Movies

I am starting to miss having the opportunity to display my erudition on obscure cinematic topics so I will try to review a few more movies occasionally, starting with Born to Dance (1936). Eleanor Powell and Jimmy Stewart are the wide-eyed grinning boy and girl in this film which is most notable for its weaknesses. The songs by Cole Porter include the standards Easy To Love and I've Got You Under My Skin, and some pretty good show tunes such as Rap Tap On Wood (the best number in the film) and Hey Babe Hey, but the story is weak and hackneyed, and the presentation is a series of set-pieces. At times it seems as if much of the story elements were cut out, as singer Frances Langford is arbitrarily paired with Buddy Ebsen without having her character really introduced, and Virginia Bruce as the Other Woman/Temperamental Star who has to be put out of the way for the sake of Powell's success and happiness never develops her character at all - she abruptly goes from fairly likeable to a complete monster just because the plot requires it. A few of the numbers are well-choreographed but mostly they don't seem to hold together or, like Powell and Stewart's sweet duet of Easy To Love which is brought to a halt by an irrelevant novelty bit by a walk-on character, are flawed or ill-constructed. Virginia Bruce's treatment of Under My Skin is aloof and unconvincing, with a few of the lines delivered with back to Stewart and the camera, not like a woman barely able to keep from crawling all over him as the song suggests. Ebsen is sometimes fun to see but here is kind of squinty and repulsive, and of all the secondary characters only Una Merkel as the Cheerful Chum is consistently appealing. Jimmy Stewart shows he is as good a singer as Powell is an actress - they must have been trying him out as an all-around leading man but they should have had someone dub his songs as they did Powell's since his voice is as weak and reedy as you might expect. She is an outstanding dancer when she gets the chance and some of her work here is remarkable, but the choreography is flat and archaic without much real connection between the action and the music, and the director seems unaware of the Berkeleyan technique of inserting a shot of other performers to disguise a break in the routine. Though it seems a bit advanced over other musicals of that period, mostly because of the high quality music and big, bright, open sets, it is a jumpy and poorly contrived movie overall. Director Roy Del Ruth has a lot of better movies to his credit and I imagine that many of the failings of this one came out of the front office and the editing room, not the soundstage. 5/10

Her most startling move.

Recently I also saw Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), a lush technicolor melodrama inspired by the early days of Hollywood and specifically the miscued non-romance of Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand. Don Ameche had to play some real boobs at times, and this is one of his boobiest - he's the jerk so obsessed with making movies that he doesn't see Alice Faye flinging herself at his feet every damn day. Sadly, there are no songs, but it is pretty entertaining with a few cameos by silent stars and an amusing pie-flinging sequence with Buster Keaton. It's Hollywood's love song to itself and as such is cloying and contrived, but it was brightly colored and well-made. 6/10

This is what I liked best.