In a change to our scheduled programme...

 Those of you who came to the screening of Singin' in the Rain a few months ago may recall that I made a comment that evening which raised a question I promised I would address in the future.

I had said that although Singin' in the Rain was one of my favourite films, it was not one of my favourite musicals. Inevitably, I was asked which film was my favourite musical, and I promised to return to that subject at a future date. 

That date has not quite arrived, despite what I said at the end of last Thursday's event. Sorry.

I know I promised everyone my favourite musical next Thursday, but on careful reflection I have decided to postpone that occasion by one week. In a last minute substitution, I have chosen an earlier film which also ranks very highly on my list of all-time-great musicals (not that I am admitting to the existence of such a list).


42nd Street is the original "Backstage Musical". It tells the story of the director and cast of a Broadway Musical Revue as they struggle to "put on a show". If that premise sounds clichéd and derivative, it's only because virtually every Backstage Musical written over the next ninety years owed its existence to this film. 


What 42nd Street delivers is a surprisingly unflinching portrait of the harsh reality of life on a chorus line - especially during a depression. 

The dance sequences were choreographed by the one and only Busby Berkeley in his uniquely cinematic style. 

When I was at University I had a Film Studies professor who swore positively that Busby Berkeley's dance routines were filled with gay subtext. Thirty years later, I'm still searching for that gay subtext (unless my old professor was working on the theory that Busby Berkeley was secretly a lesbian).

What is certain is that there is a great deal of sex and sexuality in 42nd Street (made two years before the Production Code spoiled everyone's fun). The dialogue is filled with innuendo so explicit as to be barely innuendo, and one of the musical numbers is essentially about a young girl losing her virginity.

Judge for yourself on Thursday (the 9th of December) in our penultimate film night of the year!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carry On... #Don't Trust Anyone over 25

Image
Please note that this week's film has been rated  12  in the UK. Last week's film ( Logan's Run ) is a prime example of a science fiction film that was emphatically a product of the era in which it was made. If anything, its very relevance proved to be its vulnerability. By the time it reached the theatres in 1976, many of the social trends it was responding to were already starting to fade. That may also be why attempts to produce a remake have consistently failed to make any headway. Hollywood studios have repeatedly attempted to reboot Logan's Run over the decades, and at least six different directors have embarked on such a project over the last 30 years. Multiple writers have been approached, and in some cases have written complete screenplays - but to no avail. Logan's Run has remained stubbornly and imperviously un-remade. If you think about it (and I have, trust me) remaking Logan's Run is easier said than done. After a decade of hippie culture, you...
Read more

The Best Bond Film of All Time; Thursday the 14th of October

Image
 James Bond has been in the news quite a bit recently, following the much-delayed release of No Time to Die , the most recent offering in this (almost) 60-year-old film franchise. No time to die, indeed. Like all self-respecting zombies, the James Bond character is steadfastly refusing to lie down and stop breathing, despite (or perhaps because of) six decades of sexism, racism, casual violence, jingoism and sexism (sexism is a very big thing in the Bond franchise). It should really have been called  Enough Already. Still, the Bond Movie has become an important cultural icon, and each offering follows an instantly recognisable style and pattern: a suave hero in a tailored suit, a smooth-talking but quietly menacing villain with a dangerous and (devotedly) faithful henchman, a beautiful, sexually available girl, a wide variety of exotic and photogenic locations and an endless parade of increasingly complicated and implausible assassination attempts. What's not to love? With all...
Read more

The Feast of "Stephen"

Image
If you're a Christian, you might know "The Feast of Stephen" as St. Stephen's Day (the 26th of December) when young men dress up in vaguely nightmarish straw costumes and wander around the town playing alarming music while carrying a dead bird. This is not about that. If you're a Doctor Who fan, you might know The Feast of Stephen as the first ever Doctor Who Christmas episode (broadcast on Christmas Day in 1965).  This is not about that either. For our purposes this week, The Feast of Stephen  concerns a small but pivotal character in the beloved Noël Coward/David Lean classic Brief Encounter .  Brief Encounter is remembered today as perhaps the most famous unconsummated love affair in cinema history. Released in 1945 (but without so much as the slightest hint of a war or its effects) it tells the story of two (married) individuals who meet by chance on a train platform and proceed to teeter on the brink of having an affair for a few weeks. They do not, in fac...
Read more

Another Cold War Movie. A very, very Cold War Movie.

Image
 Last week we saw a film about the Cold War as seen by a director who experienced it as a young teenager. The International situation may have been apocalyptic and grim, but none of that mattered as much as the newest monster movie. This week is going to be another film about the Cold War, but viewed through the very different lens of a director in his mid-fifties who had lived through the eras of World War Two and The Holocaust. Billy Wilder may be (quite rightly) remembered for films like Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Some Like it Hot etc. but One, Two, Three is one of his most cynical, savage and unforgiving comedies. Berlin in 1961 was a divided city. The East and West were controlled by the Russians and Americans respectively, but travel between the two regions was still possible. It was in fact during the making of this film that the infamous wall went up, sealing East Berlin off from the West for almost thirty years. I'm not going to attempt to expl...
Read more

And So, the 70's...

Image
 Raging Riders, and Lots of Bull Depending on who you ask, the ten-year period of 1965-1975 was either one of the best eras in American cinema, or one of the worst. While it was certainly a Golden Age if you were a straight white male who loved extreme violence, casual sexism, xenophobia and homophobia, it was far less enjoyable if such things tended to make you uncomfortable. (Three guesses how I feel about this era.) To some extent, Cinema was merely reflecting the tone of Society itself during that decade. After living through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of  President Kennedy (and, two years later, Malcolm X; and a few years after that , Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King) there were the almost daily news reports of  violent suppression of  Civil Rights campaigners and (if you wanted some relief from the vicious and bloody domestic news) there was the ongoing horror show of the Vietnam War. Eventually of course the 1960s came to an end, and Ame...
Read more