DVD reviews

O’Hara and Ball shine in Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance

Dance, Girl, Dance York City looking for a new way to

The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray) fulfill their dreams. The two women $39.95 end up linked when Bubbles adopts the

Judy O’Brien (Maureen O’Hara) and persona of the Tiger Lily at a burlesque Bubbles (Lucille Ball) are dancers in club, and offers Judy a high-paying the same struggling troupe, and both opportunity to do her ballet routine have big ambitions: Judy – as a stooge that the wants to be a professional dancer, scripting her own DVD audience boos and jeers until Bubbles returns to ballerina routines in her spare time, and Bubbles REVIEW the stage. Judy needs the money, is looking to land a rich but being the punchline suitor who can give to Bubbles’ act weighs on her a more comfortable lifestyle. A TYLER her. When a rich suitor with a crumbling marriage fter the troupe loses FOSTER named Jimmy Harris their gig at the Palais (Louis Hayward) starts Royale in Akron, Ohio, courting Judy, only for when the cops raid the joint for illegal Bubbles to try and swoop in, it’s the gambling, both women return to New last straw.

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Bubbles (Lucille Ball) with a stuffed Ferdinand the Bull in Dorothy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance.

Dorothy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance is an impressive balancing act between its two protagonists, using their differing desires and differing views on what they do for a living to illustrate the challenges of women working in an artistic industry.

Bubbles may be antagonistic toward Judy, but she’s not villainous – both women are presented as having sensible goals, and the screenplay, by Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis, weaves a careful story that puts the two of them at odds with one another without it being a battle of who’s right and who’s wrong.

The friction between them is one of the many elements that help the film feel relevant even 80 years later, and no doubt a contributing factor to the film being preserved by the National Film Registry, as well as being inducted in to The Criterion Collection.

I Love Lucy looms large, not just as part of television history, but within pop culture history in general. Ball’s movie career, on the other hand, gets far less attention. Dance, Girl, Dance finds Ball in top form, vamping it up as the sassy, takes-what-she-wants kind of gal who’s sympathetic to the struggles of the women around her but who is also looking out for herself first and others second.

When she offers Judy the job in the burlesque act, she doesn’t mention that the role is essentially a punching bag for the audience, feeling that Judy needs $25 a week more than artistic fulfillment (a question that many female artists no doubt ask themselves today). She bails on Jimmy, who they first meet in Akron, when he behaves strangely on their would-be date, but immediately concocts a way to win him back when she learns that he’s loaded and interested in Judy.

Arzner makes great use of Ball’s natural comic charisma to make the character sympathetic even when she’s behaving callously. The burlesque routine itself, set to the song “Mother, What Do I Do Now?”, is a good showcase for Ball’s physical comedy talents (and feels like a foreshadowing of some of Barbra Streisand’s performances in Funny Girl).

There is an equal deftness in the casting of O’Hara as the “plain” girl to Ball’s “sexy star.”

O’Hara is great in the role (especially near the end, when she gets multiple monologues), and of course, unquestionably beautiful, and yet there’s a truth to a scene where a scuzzy promoter doesn’t like the troupe’s hula act until he sees Bubbles do it. It’s not that the troupe’s version is bad or that Bubbles’ is good, but Arzner uses Ball’s brassy personality to the movie’s benefit.

There’s also a sharp bit of commentary when the promoter goes onto hire Bubbles alone, which brings to mind thoughts of womens’ solidarity, and how the charisma of one woman can make or break the careers of several others (Bubbles had hoped her success would benefit all of them).

Self-confidence issues also play a big factor in the story, with Judy constantly struggling to assert herself or objectively assess her own talents.

Early in the film, the girls’ elderly manager, Madame Basilova (Maria Ouspenskaya), tries to put Judy in contact with Steve Adams (Ralph Bellamy), who runs an important ballet troupe. When Basilova dies before their meeting with Steve can take place, Judy talks herself out of speaking to Steve, convinced she’s not talented enough.

No doubt struggles with self-image have existed forever, but mass media has undoubtedly only enhanced them since 1940, not to mention, the thread can just as easily be extrapolated into things such as filmmakers who seem unconvinced that women could act without being tricked into it, or the

conversation about whether women have the resources necessary to argue for fair pay.

The film is not really a romance, and as such Hayward does a good job of balancing between Jimmy’s charm with moments where he becomes depressed and frustrated thinking about his impending divorce from Elinor Harris (Virginia Field).

Jimmy is sincerely attracted to Judy (even if his energy would be better focused elsewhere), but Judy’s starry-eyed affection for a stuffed Ferdinand toy that Jimmy abandons (which actually belongs to Elinor) is a nice illustration of how much more seriously she’s thinking about Jimmy than Jimmy is thinking about her (as well as how much more seriously Judy thinks about Jimmy than Bubbles does).

The film builds to a very funny courtroom scene with all of the film’s major characters that the entire cast plays to perfection, especially Ball, who comes to understand Judy’s perspective and formulates a new strategy on the spot.

As the characters come to recognize that their struggles are more parallel than opposed, it brings to mind the film’s title: Judy and Bubbles might be

moving at different tempos, but to get what they want, they both have to do the dance.

Criterion has produced a foilaccented cover for Dance, Girl, Dance, the first time I can recall that they’ve ever done this for a traditional sleeve (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters does have a foil finish, although that disc comes in a digipak).

The cover features an illustration by Jody Hegwill, which captures Maureen O’Hara right before her character’s big speech, with a faded image of Lucille Ball in the background. The quality of the illustration as a piece of art is fine, but the design of the image is a little dull, and the fact that Criterion repeated it on the fold-out leaflet (also foil-accented, featuring an essay by Sheila O’Malley) kind of adds to the feeling that this particular release did not receive quite as much time or attention as some of their other releases. The reverse of the sleeve is blank brown, and the disc repeats the star pattern from O’Hara’s dress in the illustration without the actual actresses.

The biggest draw of the disc, in my opinion, is a brand-new 4K transfer, presented in 1.37:1 1080p AVC. It looks fantastic, with extremely fine film grain, expertly-tuned shadow gradients, and a stunning level of clarity for a film turning 80 this year.

The fold-out leaflet notes that while most of the film was scanned using the original 35mm nitrate negative, some sections were taken from a 35mm fine-grain master positive provided by the Museum of Modern Art. As a result, there is an occasional shot with a noticeably starker contrast, although there are not many of these inserts.

Sound is a very strong DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono track that also impresses. The film is full of musical numbers, which sound quite robust and lively for a mono presentation, and dialogue is satisfyingly crisp.

There are two extras on the disc. First, there is an introduction by film critic B. Ruby Rich (15:16), which was recorded for the Criterion Channel streaming service. It’s not a film-specific supplement, but rather filmmaker-specific, with Rich providing a brief overview of Arzner’s career (including her invention of the boom microphone!). The other supplement is an interview with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (10:48). When Coppola attended UCLA as a graduate student in 1962, Arzner was one of his teachers. After a little bit of backstory on Arzner, Coppola gets into his memories of what she was like, and the stories are quite entertaining.

Dance, Girl, Dance is very funny and features a number of very good performances, especially from the legendary Lucille Ball. Criterion’s new 4K remaster looks outstanding. Highly recommended.

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The Burke and Hare story retold

this romance seemed doomed from the start and, as Burke and Hare become more brazen in their pursuits, a light starts to shine on their connection to Knox’s school. Very atmospheric and featuring some excellent production design and art direction, The Flesh And The Fiends comes together really nicely. A big part of this has to do with the casting. Cushing is excellent in his role as Knox, bringing that nobility and determination to his character that he brought to many of the Hammer Studio’s Frankenstein films. The man does a fantastic job of portraying his convictions in a very believable way, it’s a great role for him and he looks eerie enough with a makeup appliance over his left eye (the left side of the real DVD REVIEW IAN JANE The Flesh and the Fiends (special edition) Blu-ray, 29.95 Written and directed by John Gilling in 1960 and based on the infamous Burke and Hare murders from the 1800’s, The Flesh And The Fiends is set in Edinburgh, Scotland, which just so happens to be the base of operations for one Dr. Robert Knox (Peter Cushing). He’s delighted, early in the film, to receive a visit from his niece, Martha Knox (June Laverick), and so too is one of his students, Chris Jackson (John Cairney), who Knox pays to help out around the surgical school he runs. Always in the need for fresh cadavers to use in his work, Dr. Knox relies on two disreputable men, William Burke (George Rose) and William Hare (Donald Pleasence), to supply him with bodies, paying them handsomely for their work and asking no questions as to where the bodies come from. Knox feels it is more important to keep his students properly educated and to get them the training they need than it is to look too far into Burke and Hare’s nocturnal activities, most of which revolve around The Merry Duke Tavern and a nearby brothel, where drunks frequently stumble home alone. On top of that, Burke’s wife, Helen (Renee Houston), who he mistreats quite horribly, runs a boarding house which further adds to the two men’s supply of people that nobody will miss. When Chris falls in with a lovely drunk named Mary Patterson (Billie Whitelaw), he does what he can to get her to give up her disorderly ways, but Knox’s face and eye was disfigured after a bout of small pox he suffered). If Cushing’s work here weren’t enough on its own, there’s also a fantastic turn from Donald Pleasence here, complemented perfectly by George Rose. These two play their characters very well, each man relishing the next murder even more than the last, and they really bring a sweaty, boozy feel to their characters. Supporting work from Cairney is decent enough, though he isn’t particularly remarkable, while Billie Whitelaw (who is probably best remembered for playing Mrs. Baylock in The Omen) plays a drunken harlot really convincingly. Gilling’s direction is tight and his script is sharp. Monty Berman’s cinematography does a great job of turning Edinburgh after dark into a dangerous land full of dark alleyways, dimly lit streets and rowdy establishments of ill repute. The score from composer Stanley Black is also very good, quite appropriate to the mood that the visuals so effectively conjure up. Really, this one just comes together really well. The feature version of the movie included on this disc is the stronger, uncut version of the film. This means that it includes a surprising amount of nudity in the brothel scenes, the murder of the older drunk woman is slightly stronger as is the killing of Jamie. It also features a different opening and a fair bit more. The Flesh And The Fiends comes to Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p high 68 July 16, 2020 DuluthReader.com

Donald Pleasence and Billie Whitelaw in The Flesh and the Fiends.

definition transfer framed at 2.35.1 widescreen, taking up just over 25GBs of space on the 50GB disc. Taken from elements that were clearly in less than perfect shape, the transfer is a nice upgrade over the older DVD release to be sure, but it is inconsistent in a few ways in terms of contrast and print damage and occasionally even some noticeable telecine wobble. There are scratches throughout and specks as well, and sometimes the blacks can look closer to dark greys, but this has decent enough detail even if it never approaches reference quality.

This might not be a reference quality black and white picture, but if it is imperfect it’s more than watchable and better than we’ve had before.

The only audio option on for the feature version of the movie is a 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track in the film’s native English language. Again, what we get is less than perfect, so expect a bit of hiss here and there and some distortion in a few spots. Most of the time the audio is fine, the track is balanced well enough and has some occasional moments of depth, but it would appear, as with the video grading, the elements here were less than ideal.

There are two primary extras on this disc, the first of which is the inclusion of the shorter alternate cut of the film, The Fiendish Ghouls, which runs 1:14:13 as opposed to the uncut version at 1:34:38. It’s doubtful anyone would prefer this version to the stronger, uncut version of the movie but it’s always nice to have alternate versions preserved on Blu-ray releases like this, particularly as some viewers likely have a certain sense of nostalgia for them from older home video releases of TV viewings from back in the day.

The other main extra is an audio commentary, available over the uncut version, from Tim Lucas. He covers the Burke and Hare grave robbings that took place, how this film defied his expectations in a lot of ways, his appreciation for the film’s atmosphere, the film’s strong depiction of the era in which the story takes place, the real life character that Cushing’s character is based on and lots more.

The Flesh And The Fiends is a solid slice of very atmospheric vintage British horror. John Gilling’s script and direction is top notch and it all just comes together really nicely.

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“Best” for 10 years in a row!

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