Silk Stockings (December 2011)

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Arthur Freed, Billy Wilder, Cole Porter, Cyd Charisse, Fred Astaire, Jules Munshin, Lubitsch, MGM, Peter Lorre, Rouben Mamoulian

A sad disappointment of a film.  Any project that combines the talents of Cole Porter, Rouben Mamoulian, Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse ought to be something wonderful and stylish.  Instead, it is a jocose, vulgar wreck.  When Cole Porter et al. reworked Philadelphia Story and Taming of the Shrew, they managed to retain the spirit of the originals and to create something that stands up in its own right – fine songs, great dancing, good performances.  Maybe the art of Lubitsch is more intractable.

The script did not help.  It seems that George S. Kaufman’s book for the stage version did not make much use of the three rogue commissars so we have to blame Leonard Gershe and Leonard Spigelgass for what went wrong.  Instead of the rapier of Billy Wilder we get a plastic dagger.  For example, the second time that Ninotchka is sent to sort out the commissars, it is because they have entered a dance contest and won it with a cha-cha-cha.  I think that the version in Ninotchka when they throw a carpet out of a window and complain that it doesn’t fly is about one million times more amusing.  Not least since this particular cha-cha-cha would have been danced by Jules Munshin, Peter Lorre and Joseph Buloff!  Who could possibly have seen fit to give them a prize?

In this film, Peter Lorre cuts a particularly sorry figure.  For all his gifts, he was no physical comedian and it is painful to see him reduced to feeble clowning.  He might well have been this kind of person in real life, but this does not mean that he could act that way on screen.  He was M, der Verlorene, Joel Cairo, that guy in Casablanca….

Possibly the crux of the matter is that the script of Ninotchka has real emotional content.  The plot has been constructed by a watchmaker.  The commissars have to stay in the Royal Suite at the Grand Hotel because it is the only room with a safe big enough to hold the jewels they have extorted.  We feel the sense of betrayal when the White Russians manage to rob the safe while Ninotchka is on the razzle with Melvyn Douglas.  In Silk Stockings, the plot motive is simply deranged.  Why would an American film producer commission a Russian composer to write music for an adaptation of “War and Peace” in which a Hollywood mermaid à la Esther Williams will star?  Strange things happened in Hollywood but they need to meet the standards of probable possibility to make a film about them.  It is an idea worthy of The Producers rather than a bittersweet romantic comedy.  And then, to have the moment of betrayal triggered by a scene in which the Russians hear their adored music arranged as a swinging dance number!  It is just too stupid to carry any emotional punch.

Cole Porter, for all his legendary refinement, was no enemy of vulgarity – he did write Mexican Hayride after all, and held stars such as Bobby Clark and Ethel Merman in high regard – but it is hard to see why he went along with this.  Then again, it is a very weak score:  only “All of You” has achieved any life outside the musical.  Fred Astaire also seems out of place – hard though it is to imagine.  It is strange that he is not involved in the best dance sequences in the film – Charisse’s elegant solo where she dresses in finery to the strains of “Silk Stockings”, and the athletic, rumbustious “Red Blues”.  Dance styles had changed by 1957 and he was not getting any younger.  The physicality of “Stereophonic Sound” or his duet with Charisse, “Fated to be Mated”, really do not suit his style.  He also does an awkward jive take on his classic “Puttin’ on the Ritz” routine – “Ritz Roll and Rock”.  It is well-documented how much Porter hated rock ‘n’ roll.  His duet with Charisse to “All of You” feels like a pallid remake of their duet to “Dancing in the Dark”.  There is no real chemistry between them this time.

And what was Mamoulian up to?  He moves the camera gracefully.  He introduces Fred Astaire in a sequence of foot-level shots – did anyone ever walk as distinctively as Astaire?  He conjures a reasonable facsimile of Garbo out of Charisse but the script is so feeble that it is impossible for her to make us forget her predecessor in the role.  What is really hard to accept is the terrifying vulgarity of Janis Paige’s performance as the Hollywood mermaid.  She comes across as a blend of Ethel Merman and Martha Raye.  In any other Astaire musical, she would have had a brief scene or two as comic relief:  perhaps to make Ginger Rogers jealous.  She slaps the side of her head repeatedly – apparently in an attempt to alleviate the deafness brought on by all the swimming she has done in Hollywood.  They must have paid a lot for such a great gag!  Her boisterous, stentorian performance of “Stereophonic Sound” threatens to shatter the screen.  Her partner, Fred Astaire just looks ill-at-ease.

And then there is Jules.  Sig Rumann at least had presence and authority, which made his slide into decadence amusing.  Munshin was someone who aspired to be merely decadent – a man constantly striving to be no more than just tasteless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ihiy4O9lsY

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Broadway Melody of 1940 (November 2011)

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Arthur Freed, Cole Porter, Eleanor Powell, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, George Murphy, MGM, Nacio Herb Brown

As in the case of American in Paris, it is about 30 years or more since I last saw this film. I remember liking it but not being awe-struck by it. I must have had extremely high standards back then. Having seen it again, I can say that, in parts, it is a wonderful musical – those parts being a few inimitable dance routines.

Fred Astaire’s “improvised” routine to “I’ve Got My Eyes on You” is simply a superb summation of the artistry of the man. He starts out seated at a piano, playing through and singing the tune while, during the line-breaks, spinning round on the stool and tapping through the fills. It looks as if he really is playing. Maybe on the sound-tracked he was over-dubbed, but it does look as if he was really playing the thing. And then he launches into one of his solo routines, along the lines of “No Strings” or “When There’s a Shine on your Shoes”.  This was a man who expressed himself most fully in movement.  Not to be unfair to Gene Kelly, he was another such, but he was more concerned with conveying power and weight.  And to be honest, there were people who conveyed it more effectively – such as Burt Lancaster or Yul Brynner.  Fred Astaire is always on springs, ready to explode into action.  Compare this sequence to the one in American in Paris where Kelly annoys Levant with a fairly poor Gershwin tune – “Tra-la-la (This Time It’s Really Love)”.  He grins like an idiot and teeters around like a skittle about to overbalance:  a man trying very hard to pretend to be exhilarated.  Astaire’s routine here is, on the other hand, pure excitement.  And yet nothing was left to chance.  He would have rehearsed it all immensely thoroughly…and then rehearsed some more to make it just flow naturally and easily and effortlessly.  He throws Eleanor Powell’s conveniently spherical powder-compact onto a tent roof and then catches it in his hat.  However, since there is a droop in the tent canvas, there is a dip in the trajectory which delays the flight: Astaire timed it perfectly.

Eleanor Powell has been watching from the wings and suddenly realises who is the better dancer out of Fred Astaire and George Murphy – one of those tangled musical plots that do not really bear unravelling in detail (if only they had told Richard Wagner) – and she suggests they go to lunch together. They “extemporise” a dance to a tune that the waiter conjures out of the jukebox.  Here were two people operating at their limits, testing each other and having fun:  you can see it on their faces.  Their celebrated “Begin the Beguine” routine is perhaps more intricate and highly wrought but as an expression of feeling, of joy in movement, of joy in partnership, it is not so good.  It lacks the spontaneity of the jukebox number, even though that was obviously far from spontaneous.

The “Begin the Beguine” routine is clearly a virtuoso effort from everyone involved.  The designers created a set of polished floors and mirrors and an endless vista.  The cinematographer and electricians ensured that there were no reflections of lights and technicians, merely the dancers, singers and orchestra, despite the elaborate camera movements tracking everyone.  It is truly an amazing tour de force of technique.  And yet, for me it is surpassed by the sheer joie de vivre of that jukebox routine.  I am glad that Powell claimed it as her favourite dance routine on film.  For once, she had more to do than tapping and whirling, getting thrown around by 20 muscular men and doing somersaults – she had done one of those numbers earlier on “All Ashore”.  This dance, for once, allowed her personality to shine through doing what she did best:  dance.

You do have to feel for poor George Murphy, though.  Until Fred Astaire came along, he was Powell’s partner.  This film made it clear that although he was a pretty good dancer he was no match for Astaire.  And then when Gene Kelly came along a year or so later, it would be made clear that he was second-fiddle to him as well.  And bear a thought for Freed and Nacio Herb Brown – the overture quoted their eponymous song…collecting those royalties again

Mexican Hayride (July 2011)

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Cole Porter, Damn Yankees, Ian Marshall Fisher, Jimmy Durante, June Havoc, Louise Gold, Michael Roberts, Myra Sands

This was the third show that Cole Porter had running on Broadway in 1944 after Something for the Boys and Seven Lively Arts and it is understandable that the springs were running low.  The score is not especially memorable and even the big ballad  I Love You – written as a bet – is essentially a modification of Night and Day.  It was a real throwback to a 1920s style musical, with a number of opportunities for star turns eg Lolita’s numbers, energetically and enthusiastically (maybe alarmingly) rendered by Wendy Ferguson, or Lilian the wife who seems to appear in just one scene.

 

It was really a vehicle for a comedian called Bobby Clark who used to draw a pair of spectacles on his face.  He was undoubtedly a draw at the time, in fact his Broadway career extended to the role of Mr Applegate in Damn Yankees in the mid 1950s, but like so many comic acts of the time (you think of Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice etc) he probably takes a bit of an effort to stomach these days.  In The New Yorkers, Michael Roberts stepped with panache into the shoes of Jimmy Durante.  Here he did his best with the threadbare and not so subtle material given to Bobby Clark.

 

In view of the prominence of this role, it very hard to imagine how this show ran for 481 performances: the audience must really have adored him.  What else did the show have in its favour apart from a lack-lustre comedian and an off-colour Porter score?

 

June Havoc was in the original show in the next most prominent role as Montana the bull-fighter.  From Gypsy, you imagine that Baby June would have evolved into a demure, prissy adult performer but her chosen stage name gives the lie to that.  In films, she was lively and energetic as, say, Betty Hutton and Mexican Hayride  gave her rom to strut.  There Must be Someone for Me is one of Porter’s catalogue songs – albeit that it shows signs of strain in lines such as “a boy moose for every girl moose”.  Louise Gold, that stalwart of Lost Musicals, applied her large personality to the role and convinced us that it might have worked on stage.  Abracadabra (and you’re in/out of love) was another number that worked simply because of her bounce and zest.

 

Jonathan Hansler had the real mill-stone of a part: the “comic” Mexican who manages Montana and who becomes Joe Buscom’s dupe.  Boscom, Montana and Lombo have to carry the entire show.  The American consul crops up every now and then to sing I Love You – like Allan Jones in a Marx Brothers’ film.  There is a shady Russian lady who feels Buscom’s bumps and extracts money from a wealthy American tourist with a large bankroll and a precocious son.  Stewart Permutt, as usual, does the filling-in – the rich American, the overweight female companion of another American tourist, the chief of police.  That other stalwart, Myra Sands, appears in the other plus factor that the original show had in its favour.  Mike Todd produced it and so he filled it with full of spectacle and scantily clad girls.  The egregious Bobby Clark got a production number – Girls (to the left of me…).  Myra Sands, looking more than ever like Beatrice Lillie, was one of the girls that this production could afford.  She was a triumph.