Zis Boom Bah (1941) B-movie vehicle for forgotten Vaudeville star Grace Hayes, who helps save her son's college by opening a student-staffed night club. More educational than entertaining, but some adequate musical performances. 6/10
The Dance of Life (1929) Donna tracked this down because she is experiencing an Oscar Levant craze and this is his first film appearance, as well as one of the earliest screen musicals. Sadly, he only gets about thirty seconds total screen time, the remaining two hours being a dreary backstage melodrama. I am quite tolerant of creaky archaic cinema but this one had me weary after half an hour, though the deadly pace was greatly relieved in the middle by a spectacular Ziegfeld Follies sequence with insanely huge stage set and costumes. Your chances of ever encountering this film are extremely slim. 4.5/10
El bolero de Raquel (1957) A Cantinflas movie - lots of humor, a little pathos, a couple of dance numbers, and wedding bells at the end. Unfortunately the subtitles were not well translated so a lot of the impact of his humor was obviously lost. The first 20 minutes is a sequence related to the death of his friend and the resulting funeral - Cantinflas ultimately arrives at the cemetery drunk, goes to the wrong funeral and kisses all the ladies, delivers a bizarre eulogy and falls into the grave. While everyone else grieves, his remarks are sardonic, self-serving and not a little lustful. Not at all what you would see in an American film of that day. The title is a pun - he is a bootblack (bolero) with a girlfriend named Raquel; as the result of a misunderstanding he ends up dancing on a nightclub stage to the Bolero of Ravel. Funny. Sorta. He also accidentally dives off the cliff at Acapulco. It's always something with that guy. 7/10
