Heaven

It's taken me longer to write this up than it should. There have been some good films around town lately. I finally saw The Spirit of the Beehive - not sure how I missed it all these years, but did... It's wonderful. It's not the kind of movie that lends itself to analysis or discussion - it is beautiful, dreamlike, haunting, an evocation of childhood, an elegy to the movies - everything it is said to be. Considered to be one of the great films about childhood, and it is.

Earlier last week, The Brattle was running a series of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. I should have gone to more - I didn't see any of the Kelly films - I especially wanted to see The Pirate, but wimped, since it started at 9:30. I am getting old. Now I must live with the regret. What sorrow! But I did get to a good part of the Fred Astaires: Top Hat, Shall We Dance, The Gay Divorcee and Royal Wedding.

I watched Top Hat and Shall we Dance a few months ago, and wrote about them - I've never seen Royal Wedding before. It's a 1951 film from the MGM Freed unit, written by Alan J. Lerner, directed by Stanley Donen, starring Fred and Jane Powell as a brother and sister act who go to England and find love. It is packed with music (Burton Lane's, with Lerner's words), dance, showstoppers on stage and off (has all three of my pet schemes, outlined back in my Berkeley posts) - but it's pretty dull anyway. It's not the music's fault, though I don't have much use for Jane Powell's singing - the songs are fine, the numbers are entertaining - Fred gets to bring down the house (or turn it upside down, if you prefer - it's the one where he danced on the ceiling) - it's not that. It's the story. There's plenty of plot going around - Fred and Jane fall in love, with other people - and there's an obligatory older couple who've split and are getting back together - but with three love stories, a dozen musical numbers (it gets close to as dozen), and Keenan Wynn apparently playing both Eric Blore and Erik Rhodes, it's still the slowest moving musical film I've seen in ages. It's all filler - all the dialogue scenes are filler - full of references to things happening off screen, that don't come on screen; the jokes fall flat; no one mistakes anyone else for a gigolo - it's hopeless.

The other three, though, are as good as it gets. Seeing them together, I have to admit that Shall We Dance comes off a bit weaker - the music and dancing are as good as the earlier films, but the stories, writing, all the rest are not up to the earlier standards. But those standards are so transcendent, that you can come well short and still have an unqualified masterpiece, which Shall We Dance is.

But the other two... Shameful as it is to parse films like this, which is better and all that, I did it - and would say, in the end, Top Hat comes out the winner. Everything there runs together flawlessly - the formula has been perfected, and everything - words, movements, music, sets, direction, everything - is exactly as it should be. The Gay Divorcee has some rough edges, some awkward transitions and plot points and the like - not Top Hat. On the other hand, The Gay Divorcee - made before Breen came in full force, is sexier, looser, and being less formulaic has its advantages - Edward Everett Horton, in particular, gets to offer a wider array of straight lines, not just one double take after another. Musically - well - they're all working with the best. Shall We Dance probably has the best music over all - all Gershwins, all the way through - that's good. Top Hat also benefits from the Irving Berlin only songs - first rate material, all through. The Gay Divorcee has good music, but not first rank music...

Except, of course, for "Night and Day". Which is not only the best song in any of these films (I mean, it's the best pop song ever, isn't it?), it's the best dance, and the best piece of filmmaking in Astaire's career. It's a seduction, that grows into full fledged romance - in story terms, it mixes the functions of "Isn't this a Lovely Day" and "Cheek to Cheek" - and not only Astaire and Rogers, but Sandrich, make a story of it. The give and take, with Fred following Ginger around, inviting her, pulling her back, anticipating her - they come together, pull apart, come together, explore and finally fall in love - the music and filming complimenting the dance, the music swelling and fading in turns, the camera coming closer, pulling away, spying on them, then nearly joining them - how beautiful it is. As good a reel or so of film ever made, I think.