The 1948 Musketeers

George Sidney's 1948 adaptation of The Three Musketeers is the best one I've seen. It packs the novel's whole plot (including the second half, I mean) into it's 125-minute running time while still managing to pack in lots of farcical comedy with the four musketeers. This does, of course, mean that Queen Anne (Angela Lansbury) doesn't appear in the movie very much, but it means instead that Milady de Winter (Lana Turner) becomes the real focus. And what a focus!! I think Lana Turner looks more gorgeous than anyone I've ever seen in this movie. She appears in the most expensive outfits with her hair covered in jewels. She looks absolutely exquisite. Gene Kelly is way too old to be playing D'Artagnan, but who cares, honestly. His particular style of dance makes his fight scenes even more delightful. Anyway, this is the one. It makes full use of its gorgeous Technicolor photography, has great performances (including a brilliant Van Heflin and a charming Frank Morgan), and a breathtaking Lana Turner.

The Pirate (1948)

I was not into The Pirate. I like the movie's South American–Caribbean setting, of course, and I love pirate movies, but this is no pirate movie. The main character here is a young girl named Manuela (a name everyone in the film annoyingly pronounces as man-you-ELL-a) who has created a set of romantic fantasies about a pirate. This is Judy Garland, who apparently missed much of the filming because of illness. The stuff Garland appears in is pretty great, but the real star – although not top-billed – is Gene Kelly. The trouble is that Kelly's numbers are just... not that good. Cole Porter's score is dumb, and most of the songs are not good.

I did turn a corner with the film near the halfway mark when Vincente Minelli moved into his full fantasy sequence mode. Kelly does a great pirate dance in a fantasy number wearing tiny black shorts and an open shirt. He looks incredible, and the sequence is very fun. Because it's one of those Minelli's fantasy numbers for which he will become so well known, the whole thing just works so much better than the dumb plot that the musical is so tied to. It's almost as if musicals really aren't integrated.

The movie's final number and reprise, "Be a Clown", are also great. In the first version Kelly and the Nicholas Brothers do some great spins and leaps and turns. The Nicholas Brothers are not really restrained, and Kelly really keeps up with them! It's a fun, acrobatic number. The second version is Kelly and Garland as hobo clowns doing a series of bits and yukking it up as the finale. It's a delightful number and the dancing and comedy are great.

On the whole, though, this is rather a flawed mess, and one wishes "Be a Clown" fit nicely in some other show.

Let's Make Love (1960)

Let's Make Love is a sexy comedy starring Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand, whose English dialogue was learned phonetically – I had to put on the subtitles in order to get it.

This feels like pretty typical 1960s musical fare. Almost all of the songs are diegetic because we're in some kind of off-Broadway revue. The funniest bits in this film might be the sections in which Milton Berle teaches Montand to be funny, Bing Crosby teaches him to sing, and Gene Kelly appears to teach him to dance. 

Much of this film is charming, and some of it is actually quite funny. For me the weirdest part of Let's Make Love is British singer Frankie Vaughan, who is very handsome but who seems to me constantly flat in every one of his songs. I can definitely see why he didn't catch on with USAmerican audiences.

I watched this on DVD, but I'm pretty sure it's also on VOD.

Les Girls (1957)

I loved Kay Kendall in this, and I don't recall ever having seen her in anything before, but this movie as a whole is rather lackluster. I wanted more musical numbers and more Gene Kelly.

It's Always Fair Weather

It's Always Fair Weather doesn't have many memorable songs, but it has several memorable numbers. Dolores Gray has a great number, Cyd Charisse, of course, has an exquisite boxing number, and Gene Kelly tap-dances on roller skates. This one, especially, is just inspired. Oh! And the opening number, with Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd, is also just so excellent. This is filled with action-comic choreography and great dancing. I enjoyed this immensely.

Silence and the Artist

The Artist is a gimmick. And I think it's going to win Best Picture, or rather, I should say that I hope it wins Best Picture, because if it is a gimmick (and it is) it is the most clever gimmick I've seen in years.

See, The Artist is a silent film. It's made in black and white and also in the old 1:37 aspect ratio. There is a gorgeous Old Hollywood score undergirding the whole thing (just like silent pictures of old) but we don't actually get to hear the actors (Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell) actually speak.

And it works. It works like gangbusters. Of course, silent movies worked too, and many of them still work, a fact to which anyone who has seen Sunrise or 7th Heaven or The Gold Rush can attest. The Artist is delightful: movie magic from start to finish, drawing particular attention to an aspect of the cinema that is not given a lot of attention on its own (think of how very much we always comment on camerawork, or editing, or acting, and how little on the audio in a movie!).

Ludovic Bource, who scored the film, has, as far as I can tell, never scored anything this enormous, but his music is great: instantly hummable, was nominated for a Golden Globe, and seems destined to be nominated for Best Original Score come January.

The acting in this movie is also wonderful. It is impossible not to fall in love with Dujardin and Bejo. They're simply the most lovable pair I can think of. Dujardin in particular has such a charismatic way about him that it is hard for me to imagine anyone else achieving anything anywhere near what he does in this role. I was in love with him within the film's first ten minutes. He's simply astounding.

The film is indebted, of course, to Singin' in the Rain – any film about the transition from silents to talkies is bound to be – and the plot is heavily dependent on the iconic plot of A Star Is Born, but none of that matters in The Artist. If it's derivative, it puts such an original twist on its source material that I didn't mind one bit. Instead, I went along for the ride, mesmerized by the audacious filmmaking, the sheer cleverness, and the sheer magic up on that screen.

(Just as a sidenote, I can't help but think of last year's silent film, The Illusionist, and how much I absolutely loved it. And, as you can probably tell, The Artist is also (as people are so fond of saying) a love letter to the movies, but Michel Hazanavicius's love letter is so much more interesting than Scorsese's. (I know, I know. I should leave Marty alone. I'll stop now.))

I Miss Barbra.

The sad part about WALL·E's liberal quoting of Gene Kelly's Hello, Dolly! is that though the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" opens the movie and we hear Michael Crawford's clear, lovely tenor voice, the song fades out during all of the parts where Barbra Streisand sings in the song. In the copy of the soundtrack I have, Babs starts singing at the 1:15 mark. It looks like WALL·E's soundtrack (for sale everywhere) also omits Barbra, since the "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" track lasts only a minute and seventeen seconds.

Now, I'll admit that Hello, Dolly! is not the best musical in the world. In truth, it's probably not in too many people's top ten. And Gene Kelly's film is a problematic behemoth of a movie, as well. The fact that it stars Barbra Streisand in the first place is controversial (and perhaps not the best decision.) I should also mention that "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" is not exactly the best song Jerry Herman ever wrote, either.

But I really like Hello, Dolly! for all its faults and grandeur and silliness. It's warm and loveable and sweet, and Herman's music is infectious and fun if not necessarily groundbreaking. And my favorite part of the movie is Barbra herself. She is larger than life, and she's not exactly acting her heart out, but she's brassy and fabulous and clever. And that twinkle in her eye makes me fall in love with her.

I know, I know. This is the gayest post ever. But I am about to make it a little gayer because I want to talk some more about Andrew Stanton's WALL·E. I am still thinking about it because everyone on earth is talking about how much they love it. Now I love that WALL·E begins by quoting a movie every musical-loving queen will know. But one of the things that I really disliked about WALL·E is that the robots WALL·E and EVE have such clearly defined genders. Why do they have to be male and female? I mean, robots don't have genders. They don't have genitals for Chrissakes! And they don't have sex. Or children. Or societal norms. So it seems really heteronormative and unnecessary that WALL·E and EVE's genders are so obvious.

I could go on about how holding hands is a heteronormative obsession, too, but I guess I should probably stop being down on the feel-good movie of the summer.

This doesn't really have anything to do with Barbra Streisand, I guess. But all through WALL·E I kept waiting for Barbra to make an appearance, and when she didn't I was definitely disappointed.

Hello, Gorgeous.

I realized something today while I was watching Hello, Dolly! 

I think I might be gay. 

There is no reason on earth for me to like a movie as ridiculous as this as much as I do.  It's like they took the entire experience of Disneyland and put it on film.  This movie is not very good and yet I LOVED it.  What a fun time!  I swear Barbra Streisand is never out of the exact center of the frame when you watch it, and she always has some ridiculous hat on and she sings and it's just great.  It's like a lesson in how to be fabulous.

Such good times.  I really ought to watch something with some substance now.  I'll think about it.