So most of you realize by now that I watch a lot of old movies. What you may not know (but could probably guess) is that I also read about old movies.For instance, I had read about Douglas Fairbanks in his role as one of the founders of United Artists alongside his wife, Mary Pickford. (They were the original Hollywood power couple.) I knew he was renowned as a stuntman, performing a variety of amazing feats in several iconic roles (The Thief of Baghdad, The Three Musketeers, and Robin Hood). I know he's been referenced in tons of other movies, including Blazing Saddles. I had, however, never actually seen one of his movies.
This is not a very good movie. The plot is thin, it relies a great deal on stupid coincidences, and the two main characters have zero chemistry. As a romance and as a music, this is a total fail. I'm also not sure anybody told Douglas that this was supposed to be a romantic musical. He certainly treated it like it was an action film, putting in stunts where none were actually called for. I'm sure conversations with the director must have gone like this:
"You want to slide down a fireman's pole? But the scene is on a cruise ship...No, I'm not saying it wouldn't look cool, Douglas, just why the fuck would there be a fireman's pole on a cruise...You know what, fuck it. You want to pull some Olympic gymnast shit on a pole, we'll put in a fucking pole, you big baby. Yeah, go on, while you're at it. Might as well jump over a couple of balconies too, show-off bastard."
So, some rich dude with no time for love gets made fun of by a female aviator and decides that he must drop everything he's doing to pursue her, even if it means booking a transatlantic ship voyage (thankfully not on the Lusitania this time) in order to woo her. Meanwhile, he loses every penny in the Great Depression, stocks plummet, and all his Wall Street friends kill themselves. But who gives a shit about human tragedy? You gotta win that girl who laughed at you away from her limp-dick English fiance. He ends up getting the girl only after he falls into a deep depression and she feels sorry for him. She gives him a pep talk about not giving up, and she's sure he'll make another fortune. Then it cuts to their wedding day, and sure enough, he has completely bounced back by investing in steel...right before WWII.
I guess this is continuing the trend of old movies with people whose names you'd actually recognize. I mean, if you've seen a musical from before 1981 then you've probably seen Fred Astaire. And Peter Lawford was part of the Rat Pack so most dudes will have heard of him. Jane Powell and Keenan Wynn, maybe not so much. The movie is about a brother/sister dance team that gets the opportunity to play in London during the week of then Princess Elizabeth's wedding to Prince Philip. On the boat ride, the sister (Jane Powell) meets Peter Lawford, playing a member of minor nobility. They bond over the fact that they're both kind of slutty and begin seeing each other. Meanwhile, Fred starts dating one of the dancers in the show (Sarah Churchill).
It's a very typical musical of the time (everyone gets married) but that's not really a reason to watch it. It's Fred Astaire dancing. The man could make inanimate objects look good when he danced with them. And I have not seen a single male dancer to rival him since those days. Maybe Gregory Hines.
To be clear here, I'm talking about movie entertainers not hardcore professional ballet dancers. I don't follow that world closely enough to make judgments regarding their charisma.
I was a little surprised to learn that this was made into a musical. The story of the Pied Piper is one of the darker fairy tales out there. There are a couple dozen different endings, depending on the source but basically the town of Hamelin has a rat infestation. A piper dressed in mismatched, motley clothes shows up and offers to rid the town of its problem in return for gold. A bargain is struck and the piper lures all the rats to the river and drowns them. Then the townspeople tell him to fuck off when he asks for his money, so in retaliation, he lures all of their children away. The nice stories say that he hid them somewhere until the townspeople relented and paid him. The less nice ones claim that he tripled the price. The worst ones claim that he drowned them in the river like rats, killed them himself, or worse.Side note: Hey, Hollywood, I hear you're looking for some gritty reboots to fairy tales. Here ya go, it's practically gift-wrapped. It'll be like Se7en meets Cinderella. You're welcome.
All the music in this is based on the orchestrations of Edvard Grieg, a Norwegian composer who wrote "In the Hall of the Mountain King", one of my favorite creepy classical pieces. I don't necessarily know that his music is meant to be accompanied by English singing; some of the songs' lyrics seem a bit rushed or tortured to try and fit the bar. For classic movie fans, you'll know the song as the one being whistled by Peter Lorre in M, another movie that could use a good dust-off.
Seriously, I'm tired of seeing nubile teenagers as the only victims of serial killers. That's not scary anymore. It's time to really go for the jugular. After all, if you want a movie that allegorizes the loss of innocence and the horror of the world, having a victim be a prepubescent kid is a better bet.
Only cinematically, of course! Please don't go out and murder a toddler and then tell the police I told you to in my blog. Jesus. I don't need that kind of publicity.
No comments:
Post a Comment