The Broadway Melody (1929)

The Broadway Melody has some historical importance. It was MGM’s first musical and it was the first musical to win a Best Picture Oscar.

With the advent of sound it was obvious that musicals would be a big thing, but the right formula needed to be found. It was no good just filming a Broadway show. A way would need to be found to make musicals cinematic. Paramount were already getting into the musical business and while Ernst Lubitsh’s The Love Parade is a delight it’s more or less an operetta. The Broadway Melody on the other hand invents a new genre - the backstage musical. Big musical numbers but also lots of human drama and romance and intrigue behind the scenes.

This formula would reach perfection with 42nd Street in 1932 but The Broadway Melody is a bold very early attempt.

It signals its intentions from the start, with some stunning aerial shots of Manhattan. This is going to be the magic of Broadway meeting the magic of movies. Or that's what we hope.

Songwriter Eddie Kearns (Charles King) has just got his big break. Big-time Broadway producer Francis Zanfield (Eddie Kane) has not only bought one of his songs, he’s going to use it as the centrepiece of his new revue. Eddie now thinks he’s in the big-time, which he is up to a point. His girlfriend Hank Mahoney (Bessie Love) and her kid sister Queenie (Anita Page) have a successful sister act out in the boondocks but now they want to try their luck in the Big Apple. Eddie is sure he can get them a spot in the revue. Unfortunately when Zanfield sees their act he thinks Queenie is terrific but he thinks Hank is no good. There’s going to be some tension between the two sisters.

And there’s a complicated romantic quadrangle involving the Mahoney girls, Eddie and a smooth operator named Jacques Warriner (Kenneth Thomson).

This provides the behind-the-scenes human drama. And the entire focus of the film is this four-way romantic tangle.

The Broadway Melody’s biggest problem is that everybody is going to compare it to 42nd Street and it’s just not in the same league.

It just doesn’t have that Busby Berkeley genius. In the Busby Berkeley musicals the musical production numbers supposedly take place on stage. But they could never be accommodated on any stage and could never be watched by a theatre audience since they can only be appreciated when viewed through the camera’s roving eye, from above and beneath and from various angles. We have left the world of the theatre and entered a world of pure cinema. In The Broadway Melody the production numbers are filmed entirely from in front, as if we’re looking through the proscenium arch. These are filmed stage performances. They’re quite good, but they’re totally non-cinematic.

The Broadway Melody lacks the cynical hardboiled edge of the Warner Brothers musicals, and that sense that the show must succeed otherwise they all lose their jobs and starve. That’s because the 1930s Warner Brothers musicals were very much Depression-era musicals. But this is not true of The Broadway Melody. It was made and released in the boom times before the Stock Market Crash. The Broadway Melody is very much a Jazz Age musical, and it has an underlying buoyant optimism. We’re all going to be successful and we’re all going to be rich.

This is of course a pre-code movie. Jacques Warriner makes it clear that he wants to set Queenie up as a kept woman and that marriage will not be part of the deal. Queenie makes it clear that she’s happy with this idea.

There’s one slightly disturbing moment. A showgirl perched on the prow of a prop ship falls 25 feet to the stage floor. She hits the floor and she doesn’t movie. She is taken out on a stretcher - and she is never mentioned again! The poor girl might be dead for all we know. But the show must go on.

This movie really is way too long. The ingredients are here, but the balance is wrong. There’s too much focus on the romance melodrama and not enough on the backstage struggles involved in putting on a show. The staging of the musical numbers is unimaginative and stodgy. It is worth seeing for its historical importance but it just doesn’t catch fire.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray looks terrific.

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Gold Diggers of 1933 is one of the great Warner Brothers pre-code musicals with wild Busby Berkeley production numbers.

The plot is your standard Warner Brothers pre-code backstage musical plot. Producer Barney Hopkins (Ned Sparks) is putting on a show or at least he’s trying to. But this is the Depression and the money needed to finance a show is simply impossible to find. The show closes before it even opens.

Polly Parker (Ruby Keeler), Fay Fortune (Ginger Rogers), Carol King (Joan Blondell) and Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon) are broke again. They’re in utter despair until Barney announces that he has a new show ready to go. But as usual, he has everything he needs except the money.

The girls’ neighbour, Brad (Dick Powell), then offers to finance the show. Since he’s a penniless aspiring songwriter nobody takes him seriously. But somehow he comes up with the money.

Barney wants Brad to be the juvenile lead but Brad tells him that it is simply not possible for him to perform in public.

Then we get the classic Warner Brothers backstage musical scene. The juvenile lead cannot go on. The show is doomed. The only hope is for Brad to go on.

Brad and Polly have already fallen hopelessly in love. They decide to get married.

Things get complicated when Brad’s real identity is revealed and his brother J. Lawrence Bradford (Warren William) arrives on the scene intent on preventing the marriage.

We then get plenty of farce with identities getting mixed up and the girls cooking up a plot to make sure that true love triumphs.

Warren William was always at his best when he could be really slimy and oily. In this movie he’s basically not such a bad guy, which may disappoint some of his fans.

Aline MacMahon is the out-and-out comic character and overdoes things a bit. Guy Kibbee is fun (as always) as J. Lawrence Bradford’s lawyer who has a weakness for the ladies. Ned Sparks is terrific. Ruby Keeler is as sweet as ever but she could get away with being sweet. Joan Blondell and Ginger Rogers are excellent.

What I love about these Busby Berkeley musicals is that they have theatrical settings and the musical production numbers are supposedly taking place on stage. But these numbers could never be accommodated on a stage and they could never be watched on stage since they can only be appreciated when viewed through the camera’s eye. As soon as the musical production numbers start we are teleported from the world of the theatre into a world of pure cinema.

These are also production numbers that could only work in black-and-white. They need the artificiality of black-and-white. We are in a world of total artifice.

They would also look terribly crass in colour. This is a kind of glamour that only great black-and-white cinematography can provide.

Barney’s show is intended as a show about the Depression and Gold Diggers of 1933 is a movie about the Depression. It’s at its best in the early stages when we see Barney and the showgirls refusing to admit defeat. They’re show people and regardless of the obstacles they’re going to put on a show.

For many people the highlight is the Forgotten Man production number at the end. For me this number goes close to ruining the movie. It’s typical heavy-handed Warner Brothers “social commentary” and it’s like a political lecture clumsily tacked on at the end. These Warner Brother musicals work because they take us into a magical world of pure cinematic fantasy. The Forgotten Man number is out of place and a movie that should end on a playful joyful note ends in misery and whining.

As a result Gold Diggers of 1933 is the weakest of the Warner Brothers pre-code musicals but it does include three terrific production numbers. The Shadow Waltz is visually impressive. Pettin' in the Park is fabulous and inspired pre-code cheerful naughtiness. We're in the Money opens the movie and it’s the movie’s high point and it’s a great showcase for Ginger Rogers.

If you’re a Busby Berkeley newbie start with 42nd Street or Footlight Parade which are much better movies than this. Gold Diggers of 1933 has a few great moments but it doesn’t quite make it.

It’s annoying that this movie is available on Blu-Ray while the vastly superior Footlight Parade is not.

Saturday Night Fever (1977)

I avoided Saturday Night Fever for years, assuming it was going to be a syrupy teen musical. That turned out to be a spectacularly wrong assumption. Saturday Night Fever is so far removed from that that it’s in a whole other galaxy. This is a grim, gritty, deeply pessimistic deep dive into despair, futility, alienation and nihilism.

Tony Manero (John Travolta) works in a hardware store. On weekends he goes to the 2001 disco. He’s the king of the dance floor there. But 2001 isn’t a glamorous night spot where you’ll run into A-list celebrities. It’s a third-rate dive in Brooklyn. It’s cheap and it’s tacky.

And Tony doesn’t have dreams of using his dancing as a gateway to fame and fortune. He doesn’t have the imagination for that. He’s a loser.

He hangs out with his buddies. They’re all losers.

He lives with his folks. His dad is a chronically unemployed construction worker. His mom prays all the time. Her only consolation is that Tony’s brother Frank is a priest. He’s almost a god to her.

Tony is hoping to win the dance competition at 2001. This is not exactly a big deal. The prize is a lousy five hundred bucks but that’s the total extent of Tony’s dreams.

He has a dancing partner, Annette (Donna Pescow). She’s madly in love with him. Tony dumps her when he sees Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney) dancing at 2001. He persuades Stephanie to be his new dancing partner.

Tony thinks Stephanie has class. He thinks that because he’s never met a woman with actual class. Stephanie does at least have ambitions but she’s as working class as Tony. Her middle-class affectations are merely absurd and tragic.

Stephanie dreams of success in Manhattan, perhaps in public relations. She probably won’t make it. She didn’t go to the right school, she didn’t go to college, she doesn’t have the right accent. She’s Brooklyn. She will always be Brooklyn. Maybe she will make an OK life for herself but she’s never going to have a penthouse apartment in Manhattan. Maybe she needs to set her sights a bit lower.

Maybe Tony needs to set his sights a bit higher.

The most powerful moment in the movie and the moment when Travolta really nails it is when Tony comes face to face with reality. He works in a hardware store. He’s a moderately good dancer. His chances of making it as a big-time dancer are zero. He’s just not good enough.

Annette needs to figure herself out as well. Her one real ambition is to go to bed with Tony.

This is also a gang movie. Tony’s gang is a bunch of losers and low-rent thugs. They get into fight with other gangs, who are losers as well. The other gang members are possibly even dumber than Tony.

There’s not a single characters in the movie who isn’t contemptible.

The guys treat the women with disrespect but they disrespect everybody and most crucially they have no respect for themselves.

There’s a subplot concerning Tony’s brother who has left the priesthood. It’s entirely pointless, it goes nowhere, it slows the movie and really it should have ended up on the cutting room floor. Subplots that go nowhere simply irritate viewers. It may have been included purely as an anti-Catholic element. The hostility to Catholicism here is pretty virulent.

This film is typical of a certain strand in Hollywood filmmaking - movies in which middle-class intellectuals express their seething hatred for America and for ordinary working-class Americans. It’s no coincidence that screenwriter Norman Wexler was Harvard-educated. Wexler also wrote the screenplay for Serpico, my least favourite 1970s Hollywood film.

This is a movie all about social class and the way different social classes inhabit different universes. Manhattan and Brooklyn are two different universes. Travel between those universes is not possible.

This is not a musical. There is dancing. Tony’s obsession with dancing is a major plot point. But it’s not a musical in the usual sense. There are no real big musical production numbers. The dancing sequences are rather unglamorous. Again, this seems to be a deliberate choice. This a story about Tony trying to figure out why his life is going nowhere, why he feels dissatisfied and empty. And trying to figure out if there is something he can do about it. The dancing really is incidental. Tony could have been a tennis player or a guitarist. It wouldn’t have mattered. What matters is that dancing is an escape from reality for him, and perhaps a way out.

What’s fascinating is that this is a visually very unattractive movie and this is clearly deliberate. Everything is grimy and seedy. You can almost smell the garbage rotting in the streets. There’s not a trace of glamour. There’s nothing glamorous about 2001. It’s just a dive. They have dancing and they have strippers as well. You can almost smell the stale liquor, the tobacco smoke, the sweat and the desperation.

This movie is a product of the New American Cinema and it has the miserable feel and scuzzy look often associated with that movement.

Saturday Night Fever is a deeply unpleasant movie about deeply unpleasant people. That was obviously the intention. It’s a good movie but it ain’t a feelgood movie. Recommended, if you know what to expect.

The Blu-Ray release is fine. I suspect this is a movie that was always supposed to look dark and depressing. The audio commentary by director John Badham isn’t really worth bothering with.

Congress Dances (1931)

Congress Dances was released in 1931. German, French and English-language versions were shot. There were some cast differences between the three versions. The recent Kino Classics Blu-Ray offers the German-language version with English subtitles.

The Congress of Vienna which opened in 1814 was a diplomatic conference to establish a new framework of relations between the Great Powers after the defeat of Napoleon. You might not think that it would be the perfect background for a lighthearted goofy comedy romance with songs and a strong fairy tale vibe, but you’d be wrong. This is one of those “this idea is so crazy that it just might work” concepts, and it actually does work.

The prime mover of the Congress was the Austrian Foreign Minister Prince Metternich (played here by Conrad Veidt). His main problem is to keep Tsar Alexander of Russia fully occupied and out of the way. That way Metternech can ensure the result he wants from the Congress. There’s nothing sinister about this. It’s just diplomacy.

What Metternich doesn’t know, what nobody knows, is that the Tsar has a stand-in. An officer named Uralsky, who closely resembles the Tsar, takes the Tsar’s place in dangerous situations where assassination might be a danger. The Tsar also makes use of Uralsky to avoid very unpleasant public duties, such as the performance of the Russian Ballet that Metternech has organised. If there’s one thing Tsar Alexander can’t stand it’s Russian ballet!

Now a pretty young glove-seller enters the picture. Christel (Lilian Harvey) has come up with an ingenious publicity stunt for her glove shop. Vienna is now filled with VIPs. When she sees a foreign head of state she throws him a bouquet of flowers, with an advertisement for her glove shop attached. When she tries the stunt on the Tsar she lands herself in big big trouble. In fact she’s about to have her bottom caned. Luckily the Tsar gets wind of this and rescues her in time from this painful indignity.

The Tsar is charmed by Christel. He thinks she’s the cutest thing he’s ever seen. They spend a delightful afternoon together. She is swept off her feet by the handsome romantic Tsar. She must have had quite an effect on him, since he provides her with a luxurious villa and a carriage. He has clearly decided to make her his mistress. Christel thinks this that this is a most exciting prospect.

It’s interesting that Christel is not the least bit shocked or disconcerted by the prospect of becoming the Tsar’s mistress. And she is not amazed that such an important man would take an interest in her. She has plenty of confidence.

If you’re trying to see some kind of commentary here on class it’s important to understand that Christel is not working class. She’s not a penniless waif wandering the streets barefoot depending on charity. She’s a successful prosperous independent businesswoman. It’s implied that she owns her shop. She employs several girls. She does not represent the downtrodden masses. She is solidly middle class.

The affair with the Tsar seems likely to prosper but there is somebody about to throw a spanner in the works - Napoleon. He’s not staying quietly in exile the way he’s supposed to.

The fact that the Tsar has a stand-in naturally leads to lots of romantic complications and lots of humorous complications. There’s more than a touch of farce to this movie.

London-born actress Lilian Harvey was an ideal choice as Christel, being fluent in English, German and French which allowed her to play Christel in all three versions. She’s a delight. Christel is pretty, she’s adorable, she’s lively, she’s sexy in a playful way and she’s a total screwball.

Willy Fritsch makes a charming handsome Tsar. Conrad Veidt played Metternich in the English and German-language versions. He’s excellent. Metternich is not a villain. He’s not even mildly villainous. Veidt plays him as a likeable rogue.

Congress Dances was a UFA production which means this is a big-budget big-studio picture. This is a lavish production. The production design is very impressive.

Congress Dances is zany, offbeat, wildly romantic and charming. It’s also very very German. If you’ve ever seen any of Ernst Lubitsch’s crazy early silent films such as The Wildcat (1921) and The Doll, or early Lubitsch musicals like The Love Parade (1929), or the insanely romantic Sissi (1955), you’ll know what I mean. Whimsical romance with a fairy tale flavour was something for which German filmmakers had a real affinity. Congress Dances is a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

The source material was in bad shape but Kino Classics have come up with a pretty decent Blu-Ray transfer.

Xanadu (1980)

Xanadu may be the most 80s movie ever made. This is maximum 80s overload. This is a Gene Kelly-Olivia Newton-John roller-skating fantasy musical romance with goddesses. Goddesses on roller skates.

Although everything is explained eventually it does help if you know that this is a remake of a 1947 Rita Hayworth musical, Down to Earth. This is one of Hayworth’s least admired movies but I actually love it.

In the 1947 movie one of the muses, Terpsichore, takes the form of a human woman and comes to Earth, and puts on a Broadway musical. Terpsichore is the muse of dance. The muses were of course demi-goddesses and their role was to inspire the arts and sciences. It’s a crazy idea for a movie but Xanadu takes that craziness and ups it by about twelve notches.

Sonny Malone (Michael Beck) paints enlarged versions of album covers as promotions for record stores. There’s a cute blonde girl on one of the album covers. She looks just like a girl he just saw. A girl who appeared and then disappeared. The guy who took the original photo doesn’t know who she is - she was just suddenly there in the shot and then vanished.

Of course the reason she keeps appearing and disappearing is that although she calls herself Kira she is indeed Terpsichore, and demi-goddesses can do stuff like that. She’s been sent to Earth on a vital mission - to inspire the ultimate 80s nightclub.

Sonny and Kira make the acquaintance of Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly). He’s a construction tycoon but in the 40s he was a band leader, and had his own nightclub. He got his start with Glenn Miller. He gave up music after a disappointment in love. She was a lovely girl. She looked just like Kira. The audience of course knows that it really was Kira, or rather it was Terpsichore on a previous visit to Earth.

Danny admits that for 35 years he has daydreamed about opening another nightclub. Sonny persuades him to follow his dream. He knows the right place. It’s a derelict art deco wrestling auditorium. Danny has the money and the construction know-how to turn it into the ultimate nightclub. It will be called Xanadu. The name is Kira’s idea. It is of course quite possible that she was the one who inspired Coleridge to write his famous 1797 poem.

Two years earlier Olivia Newton-John had starred in the smash hit Grease. These two movies are very different but they do have one thing in common - a sense of total temporal dislocation. Grease is about teenagers in the 50s, or maybe in the 70s. Or even at times the 40s. Nothing fits into a coherent time period, and that’s why Grease works. It exists in its own fantasy teenage universe. There’s quite a bit of that in Xanadu. It’s the 80s meets the 40s, but with a goddess from a couple of millennia ago thrown in. Nothing fits. That’s what’s so great about it.

I have no idea if the people making this movie were getting into the Bolivian marching powder but this was Hollywood in 1980 and people in Hollywood in 1980 were certainly doing a lot of coke. And Xanadu does have an 80s cocaine-fuelled vibe. When you watch Xanadu the first word that will pop into your head is cocaine.

The casting of Olivia Newton-John works. Her Australian accent helps - it makes her seem out of place in California and of course she is out of place in California. She also has that ability to be adorable and wholesome without being cloying.

Michael Beck makes a forgettable male lead.

Gene Kelly does not make a mere cameo appearance. He’s one of the stars. This is a leading role. He’s out of place here, but he’s supposed to be. He’s a guy who still lives in the 1940s. It works. He’s excellent.

And Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John get to do a romantic dance number together. Miss Newton-John also gets to sport a very nice 40s hairdo.

Visually Xanadu is brash, garish, vulgar and overblown. This is 80s style taken to extremes, but with added art deco elements. And Danny lives in a mansion that once belonged to a silent film star and the mansion belongs to the Edwardian era. This is bad taste elevated into an art form.

Every single thing about Xanadu is just so wrong, but it’s so wrong in ways that make it just so bizarrely fascinating. Don’t try to make sense of it. Just go with it. She’s a goddess, and goddesses enjoy roller-skating as much as other girls do.

The dance sequences seem to have been shot by people who had never shot dance sequences before. The one dance sequence that works is the romantic dance sequence with Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John and I suspect it works because Gene Kelly took control and made sure it worked.

Xanadu was of course a flop. Xanadu is not a trainwreck. It’s beyond that. This is the cinematic equivalent of an earthquake that levels an entire city. It’s so bizarre that you can’t help feeling a sense of wonder that someone gave this movie the green light.

They don’t make movies like Xanadu any more. It’s one of those movies you really won’t believe until you see it. And yet it is weirdly enjoyable. Yes, I actually did enjoy Xanadu and I’m going to highly  recommend it.

I’ve reviewed the original 1947 movie Down to Earth and if you love Xanadu it’s worth checking out (plus you can’t lose with Rita Hayworth as a goddess).

Top Hat (1935)

Top Hat was the fourth of the RKO musicals featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers but it is the first real full-blown Astaire-Rogers film. They’d played supporting roles in movies like Flying Down To Rio (a fun movie in its own way) and Roberta (an awful movie redeemed only by their presence). Top Hat was conceived right from the start as an Astaire-Rogers picture and a star vehicle for the duo. It’s extraordinary that it took so long for RKO to figure out that yes, these two could effortlessly carry a movie between them.

We don’t need to trouble ourselves too much with the plot. It’s standard farce (albeit superbly executed). Jerry Travers (Astaire) is in London to star in a new show promoted by Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton). Jerry meets Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) under inauspicious circumstances. She thinks he’s incredibly irritating. He’s besotted by her. The main plot point is a case of mistaken identity. Dale thinks that Jerry is Horace and that he’s a married man. She’s attracted to him but Dale does not steal other women’s men. There is no way she is going to get involved with him.

There’s more confusion regarding Alberto Beddini (Erik Rhodes). Horace suspects that Dale is a kept woman, that she is Beddini’s mistress. In fact their relationship is quite innocent. He’s a fashion designer and she is his top model.

Much romantic confusion ensues.

Astaire and Rogers demonstrate why they were such a dazzling movie couple. The chemistry is there between them right from the start. RKO’s doubts about Astaire had a lot to do the fact that he was balding and did not have conventional matinee idol looks. But he had charisma, charm, vitality and style and these are things that women go for in a big way. We have no difficulty understanding why Dale is fascinated by him and attracted to him. Rogers had plenty of charm and charisma herself and her likeability factor was off the scale. We have no difficulty understanding why Jerry is crazy about her.

The contribution of Ginger Rogers to this movie must not be underestimated. She’s Astaire’s acting partner as well as dancing partner. There’s the dancing chemistry but the chemistry between them goes much further. There’s emotional chemistry and Ginger Rogers has a way of subtly letting us know that there’s erotic chemistry as well.

And of course there’s the dancing. Astaire had complete control over that - not just the dances but the way they were shot. What really made the dancing memorable in these movies is that Astaire used the dances to tell the love story. These are courtship dances. This is a man and a woman gradually figuring out how they feel about each other, through the dances.

The fact that Astaire had total control over not just the staging but the filming of the dances gave him in effect a huge degree of creative control over the movie. What made Top Hat important is that this control allowed Astaire to revolutionise the movie musical.

The other outstanding feature of the RKO Astaire-Rogers movies is their visual magnificence, and this is very much because they were shot in black-and-white. Filmed in colour they would have looked gaudy and cheap and vulgar. They needed the cool crisp elegance that can only be achieved by black-and-white cinematography.

And by this time the black-and-white aesthetic had been perfected. Everything, from the sets to the costumes to the makeup, was done to look stunning when filmed in black-and-white. Black-and-white also adds to the Art Deco feel. To make this work you don’t just need cinematographers who understand black-and-white. You need set designers and costume designers and makeup artists who understand how to make the movie look stunning in black-and-white. That’s why you can’t do black-and-white today. By this time Hollywood had a couple of decades of experience making feature films in black-and-white. That expertise is long gone.

The other thing I love is the extreme artificiality. There are scenes that take place in Venice. It’s not just that we don’t believe for one second we’re in Venice, what’s great is that we’re not supposed to. These scenes are supposed to look like they’e shot on a sound stage. We are not supposed for one second to believe that this movie takes place in the real world. The rejection of realism is uncompromising. This is a fantasy world.

There were of course other very talented people making huge inputs into Top Hat. Von Nest Polglase as head of ROKO’s art department got the art director’s credit but it appears that the magnificent sets were the work of Carroll Clark. David Abel’s mastery of black-and-white cinematography didn’t hurt. Astaire had a close and amicable working relation with director Mark Sandrich and producer Pandro S. Berman and they made their contributions.

The gowns designed by Bernard Newman don’t just make Ginger Roger looks fabulous, they follow the evolution of her feeling. In the dance in the gazebo she is trying to keep Jerry at a distance. She is wearing a cute feminine riding habit but she’s all buttoned up tight, as if she’s wearing armour. In the climactic dance she wears the famous feather dance. She has discarded her armour. She is ready to give herself to him as a woman. Nothing in this movie is accidental.

Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore and Helen Broderick are wonderful in supporting roles.

Top Hat was a massive box office hit, the most successful of all the Astaire-Rogers movies. It was RKO’s biggest hit of the 30s.

Top Hat is a delight from start to finish. This is the Astaire-Rogers formula at its most perfect. Very highly recommended.

42nd Street (1933)

42nd Street, released in 1933, is of course the great backstage musical. This was the first of the great Warner Brothers musicals. There had been musicals prior to this but there had been nothing like 42nd Street. Musicals had had a brief vogue early in the sound era but faded quickly. No-one had yet worked out exactly how to make film musicals.

42nd Street is a hardboiled musical. Yes, there’s plenty of emotion and quite a bit of corniness but it has that Warner Brothers hardboiled edge that prevents it from descending into syrupy sentimentality. The characters are outrageous and larger-than-life but we believe in them. We believe that they feel things. We believe in their heartbreaks and jealousies and insecurities. It’s like a delicious cocktail but with enough hard liquor in it to give it a real kick. 42nd Street is gritty reality and fantasy combined.

It was also the first musical to feature the genius of Busby Berkeley’s extraordinary big production numbers. Musicals wold never be the same again.

It’s also a pre-code musical which gives it an extra bite that would be sadly missing from musicals once the Production Code came into force.

Warner Brothers knew that they had a winner and three more great musicals followed in quick succession - Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade and Dames - but after that the Production Code exercised its dismal effect and the golden age of Warner Brothers musicals came to a close.

The plot has been recycled many times but in 1933 it was still fresh.

Genius producer Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) is putting on a new Broadway musical comedy show, Pretty Lady. Despite his string of hits he’s broke (he lost everything in the Wall Street Crash) and his health is breaking down. Pretty Lady has to be a hit. He has established star Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) as the headliner. Tycoon Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee) is putting up the money because Dorothy Brock is his mistress.

For young Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) this is her first show. She’s only a chorus girl but it’s a start. She doesn’t know it yet but this show is going to make her a star, by pure accident.

The movie was based on a novel of the same name by Bradford Ropes, a novel that was sleazy and scandalous. So sleazy and scandalous that Warner Brothers simply had to buy the rights.

This movie features a galaxy of acting talent all playing outrageous characters. There are just so many wonderful performances. There’s Una Merkel as cute but ditzy chorus girl Lorraine, there’s Ginger Rogers demonstrating her comic skills as the adorable Anytime Annie (the girl who never said no). Guy Kibbee gives one of his trademark performances as the ludicrous Abner Dillon. George Brent is solid as the man Dorothy really loves. Dick Powell is charming as the show’s juvenile lead.

Warner Baxter as Julian Marsh is like a force of nature. He’s hardbitten and cynical but while he’d hate to admit it he loves show business. It’s in his blood. Bebe Daniels is extremely good. Ruby Keeler is ridiculously adorable.

But the real star is Busby Berkeley. Lloyd Bacon is the director of the movie (and he does a fine job) but Berkeley directed the musical production numbers. What makes those numbers so great, and what makes this movie so great, is that these numbers are supposed to be taking place on a stage in a theatre but they’re pure cinema. They’re staged in such a way that they can only be appreciated when seen through the camera’s eye. Berkeley’s genius was that he understood that this is the way to do it. He understood that he was working in film, not on stage.

I love the final shot in this movie. It’s not what you expect in a musical but in this film it works.

42nd Street is a good example of the inherent aesthetic superiority of black-and-white. Shot in colour it would have looked tacky. Shot in black-and-white it looks all class and style. It’s also a movie that would never have worked in a widescreen format. If you have real talent you don’t need colour or widescreen.

42nd Street was not just the first great movie musical. It remains the greatest of all movie musicals. Very highly recommended.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray offers a lovely transfer and quite a few extras.

Gidget (1959)

Gidget, released in 1959, was the first surfer girl movie and was so successful that it spawned several sequels and a TV series. It paved the way for the beach party movies of the early 60s and it established the existence of a major market for lighthearted teen romance comedies. It launched Sandra Dee’s career. It’s a fun movie and it was interesting in other ways as well, which we’ll get to later.

Francine (Sandra Dee) is a 16-year-old girl about to spend the summer soaking up the sun on the beach. Her friends have other things in mind apart from sun worship. As far as they’re concerned they’re on a hunt for men and they intend to bag a few trophies.

Francine is bitten by the surfing bug. She sees the guys having so much fun and she wants to join. Surprisingly the surfer guys who hang around with Kahuna (Cliff Robertson) are not overly hostile. They agree to teach her to surf. Because she’s a girl and she’s very petite they christen her Gidget (short for girl midget). The fact that Gidget is as cute as a button may have something to do with the fondness the guys feel for her but they’re rather protective of her as well.

Most of the guys just spend the summer surfing but Kahuna is a full-time surfer bum. Moondoggie (James Darren) wants to be a surfer bum as well. Kahuna might be perpetually broke but he’s free. This movie marks a very early appearance of the drop-out in Hollywood movies.

Gidget falls for Moondoggie. He’s not very interested.

Gidget of course has a plan to land her man. Naturally everything goes wrong. Gidget finds herself in a very awkward situation.

There’s plenty of amusement to be had here. There’s some very obvious rear projection which adds to the charm of the movie.

Hollywood teen movies are often mocked for featuring teenagers played by actors who were pushing 30. For Gidget Columbia decided on a radical approach. If they were making a movie about a 16-year-old girl why not get an actress who could do it convincingly? Why not cast an actual 16-year-old girl? Which is what they did. And it works. As a bonus Sandra Dee turned out to be a talented comic actress with immense amounts of charm.

Gidget was made at an incredibly interesting time in Hollywood history, the period around 1958 to1962. The Production code was staring to crumble and Hollywood was tentatively exploring the idea of making movies that dealt with sex in an open and grown-up way. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, Butterfield 8 and The World of Suzie Wong all came out during this brief period. There are very slight hints of this in Gidget. There is at least an acknowledgement of the sexual nature of the interest that Gidget’s female friends have in boys.

Of course there’s also a message that girls are allowed to have sexual feelings as long as they don’t do anything abut it. The Sexual Revolution was on the way but it wasn’t there yet.

There’s also a message about growing up. Growing up means giving up your dreams and giving up silly ideas about freedom. Who needs those things? I’m afraid that the happy ending to this movie left me incredibly depressed.

The acting is pretty good. Cliff Robertson is fun as Kahuna, a man who isn’t as sure of himself as he thought he was. There are early appearances by people who would go on to achieve at least a measure of stardom. There’s Doug McClure, Yvonne Craig and Tom Laughlin. And of course James Darren who later starred in one of my favourite 60s TV series, The Time Tunnel. In Gidget he even sings. He makes a fine leading man for Sandra Dee.

The movie’s biggest strength is Sandra Dee. She’s delightful and she’s very funny. It’s a great pity that this was to be her only appearance as Gidget. She has great chemistry wth James Darren.

Apart from my reservations about the ending Gidget is lightweight amusing romantic fun. Sandra Dee’s performance is enough to warrant a highly recommended rating.

Via Vision in Australia have released the three Gidget movies plus the 1972 TV-movie Gidget Gets Married in both DVD and Blu-Ray boxed sets (both very reasonably priced). Gidget gets an excellent anamorphic transfer, with no extras.

Madam Satan (1930)

Those who are only familiar with Cecil B. DeMille’s later films might be rather surprised by his 1930 musical sex comedy Madam Satan. If however you’re familiar with his silent films then Madam Satan is just the sort of thing you’d expect him to come up with. It’s like his sophisticated silent comedies but with musical numbers, and even more outlandish. It’s one of my favourite DeMille movies.

This movie was made during DeMille’s brief time at MGM, a very grim time for the director. He was being harassed by the IRS and made a series of box office flops. Those flops included, sadly, Madam Satan. He would return to Paramount and bounce back in a big way with the box-office smash Sign of the Cross in 1932.

The marriage of Bob Brooks (Reginald Denny) and his wife Angela (Kay Johnson) is in big trouble. Bob has been playing around. We get the feeling he’s been playing around quite a bit. His latest playmate is Trixie (Lillian Roth). He’s also been spending too much time with his charming but dissolute friend Jimmy Wade (Roland Young). When Bob and Jimmy get together there will be alcohol and girls involved.

Trixie is the last straw for Angela. Bob gets his marching orders.

But Angela doesn’t really want the marriage to end. And she realises that some of the accusations that Bob has hurled at her are true. She isn’t exactly a fun-loving girl. She’s a staid boring resectable housewife. She isn’t glamorous. And maybe she is a bit sexually cold. Maybe it isn’t surprising that Bob is bored with her.

She realises she has to do something. She doesn’t want to turn herself into a tramp like Trixie. She does however decide that she needs to be much more sexy, much more glamorous and much more exciting. She needs to be more like a mistress than a wife.

The perfect opportunity will be a masquerade ball that Jimmy Wade is throwing on board a zeppelin. Angela will put in an appearance, in the guise of Madam Satan. She makes quite an entrance.

The first half of the movie is a typical pre-code sophisticated sex comedy, and it’s very funny. The second half takes place entirely on board the zeppelin, and it’s totally mad and bizarre.

Jimmy’s party is definitely wild. The highlight is the auction. The six prettiest women take part in it. The men have to bid for them. The winning girl gets to be Belle of the Ball. The men get to dance with the women for whom they put in successful bids. Being the sort of party this is we can assume that as the evening progresses there will be more than dancing involved. Trixie has made it clear to Bob that she expects to be Belle of the Ball, no matter how much it costs him. Bob is OK with this, being totally under Trixie’s spell. At least he’s under her spell until the mysterious super-sexy Madam Satan turns up. Of course she is masked, so Bob has no idea he is being seduced by his own wife.

Then the storm hits and Madam Satan becomes a crazy disaster movie.

The visuals are what make this movie movie so memorable. The costumes worn by the women at the ball are insane. They’re wonderful, but insane.

The ball is like a Roman orgy on a zeppelin.

DeMille was fascinated by decadence, both ancient and modern. And it’s obvious he didn’t entirely disapprove of it. DeMille was no puritan. The theme of societal decadence pop up in lots of DeMille silent films and would be spectacularly showcased in Sign of the Cross and in his 1934 Cleopatra. The Jazz Age rich decadents partying while the storm approaches the zeppelin are the equivalents of the Romans indulging in orgies while Rome burns in Sign of the Cross. DeMille however was not especially interested in ensuring that those who gave themselves up to decadence were punished. DeMille’s specialty was appearing to be on the side of respectability while making it perfectly clear that he really sympathised with wicked fun-lovers.

Kay Johnson looks great as Madam Satan. Reginald Denny manages to be a charming likeable unfaithful husband. The movie is however dominated by the gloriously over-the-top performances of Roland Young and Lillian Roth.

DeMille made some seriously deranged and outrageous movies and this is visually at least the most outrageous of them all. Watching it is like an acid trip, but a good acid trip rather than a bad acid trip. This movie is a wild and delirious ride. Like the passengers on the zeppelin you might want to hold on tight to your parachute.

Madam Satan is very highly recommended.

Madam Satan is available on DVD in the Warner Archive series, with a very good transfer.

Grease (1978)

Until now Grease is a movie that I had overlooked completely. It’s not that I’ve tried to avoid it, it’s just one of those movies I never got around to seeing. I approached it with certain expectations, and those expectations turned out to be spectacularly off-base.

I had expected a nostalgia-laden affectionate homage to 1950s America. In fact Grease has absolutely zero to do with the 1950s. There is not the slightest attempt to capture any of the spirit of 1950s music, movies, fashion or any aspect of 1950s pop culture. Grease is pure 1970s, all the way though.

But it is set in the 1950s. The fact that it bears no resemblance to the real 1950s, and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the 1950s of 1950s pop culture, makes it rather interesting. It also bears very little resemblance to the actual 1970s. Grease takes place in an alternative universe which has been constructed by throwing together random bits of pop culture from the previous 50 years. It’s a weird mishmash. It’s like a drug-induced fever dream.

One of the amusing perennial features of teen movies is that they usually do not include a single actual teenager. Grease takes this to extremes. We have 30-year-old Olivia Newton-John playing an innocent teenage girl, and we have 34-year-old (!) Stockard Channing as a teenage. This should have been enough to sink the movie but it just adds to the weird slightly surreal fantasy vibe.

We can dispose of the plot pretty quickly. An Australian girl named Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) has a chaste holiday romance with a nice boy named Danny (John Travolta). It comes to an end, as all holiday romances, come to an end. Sandy is going home to Australia.

But the story doesn’t end there. When Danny goes back to school at Rydell High School he is more than a little surprised to meet the new girl at school - yes, it’s Sandy. She didn’t go back to Australia after all. The attraction between them is still there but Sandy is shocked to discover that Danny is actually a bad boy. And she’s a good girl. Can a good girl find happiness with a bad boy?

There are various other sub-plots going on, involving the T-Birds (Danny’s gang) and the Pink Ladies (not exactly a female gang but they hang around with the T-Birds).

Despite not looking remotely like teenagers all the cast members are good, with Stockard Channing being outstanding and giving the only really nuanced performance in the movie.

In the final analysis however Grease was always going to stand or fall on the performances of the two leads. They come through with flying colours. Travolta has real charm. Olivia Newton-John is adorable. And when she cuts loose at the end, surprisingly sexy.

I’m not totally convinced about the job done by director Randal Kleiser. The movie is certainly colourful but the staging of the musical numbers is a bit uninspired. It was a long wait to hear the movie’s big hit, You’re the One That I Want, and it deserved a more stylish treatment. On the whole the actual songs however are pretty good. The songs are very much 70s songs.

Another delightfully weird thing in this movie is Sandy’s outfit at the end. She decides to transform herself into the kind of girl she thinks Danny wants. You might expect her to come out looking like a 1950s female juvenile delinquent, or a 1950s movie starlet. But in fact she looks like she’s auditioning for an S&M bondage video. It’s like a disco version of fetish gear. It is kind of sexy, but it’s unexpected to say the least.

Grease is a remarkably vulgar movie in every sense of the word. It revels in its bad taste. That’s part of its weird charm. It’s not ugly vulgarity. It’s cheerful bright and breezy vulgarity.

This is a movie that really is all about sex. The kids in this movie certainly want to find love, but they consider sex to be an essential ingredient in love.

What I was expecting was a light fluffy feelgood musical romance. What I got was more of a bizarre psychotronic movie. It’s a movie that exists in its own universe which slightly resembles the 1950s, but only slightly. It’s not that it’s a fantasy movie as such. It’s just slightly detached from any actual reality.

It’s not what I expected, but it’s more interesting than I expected.

Grease is fun in its own distinctive way. I enjoyed it.

The 40th anniversary DVD includes lots of extras and the transfer is fine.