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February 23-March 1, 2017 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 23
Musical Best Pictures through the ages by Matthew Kennedy
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f La La Land takes the Best Picture award at the Academy Awards on Feb. 26 as expected, it will be the 11th musical to do so. The simple romance between an actress and pianist in present-day LA racked up an untenable 14 nominations. Two of the best, Meet Me in St. Louis and Singin’ in the Rain, weren’t even nominated. Two other great ones, Wizard of Oz and Cabaret, didn’t pick up the Best Picture award for good reasons – see Gone with the Wind and The Godfather. While Academy choices of Best Picture musicals may not all fondly endure, most offer more sonic pleasure than the insipid little ditties of La La Land. Broadway Melody (1929) is as creaky as creaky can be, but it is essential viewing for the committed student of film musicals. As the second Best Picture winner, it was the first talkie and first musical so honored. Its merits are hard to decipher today, though Bessie Love’s performance avoids the pervading rigor mortis. The thrill of movie sound and singing was brand-new, and director Harry Beaumont’s camera is surprisingly fluid for the time. The backstage story wasn’t fresh even then, but Broadway Melody became the template for many later musical retreads. The Great Ziegfeld (1936) is an over-baked, half-risen MGM soufflé, aided by showcases for Fanny Brice and Ray Bolger and the welcome presence of William Powell and Myrna Loy. It’s most remembered for its magnum production numbers. “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody” still dazzles for the very reason it wasn’t created by software, but rather was the result of an army of technicians, musicians, craftspeople, and artists working at the capacity of their powers at
the mightiest studio of them all. Luise Rainer’s brief and mannered performance as Ziegfeld’s first wife also won an Oscar, demonstrating MGM’s get-out-the-vote prowess. Going My Way (1944) continued the Academy’s tradition of questionable Best Picture musicals. As drippy as vanilla ice cream at a Fourth of July picnic, Going My Way is an Oscar oddity. Scene-stealer Barry Fitzgerald was nominated twice for the same performance in both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories. He won for the latter, while a warbling Bing Crosby in the same film took Best Actor. War-weary audiences loved the sentimental tale of lovable Irish Catholic priests, and it became one of the biggest moneymakers of the 1940s. The fact that it beat Double Indemnity and Gaslight for Best Picture looks scandalous today. La La Land owes plenty to An American in Paris (1951), from its wistful lovers yearning for creative fulfillment, to its painterly set-pieces, dream ballet, and use of music to interrupt the movie’s tenuous hold on realism. Though An American in Paris is unfavorably compared to actor-choreographer Gene Kelly’s subsequent masterpiece Singin’ in the Rain, it remains a worthy Best Picture choice, from its peerless treatment of George Gershwin’s melodies (“I Got Rhythm” and “Our Love is Here to Stay” are fairly irresistible), to director Vincente Minnelli’s innovative use of color, and the unsurpassed extended ballet that closes the film. A recent Tony-winning Broadway reworking suggests the film has legs. Gigi (1958) is an original screen musical made when such things were on the endangered species list. A velvety beautiful film, Gigi had the finest pedigree of the day. Starring Leslie Caron and Maurice Cheva-
lier, it was produced by MGM from a novella by Colette, directed by Minnelli, composed by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and designed by Cecil Beaton. Gigi’s reputation suffers from the notion that its story of a courtesan in training exploits women. But its titular pupil winds up with exactly whom and what she wants, and gets there with a lilting score and some of the most sumptuous Parisian location filming you’ll ever see. As original screen musicals disappeared, Broadway adaptations came to dominate the genre in the 1960s. West Side Story (1961), for all its musical and choreographic brilliance, was not a stage hit of the highest order, lasting just 732 performances. The film, however, did terrific business and won 10 Oscars, the most of any musical before or since. Stars Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer did rudimentary dancing, and their singing was canned, but everyone around them crackles with an electric energy inspired by Leonard Bernstein’s great score. More than any other winner, My Fair Lady (1964) reveals the hazards of a Broadway-to-Hollywood adaptation. The Lerner-and-Loewe smash was transferred with such reverence it looks like a stage recreation on expensive sets. Every note of its sacred score is preserved, as is every squint from its priggish
anti-hero Henry Higgins, played by originator Rex Harrison. Choosing Audrey Hepburn over stage star Julie Andrews for Eliza Doolittle was the most obvious gesture by Warner Bros. that this Lady had “gone Hollywood.” Ensuing box-office was spectacular. After winning an Oscar the previous year for her screen debut in Mary Poppins, Andrews went on to star in the most popular musical of all time. Adjusted for inflation, The Sound of Music (1965) remains the third all-time biggest box-office. Something about Andrews’ crystalline voice, the Austrian Alps, nuns, Nazis, and children needing new
play clothes combined so effectively that Hollywood has yet to reformulate its success, despite many attempts. The British-made Oliver! (1968), then as now, elicits mixed reactions. Its score is boisterous (“Consider Yourself ”), delicate (“Where is Love?”), or torchy (“As Long As He Needs Me”), but something about its lovablehateful villains, fetid Dickensian setting, child abuse, and murder competes with the film’s strained upbeat spirit. Oliver! appeared when gargantuan, overpriced musicals were losing big bucks, and it would be the last musical to win Best Picture for 34 long years. The most recent musical winner, Chicago (2002), solved the supposed problem of people busting out in song by staging numbers in the leading lady’s fermenting imagination. With its rat-a-tat razzle-dazzle, quick edits, nourish lighting, and absence of slut-shaming, Chicago is the most Bob Fossesque musical Bob Fosse didn’t make. He directed the stage original, but died before it landed on the big screen. Will La La Land take its place among these winners? I bet yes. It’s winning awards right and left, and everybody’s green-lighting musicals again. When a genre is perceived as reborn because of one film, the industry love runneth over. Even more, Hollywood loves itself and the myths it spins.t
First three days of March
by David Lamble
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he Castro Theatre begins its March programming on Wednesday with The Big Sleep (1946). Humphrey Bogart’s second great private eye (Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe) is caught between the demands of an aging mogul and two mismatched daughters (Lauren Bacall and Marsha Vickers). The film that virtually defines film noir, this 1946 release gave Humphrey Bogart his second crack at the world-weary, cynical but totally honest private eye Marlowe, capable of witty one-liners. “She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.” Farewell My Lovely (1975) Robert Mitchum is the best thing going for this third film version of a Raymond Chandler novel that was too
well-written to be entirely ruined. (both 3/1) Delicatessen (1991) Jean-Pierre Jeunet provides an oddball take on cannibalism that’s (sorry for this) not for all tastes. The color scheme matches its icky artistic intent. The Tenant (1976) Roman Polanski helms this odd terror cult piece about an unlucky soul who moves into the room once rented by a woman who took her life. (both 3/2) Reservoir Dogs (1992) One-time Southland video clerk Quentin Tarrantino made a huge splash with this hyper hip, extremely bloody bankheist noir that re-invented an old genre for the 90s. As with the greatest pop art, there’s something to please or offend virtually anyone. The piece starts out with an aging gangster (Lawrence Tierney) assigning code names to a random group of hoods. The names are color-coded like a suburban housing tract: Mr. Pink, Mr. White, Mr. Brown. Predictably, some of the wannabe thieves are offended by their new nicknames. The names are just the beginning of the fun. A serious crime-film geek since his teens, Tarrantino uses his encyclopedic knowledge of rock-nroll to find exhilerating ways to pump up the violence. His casting seriously good actors (Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel) against type both cuts across and increases our expectations of what these guys will deliver as serious goons, especially once the job goes bad and the survivors are left to point fingers and guns at those they suspect may have betrayed them to the cops. (3/3)t
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