Intermission Feature

As has been well documented by now, our current series is a celebration of comedies released during the Great Depression (creatively entitled Depression/Comedy).

Last week's film took us rather dramatically out of that particular comfort zone with Monkey Business, released in 1952. 

The late date notwithstanding, Monkey Business is (ideologically, if not actually) a Depression-era comedy. It may have been made in 1952, but its heart belongs to the 1930s (very appropriate for a film about regressing to one's youth).

Before we go back to the Depression, I want to dawdle in the 1950s for one more evening with a film that is very much of its time. After Monkey Business, I think it's worth seeing what movie making in the 1950s actually did look like.

You See it Without Glasses!

Last week I talked about the multi-threaded crisis that was overwhelming Hollywood in the early 50s. Film studios were in trouble, and most studio heads were of the opinion that new films would need to look (and sound) dramatically different if they were going to entice audiences back into the movie theatres and away from the television sets in their living rooms.

It became very obvious to everyone who followed such things that novelty was the most reliable way to win audiences back. 1952 ( the year of Monkey Business) had seen the release of some (ultimately) iconic films: Danny Kaye had memorably portrayed Hans Christian Anderson. Gary Cooper had faced his demons in High Noon. Katharine Hepburn got to beat up Charles Bronson in Pat and Mike (really!) and Gene Kelly had gotten thoroughly soaked in Singin' in the Rain. In the UK, Michael Redgrave had discovered the vital Importance of Being Earnest. 

But there were two films that year that really got audiences excited, and played to consistently packed houses (to the envy of every other film studio of the time): Bwana Devil and This is Cinerama.

Bwana Devil (a truly cheesy "B" movie about lions attacking natives in Uganda) was the first Hollywood film to be made in 3D.

And This is Cinerama was a documentary-style "travelogue" designed to show off the ultra-widescreen Cinerama process.

Both films (regardless of their content) represented technical innovations at a time when film technology hadn't really changed in twenty years. Audiences took note. They got up, turned off their television sets, packed their baby boomers into the Cadillac and drove down to their local cinema for the chance to experience something new and interesting. 

And the film studios took note of that.

By 1953, every studio was trying to rush out their own cinematic innovation. For 20th Century Fox, it was CinemaScope.

Like Cinerama, CinemaScope was an ultra-widescreen process that overwhelmed audiences with a ridiculously large image. Unlike Cinerama, CinemaScope could be filmed with a single camera (and screened with a single projector) making it more cost-effective for all concerned. And unlike 3D, the audience was not required to wear special glasses, as the promotional material took pains to point out.

One of the first films to be released in this exciting new format was the romantic comedy How To Marry a Millionaire.

(notice the word CinemaScope is more prominent than the film title, or the actors' names...)

In many ways, How To Marry a Millionaire is a perfect distillation of American society in 1953. Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe play a trio of fashion models (a very low-paid and unglamorous profession at the time) who dream of escaping the drudgery of their daily lives by marrying into money. Lots and lots of money.

To that end, they set themselves up in a luxury Manhattan apartment and live far beyond their means in the hopes of enticing (and "marrying") an eligible millionaire or two.

This was of course smack in the middle of the post-war economic boom in US society, when rampant consumerism was everything, and women were being told in no uncertain terms that marriage and domestic bliss should be their only ambitions.

As such, this film could easily have been highly offensive and disturbingly misogynistic (as many films of the decade in fact were). But astonishingly, it manages to avoid those pitfalls by keeping things light and fun, and (most importantly) very, very stylish.

And ultimately of course, How To Marry a Millionaire only had one real objective. It's a 95-minute show-reel for the wonders of CinemaScope. The story is fun and well structured, but never mind that; look! It's Marilyn Monroe! In Widescreen!

Fritz Lang famously said that widescreen cinema was only good if you're filming funerals or snakes, but the cinematography of How To Marry a Millionaire leaves no vista un-panned, no chaise lounge un-reclined. I don't think any other film has featured so many people draping themselves over the furniture at every opportunity...

Even the thermometers are in widescreen.

Say "Aaaaaaaaaaaah..."

The gender politics of the 1950s was becoming increasingly toxic, and runaway consumerism was threatening to become the be-all and end-all of society, but Hollywood only had one message for the audiences who came to see this particular film.

It's better than television!

We will screen How To Marry a Millionaire at 7.30 on Thursday, the 23rd of May at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.