• The Bandwagon

2/22/24 (Thurs)

Vincente Minnelli’s 1953 film is often cited by critics as one of the great film musicals, but I have to wonder if I was watching the same movie that they were. Comden and Green, who succeeded brilliantly in building a story around random Brown/Freed songs in Singin’ in the Rain, were defeated here by a similar ambition for the Dietz/Schwartz catalogue. They managed barely the flimsiest of stories and soon seemed to give up on giving the songs a context at all, simply featuring them as musical numbers in a stage show or, as with the supreme “You and the Night and the Music”, rendered as background music without being sung. (The 1931 stage version was in fact a pure revue of various numbers, only some of which made their way into the film.) The story was too exaggerated and desperate to be fun, including a tacked-on romance between a 50-something Astaire and 20-something Cyd Charisse that didn’t feel organic whatsoever. Clever dialogue might have helped, but the creaky jokes didn’t matter anyway as the basic story is beyond saving.

An aging and faded film/stage star is persuaded by his writer friends to try a comeback with a flamboyant producer and famed prima ballerina. The star and ballerina take an instant dislike to each other, which of course means they will fall in love. The producer wants to take the writers’ farcical concept and turn it into high art, resulting in disaster. Astaire steps in to save the day by retooling the show into pure entertainment, which proves a huge success.

The movie starts out with an idea later pilfered (to much greater effect) by The Music Man as people on a train talk about a washed-up actor without realizing that he is sitting there among them. The songs at first reflect the story: the actor (Fred Astaire) emerges from the train and sings a fine “By Myself” (with different lyrics from the romance-related original); “Shine on Your Shoes” is an exuberant dance with a shoeshine boy – apparently an actual dancing shoeshine boy recruited for the film – that unfortunately incorporates a ridiculous routine at a kid’s arcade; and the anthemic “That’s Entertainment”, the only song written specifically for the film and superbly rendered by Astaire, Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant as the Comden/Green stand-ins, and a hilarious Jack Buchanan as the producer. I was shocked to learn that that last song wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar, especially as it’s since become a virtual theme song for Hollywood.

Then everything falls apart. The songs pop up randomly, and it is not certain how they even fit in the show-within-a-show. Still, they hit some highs, as with a terrific “I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plan” by Astaire and Buchanan, and the bizarre “Triplets” with those actors and Fabray. The best is a dreamy unsung “Dancing in the Dark”, danced by budding lovers Astaire and Charisse. There are some lows as well, especially a badly conceived ballet intended as a Mickey Spillane parody that went on way past its expiration point. Charisse is a terrible actress but a dancer par excellence, and I wish they had showed more dances by her; one of her numbers was evidently cut from the film but supposedly available on video. Will have to look for that.

No one came off well on the acting side other than Buchanan, whose hamming was just right for the role. (Buchanan introduced “By Myself” to the world in a separate musical around 15 years earlier, but that was given here to Astaire.) Fabray did at least give a spirited performance that fit the whimsical tone being targeted. The actors were defeated mainly by a nonsensical script that never rose above embarrassing. The creators would have done better just to release the entertaining musical numbers without bothering with a story, or at least this story. I remember reading years ago that someone was trying to adapt this version of the show for Broadway, and I’m not surprised that it never worked out. Given the quality of the songs, it’s a pity that Dietz/Schwartz were not better served.