in this piece.

The one solid dud in the collection is Keenan Wynn in the telephone sequence. Directed by the famous acting teacher Bobby Lewis, one would have thought something might have been made of it, but it would have been better played by his father Ed Wynn, or at least by someone with natural funny bones, like Durante or Hope or Raye. Keenan Wynn could be funny as a character but not as a stand-up single. He is suicidally bad, poor guy. Let’s sink down into our seats and spare him further shame.

This being MGM, everything is over-produced, including Lena Horne’s solo, the wonderful song “Love.” With her hot eyes and powerful arms and elbows, Horne moves through the song’s genius in a costume wrapped around her like a wound.

Another singer, James Melton, sings the waltz scene from Traviata. And Kathryn Grayson sings the finale, in which Cyd Charisse twirls about as the ballerina, as she does in the opening, briefly with Fred Astaire.

Astaire dances four times in this film. And he sings. And there is no one like him, and, without meaning to, he really puts everyone else in the piece outside the pale. He is the one who’s worth the ticket of admission.

One of his dances is with Gene Kelly, in a frivolous duet, “The Babbit and the Bromide,” and Astaire opens the entire show with a turn or two in which Charisse dances and Lucile Ball appears wielding a whip as a dominatrix. Except for two sideways glances she asks us to take this hysteria seriously. No one with hair that particular color could possibly be serious.

But Astaire dances twice with the stony Lucile Bremer, once playing a society dame at a ball being wooed by a cat burglar, and in the second with Bremer as a Chinatown doxie being woed by Bobby Lewis, terrifying as the ganglord, and by Astaire as a Chinese peasant.

Bremer was a talented dancer, with good carriage, and a fine figure. She dances beautifully with Astaire, but as a screen personality she is meaningless. Astaire is dancing with a mummy, and it is odd that this was not found out sooner, when all Astaire needed to do was turn to Cyd Charisse who was standing there right next to him. Bremer’s face is cold; she can’t help it, but it is just awful to look at. She had made Minnelli’s Yolanda and The Thief with Astaire and Minnelli, another failed film, and these two pieces, one suspects, are left-overs from that film. Bremer was Arthur Freed’s mistress. He is the producer. Indeed, “Raffles” – an upper-crust dance at a satire ball – is an exact duplicate of the plot of Yolanda.

“Limehouse Blues” is fan dance, and is especially interesting as Astaire retains a poker face, his slant eyes expressionless, while they both wield four fans in startling metronomic display. It is actually a ballet, such as Gene Kelly would mount, and it works like all get out. Astaire’s cooperation with a partner on the dance floor is meritorious. The more you look at him perform the less you believe your eyes. Credulity is inapt to a miracle.

Both pieces seem to have been augmented by Minnelli’s set designs, décor, and color sense – with big corps de ballet. And certainly by his desire for fantasy-dance and dream-dance, of the kind he would put into play at the end of The Bandwagon, also with Astaire.

Why sample this smorgasbord?

Because Fred Astaire had the greatest body ever to appear in film.

One looks at all the Rembrandts one can.

 

 

 
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Posted in Cyd Charisse: screen goddess, Dance & Dancing, Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Edward Arnold, Esther Williams, Fred Astaire: Screen God, Gene Kelly, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Judy Garland: screen and acting goddess, Kathryn Grayson, Keenan Wynn, Lena Horne, Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, Variety Show, Victor Moore, William Frawley

 

The Band Wagon – more

10 Nov

The Band Wagon – more — directed by Vincente Minnelli – a backstage musical in which a fading movie hoofer resumes his Broadway career, except with a director of Orson Wellesian pretension, except, as well, with a snooty ballerina! – 112 minutes 1953.

* * * * *

The Greatest Musical Ever Made? Don’t answer. I’ve been watching it again in the DVD re-release, color restored and in stereo now. Two discs of background and outtakes, and three versions all of which I could not help watching in one day, the other two being a commentary by Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein and a monaural version, which I actually preferred, because that’s what I saw when it first came out in 1953 while I was in basic at Fort Dix. Those soldiers who appear in the Shine On My Shoes number were like me, headed for the Korean War. I went back to the post movie house and saw it all over again, just as I did yesterday. The Lisa Minnelli and Michael Feinstein version is worthwhile because Michael Feinstein is a gentleman and has useful information about the musical contributions of Adolf Deutsch, Roger Edens, and the arranger Conrad Salinger, while Liza Minnelli jackasses herself with moronic sentimentality punctuated with a coarse laugh. Her nostalgia is not even her own — she is nostalgic not for her father but for his work, which, however, is before us, and which speaks for itself. Vincente Minnelli was famous for his color sense, and the colors are not modest. He hired two newcomers, Michael Kidd, to do the choreography, and Mary Ann Nyberg to do the costumes. Nyberg does two unusual things with Cyd Charisse. The first is to put her in green twice, not a forgiving color for humans, except her. The second is to frame the film with her costumes, red and green at the start, then red and green at the end. In It’s Always Fair Weather, Charisse, in the boxing match dance, will wear two almost matching greens, and she has already proven she can carry the color in the great Louise Brooks finale of Singing In The Rain where she wears a green flapper dress with short flyaway skirt. Now, first seen in the en pointe ballet, Charisse is in bright red. Next when she enters to meet Astaire, she is in a black spangled lace dress over midnight green petticoats so dark you can hardly see the green, with bright green gloves. At the end, Nyberg puts Charisse in the red spangled dress for the Girl Hunt ballet and then for the That’s Entertainment finale she puts Charisse in green khaki satin. For the simple and justly famous Dancing In The Dark number in Central Park, Nyberg, in a tour de force choice, has Charisse and Astaire both in white, he in three tones of white, she in a $22 shirtwaist with a trillion pleats. White, the color of truce – for, having come to a truce in life, they are out to discover whether they can find a truce in dance. The unity of their performance is created in part by the unity of that color, to make “Dancing In The Dark” the most moving romantic dance ever filmed. (Watch: Charisse actually leads it; the focus is actually given to her.) The other newcomer is Michael Kidd. You will find what he starts out to do in the “Louisiana Hayride” number he will not long after complete in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. But what he mainly does is remove Astaire from his usual tropes. So there are no great big tap dancing numbers and such. What we have is the amiable affair of the shoeshine dance and the jazz dance of “The Girl Hunt Ballet”. That is to say, Astaire’s dancing is technically simple, and this is rare for him, for it does not resemble even big splashy jazz numbers like “Stepping Out With My Baby” from Easter Parade. It’s a new Astaire, and it is possibly the most satisfying and relaxed he has ever been in dance. To make up for it, he sings a lot, and sings well. Watch also the chiaroscuro of Minnelli’s use of extras and bit players as they populate, move around, pass through, come forward, and then retreat into the background dark, as does Thurston Hall as the moneybags backer and the stagehands and manger. Compare “Girl Hunt” here with the similar but barely populated “Broadway Rhythm: Gotta Dance” finale of Singing In The Rain, to feel Minnelli’s genius as a colorist with chorus, with casts, with people, with extras, all of whom he instructed individually and personally as to their tasks and motivations. This makes it a musical of great warmth. Easy and essential. Singing In The Rain and The Band Wagon are the apogee of Hollywood musicals. Don’t miss them.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Backstage Musical, CHARACTER BIT PLAYER EXTRAORDIAIRE: Thurston Hall, Classic Movie Musical, Cyd Charisse: screen goddess, Dance & Dancing, Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Fred Astaire: Screen God, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, James Mitchell, MUST SEE, Nanette Fabray, Oscar Levant, Singing & Dancng Musical

 

The Kissing Bandit

30 Sep

The Kissing Bandit – Directed by Laslo Benedek. Musical. The milquetoast son of a famed Mexican bandit longs for his son to take up the gun, and become “The Kissing Bandit.” 100 minutes 1948.

* * * *

In Ann Miller’s picture book of her musicals, this one is described, by common agreement of all its principals, as The Worst Musical Ever Made. I don’t know what the worst ever made is, but this can’t be it. First of all it is a lot of fun! It’s a Latin American farce, so, if you like The Pirate as much as I do, you will find this picture has its own version of amusement. (True, it would have been better directed by Vincente Minnelli.) Much of that amusement is supplied by J. Carrol Naish who, with a light-bulb nose, plays the funniest bandito in the world, grumpy, greedy, and galumphing. He is abetted by Mildred Natwick who is super as a lecherous duenna. For its stars we have Frank Sinatra, who is in perfect voice, and Kathryn Grayson, the same. These two had made musicals together before this, and got along. Why?  As they are so oddly matched, they are perfectly suited to one another. For Kathryn Grayson with her valentine face and bosom and her operetta soprano and Sinatra with no body weight at all and his crooner’s baritone are a naturally funny combo and they both play their parts well in the style of light farce, with Sinatra as the fool and Grayson as the femme voluptueuse. None of Nacio Herb Brown’s songs (save Love Is Where You Find It) are hits, yet that is not the problem. The problem is that the costumes are lousy. They drown the performers and the performances. They are not just over the top, which would be fun, they are vulgar, and one is wrenched from what is going on by the distraction of their garishness. Only until Grayson gets into a black dress and then into a white one, do her scenes work. A neat pas de trois, with Cyd Charisse and Ann Miller and Ricardo Montalban, is almost demolished because of the gold shoulders the two ladies wear. (As an aside, I wonder – why it was Sinatra was always presented as sexually callow in his films, a boy with no passion, sexual experience, or drive. Was it to still milk his appeal to fifteen year old bobby soxers?) The great Robert Surtees filmed it, and it still works to entertain escape and beguile. See if you don’t agree.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Ann Miller, Billy Gilbert, Cyd Charisse: screen goddess, FILMED BY: Robert Surtees, Frank Sinatra, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, J. Carrol Naish, Kathryn Grayson, Mildred Natwick: MASTER COMEDIENNE, MUSICAL, Ricardo Montalban, Singing & Dancng Musical

 

East Side, West Side

17 Dec

East Side, West Side — directed by Mervyn Leroy — drama about a society woman who finds her husband is stepping out on her. 108 minutes black and white 1949

* * * *

Cyd Charisse had an appealing lady-like quality to her, something modest and reserved. Also something inherently comedic, as can be seen in her ravishing poker-faced finale-dances in the saloons with Astaire and Kelly. Here she is less brilliantly dressed than the female star who is the addiction of James Mason in the picture, a sex addict helpless to stop himself. Understandable if the object of his compulsion happens to be Ava Gardner. Gardner really can’t act, and she knew it, and both things show. She was a very interesting woman off the screen, one hears, rather like Paulette Goddard was — direct, honest, and fun. Here, as usual, she is forced and broad and untrained, and it is painfully obvious in her scenes opposite Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck always had the common touch as an actress. She was a girl from Brooklyn and never lost her Brooklyn accent. She was tiny, had a marvelous carriage, moved fabulously, exuded physical strength, had great direct execution as an actress — everything was clear and ready — and she had an interesting alto vocal quality to boot. But the voice is somewhat flat and she is always all too ready with a response. She is canny as an actress in her few pauses, but she does tend to rush her lines and leaves most of her material unexplored for its details. (For a detail-brilliant actress see Geraldine Page.) She lacks breadth and range: she seldom played comedy, although she was a Good Time Charley at it when she did. But essentially her dramatic range even at high pitch is monotonous. She is peculiar in looks and in energy. She was convincing as someone who worked for a living, someone who did things. Here she plays a Park Avenue matron, which is, of course, ridiculous, but she gets away with it, not because she acts it or has to act it, but because every character in the story plays up to her as such, just as, for film after film, she is referred to as a beauty, which, of course, she was not. But she was someone whom we were all accustomed to, like Dick Tracy or Blondie. Into this Hollywood cocktail arrives the earthy and naturally humorous Van Heflin, with his lovely technique, who breathes an air of reality into the proceedings that nearly topples the picture. But he is a very adaptable actor and one who is appealingly self-effacing. The film is a fancy MGM production — pulp, of course, but, if one likes pulp, as I do, a show with a lot of residual merit.

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Posted in Ava Gardner, Barbara Stanwyck: THE QUEEN, Cyd Charisse: screen goddess, DRAMA, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, James Mason, MATING, Nancy Davis, Van Heflin

 

The Silencers

06 Dec

The Silencers – directed by Phil Carlson – a parody of Bond. — 102 minutes color 1968

* *

Do you find garage doors fascinating? Like them this film is a gadget, not without its grumbling use and occasional comical breakdown. And it itself is full of gadgets, huger doors, fatter death-rays, wilder amo. If you fire this revolver it will shoot you in the chest, if you press that button you will find a naked tomato in your bathtub. Of course, the hugest garage doors are the false eyelashes of the babes. They come crashing down, dislodging civilizations. Step back from them. Dean Martin certainly does. He is wise and unperturbed by the sexual affront they present and the cavernous décolletage they awn. Ah, for the peace of refusal which seems to be his, as he plays in this, the first of the Matt Helm mock-Bond series. Nowadays we don’t have leading ladies such as Stella Stevens whose hair is dyed Irish Setter and held in place with Gorilla Glue. She’s Helm’s fumbling side-kick, called that, I suppose, because she keeps kicking him in the side. Martin is some kind of easy dish, like spaghetti, pleasant and not without nourishment, easy to take. He never asks to be liked and so is likeable for it. He strolls through bullet-hails with benificent nonchalance. Daliah Lavi presents hair piled on the back of her head as though concealing a rocket launcher. Dozens of ladies, equally coiffed and lashed throw themselves at Martin’s head, but he retains his incredulity as to the animal fervor they advertise, as any normal intact male would. Their ferocious armamentarium promises pornography, that is to say, unearned nudity. And, since the film begins with a series of strip-teases, we are able to sustain no virginal delusions about what is to follow. Even when the miraculous Cyd Charisse performs. Two numbers are given her, miserably choreographed, vilely costumed, but her dignity, her alacritous genius, and the natural placement of her hip-bones conquer the drooling mess.

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Posted in ACTION, Cyd Charisse: screen goddess, Dean Martin, Farce, Low Comedy, Parody, Spy Comedy

 

The Bandwagon

16 Oct

The Bandwagon – directed by Vincente Minnelli – a backstage musical in which a fading movie hoofer resumes his Broadway career, except with a director of Orson Wellesian pretension, except, as well, with a snooty ballerina! – 112 minutes 1953

* * * *

I just slightly prefer Fred Astaire to Gene Kelly, so I barely prefer this to Singing In The Rain as my favorite musical of that era. Astaire performs phenomenal feet feats and especially with a negro shoeshine man in the opening sequence. (It’s well worth hearing Lisa Minnelli tell the story of that man in the Extras.) Astaire dances beautifully with Cyd Charisse, whose long waist bends back in his arm like an osier. Setting Ginger Rogers aside, Cyd Charisse was one of the two greatest dancers he ever danced with (the other being Rita Hayworth), because Charisse’s power, attack, musicality, and joy in dance were even greater than his own. Charisse was essentially a comedic dancer, a quality clearly shown in Black Tights, Singing In The Rain, and here. Her humor is embodied, reserved, and always in play. A member of The Ballets Russe from the time she was a child, she is less a prima ballerina assoluta than a character dancer, and this is why films were so right for her. She was a great physical beauty, with a slender, swift, lithe body, and those legs that go on forever, don’t they? So the Mickey Spillane take-off at the end is perfect for her. She never tips her hand as a satirist, and what’s so entertaining is how sexy she is in succeeding in doing that. The script is full of fun, and Nanette Fabray is full of beans as the better half of the script-writing team putting on the show, and Jack Buchanan is full of himself as the director of the turkey. Minnelli organized color schemes and Oliver Smith’s sets to give absolute support and humor to the whole — a masterpiece of tone in every department. Wonderful songs! Just a delight! An essential movie and an essential musical! Aw, shut up, Bruce; like Jack Buchanan, you might be overselling it.

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Posted in Classic Movie Musical, Cyd Charisse: screen goddess, Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Essential Musical, Fred Astaire: Screen God, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Nanette Fabray, Showbiz Comedy

 
 
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