Something Siegfried Kracauer Said

About girls...



and men and machines...



that applies to politics...





...though more than politics...





though sometimes, more politics...



made me think about how images and politics work together...



...to do evil...



And how evil...



...might be countered:



by being reconfigured





Maybe?



...gave me something to write anyway.

Saturday Placeholder

Oy, another week without any posts... at least the last two were big ones. I am, as it happens, in the middle of writing a paper for class - more Nazis and their films... though I might get this one in there as well:



Anyway - once this class is done - well, it'll be Christmas, shopping season at any rate - so the odds are probably against getting any decent blogging material through the end of the year. The end of the decade, in cold fact! There have to be lists coming, right? Of course! Not yet though - for now, I'll offer a tease, with the Cinematheque Ontario poll that's been out a few weeks and gotten much comment already. Film lists are fun - and I will certainly take the opportunity to put one together... the more challenging task will be constructing a musical list - Joseph B. did, a couple weeks ago - that's going to be a troublesome project. I listened to and bought a lot of new music this decade - up through the end of 2007, for some reason. The last couple years, not so much. Strange phenomenon - mix of habits (more walking, less trains, so less listening to the iPod) and spending priorities (I've been spending money on DVDs instead) and - um - redecorating the apartment (which included boxing up CDs to create more space for bookcases....) - who knows. So - I look forward to thinking about the music of the 00s, since I care, but have let it slide for a couple years....

Anyway.. lately I've taken the Friday Random Ten to facebook, where it seems a bit more at home... but maybe a video is in order? count down some of my favorite music of the decade that way? I don't know. Maybe now, one of this year's most intriguing records (and an artist likely to figure large in my end of the decade lists) - "Small Metal Gods" from David Sylvain's Manofan:

The Seventh Art and the Eighth Wonder of the World

For the movies about movies blogathon, at Goatdog blog. King Kong! (and a bit of Busby Berkeley.)



King Kong is a movie that is explicitly about movies. It's also pretty explicitly autobiographical, both in the characters populating the film (Carl Denham being a dead ringer for Merian C. Cooper and all), and in the development and structure of the film itself. The film planned in the story of the film is the film we're watching, pretty much. In fact, King Kong is about both movies and movie making directly, and metaphorically - it is a figure for movies in general. That's not unusual in films, and especially not in the early 1930s, a period with a good deal of technological and social change. What is unusual about King Kong is how explicit it is, especially its direct comments about spectacle, sex, the market, and so on. It's especially unusual in a film as enthusiastic about films as this one is.

Films that are or contain figures of film tend not to be so direct. Usually, they use another art form - books, the stage, music - to stands for film. (Or, taking a recent example - cooking, in Ratatouille.) Denham's show in NY, displaying Kong, works that way - it's a pretty direct analogue to the film we're watching, no pretending otherwise - but it is not, itself, cinema. What makes King Kong different is how everything else in the film that points to cinema does so without any disguise. The story is about a man who sets out to make a film: adventure! Spectacle! Sex! Drama! Beauty and the Beast! Denham and company come right out and say it - and they aren’t sentimental about it. They say it, they plan for it, they rehearse it, and then life (in the film) comes along and does it, more or less to cue. And with fine eye for spectacle - the natives stake out Ann Darrow just like a master showman would - and indeed Denham repeats the staging almost exactly in his show in NY.



Repeats Kong's defeats, too...



And of course King Kong the movie is, from start to finish, built around cinema - it’s designed to look good as a film; it’s conceived around the technology of film. And revels in it - the stop motion animation, the elaborate mattes and models and process shots. It's set up to look right on screen. They aren't trying to hide these things - they are presenting us with an amazing spectacle, and expect us to marvel in it, all of it. The planning, the formal properties of the film, are made more explicit by being prepared by Denham's talk. His attempts to film on the island, his attempts to stage-manage the villagers or the fights with Kong, etc., set up the formal structure of the rest of the film - the parallel imagery on the island and in NY (the wall on the island serving as stage and curtain, that recurs in the second half; the parallels in how Ann and Kong are staked out for display; the parallel battles on Kong's mountain and the empire state building, complete with dangerous birds. Even details like the several scenes in both parts of the film of Kong fishing around caves/apartments for people.) The depiction of the act of making a film sets you up to wonder at the artistry of the story proper when it gets going.



It's reminiscent of one of the other outstanding figures of cinema of the period - Warner Brothers' musicals, especially Busby Berkeley's parts. Berkeley’s numbers are almost parables for the shift from stage to screen. Their placement in the films (in 42nd Street, at least), and their overall structure, almost always enacts the shift from stage to screen. The numbers usually follow that pattern - starting on something like a real stage, then opening up toward film. First (usually) by shooting them from impossible places (the flies, through the floor), but eventually abandoning all sense of the spatial unity and integrity of the stage. The space in “42nd Street” (the song) or “By a Waterfall” or “Shanghai Lil” is pure cinematic space - much of it designed explicitly for the camera (and for editing), certainly constructing the three dimensional space of film. Interestingly, while this abandons the "real" space of the theater, it moves toward a "real" space of films - itself referring to the "real" space of, um - reality.



This is a bit like what King Kong does. The first section sets up the idea of the film Denham is going to make - they land on the island, he tries to start filming, but things go wrong: and then very wrong, and instead of making an adventure film, he has to live one. Which, of course, is almost exactly the film he planned all along (and certainly the one Cooper and Schoedsack were planning - and Denham "is" Cooper....) - though since his film plans fell through, he puts on his show the old fashioned way, on stage. This, perhaps, ties us back to the Warner's films. Of those films, Footlight Parade comes closest to matching King Kong's explicitness about the role of cinema. It comes closest to acknowledging the historical circumstances that these films reflect, the historical move from stage to screen. Jimmy Cagney stages musical preludes for movies - already, movies have replaced shows: now, they are starting to squeeze him. Largely, of course, because films like this have managed to recreate a good chunk of the spectacle of the stage. And of course - as Cagney holds off history a bit longer, he does it by staging “preludes” that are, of course, dazzling films.

Though one of the things this has in common with King Kong is the way they treat film as a part of a grander world of spectacle. Films, stage musicals, giant apes, are all attractions - all things put on for the amazement of the audience. Cooper and Schoedsack were no stranger to this - they made documentaries to show to lecture groups; they made films to be the Eight Wonder of the World! Cooper's later ventures, Cinerama, notably, work almost exactly like Denham's Kong exhibition - a grand event, demonstrating the wonders of something new. That's not far from what those Warner Brother's musicals were doing (or what Warner's did in the 20s, with sound films) - setting out to show that film was every bit the spectacle that theater could be. It's an approach that runs through King Kong - the way it was marketed, the way it is structured (with its overture and shows in shows and so on) - and the way it was made. Willis O'Brien's animation tests were central to the whole conceit. It's a film about spectacle - about story and everything else as an attraction. Presentationalist through and through, and quite delighted in it.

Berkeley Postscript - politics

Well - I've said, mostly, what I have to say about Busby Berkeley. I can't deny it's been mostly just a straight dump from the old notebooks to the blog - but I'm not going to pretend this blog is anything but a trying ground... Anyway, I'll try to do some summing up in time, but right now I want to make a quick aside on the political implications of the 3 1933 Warner Brothers films.

Mark Roth writes about the WB's 3 musicals of 33 as homologies for the new deal. WE see a group of people coming together to make a show - all depending on everyone else, on lining up the fat cats, enough to make things move - everyone working together for the good of all... He emphasizes the role of the strong leader in 42nd Street and Footlight Parade especially - considering Marsh and Kent figures of Roosevelt. All of this makes sense - the connections might be even stronger than he puts it. The references to Roosevelt are pretty clear in many places, and all these films - maybe most especially Golddiggers of 1933 - make the depression a central fact of their world, and are quite explicit about the mutual dependencies amongt he people working on the shows. Roth singles out 42nd Street and Footlight Parade for the stength of the directors, the male leads, specifically preferring them to Golddiggers of 1933 - that, I think, is less convincing. On two levels. The first might be the "fascism" level, occasionally remarked upon - the "strong man" can be taken that way, especially when considered in relation to Berkeley's dances. The way his routines reduce people cogs in a machine, strip out their humanity, etc., has been remarked on - and it's a reasonable observation. Roth’s praise of the dances (and the shows) is couched in the same terms. To Roth’s credit, he realizes this, and says he can’t really answer why this is good and not bad - except tautologically - that FDR did not become Hitler, even though he could have. But whether it is praise or blame, the way the films swallow the individual into the mass is - questionable.... The second problem with Roth's position is is wrong is that Golddiggers of 1933 is better for more post-modern reasons. There’s no doubt that Marsh and Kent hold the other two films together - Golddiggers of 1933 is more diffuse; the energy, the plotline, slides around among the ensemble. For me - big Altman and Imamura and Ozu fan - that is not a bad thing. You could take that a bit farther, too - point to the importance of female desire and agency (however parodied) in Golddiggers - which contrasts nicely to the emphasis on male desire and agency in the other films.

I could add a third objection to Roth's argument - he puts Footlight Parade ahead of 42nd Street because it is more triumphant - Marsh at the end of 42nd Street is exhausted - he's held off his creditors and the day of reckoning for another year, but he has to do it again, or he'll be back where he started - the cycle of woes could start up again. Roth prefers Footlight Parade because it avoids this sense of the wheel of fortune - it is hopeful and optimistic, only. But this might be why 42nd Street is better known today, and why it might be the greater film - That might be why it is a greater film - because in fact, fortunes do rise and fall. Roth argues that these films form a kind of new myth - and myths are almost always cyclical. Years later, the film that keeps an awareness of the transience of life and fortune is almost certainly the one to seem deeper.

Berkeley - Welcome to the Machine

(Sorry for missing a couple days - Red Sox, sloth... but on we go.)

In our previous installment I offered some thoughts on Berkeley's big production numbers in the Warner's musicals - how they relate to the world of the film, some of their formal properties, what they look like. About the abstraction of those numbers - the way the content gives way to a pure play of line and motion. This post is about something else - it is about the mechanics of Berkeley's dance numbers - the work involved.

No matter how extravagant Berkeley's numbers get, he never lets you forget the work involved with putting these dances together. I could refer here to Jane Feuer - she argues (in the first chapter of The Hollywood Musical) that Hollywood musicals always aim to hide the work involved in making them; to create a sense of community between the audience and the performers, largely by making the performers seem to be amateurs - etc. There is merit in her argument - though I think it applies far more to later, MGM style musicals than to 30s musicals - especially the WB musicals. (A full discussion of what I think she gets wrong is a topic for another day. And the truth is, she tends to make exceptions for Berkeley's work - so using her as the departure point might be a bit of a cheat. But - for now...)

We can start to talk about Berkeley. Now - there’s no question that his musical numbers tend to efface the individual performer, in a host of ways. Many of the dances consist, more or less literally, of perfectly mundane movements - walking in circles - sprawling on your back scissoring your legs - floating in a pool: the "dance" is constructed out of the patterns formed by the dancers. His numbers often function much more as live action animation than as dance numbers. Even when the dancing is more complex, like the tap dancing in "Lullaby on Broadway," the dance steps are secondary to the overall pattern. (And in this case, as in others, the main affect is as much the sound of 100 tap dancers as the dancing.) But for all this, one of the striking things about Berkeley’s dance numbers is that you see how they work. You can see the patterns the dancers form - you see the things they represent - but you also almost always see the mechanisms, how they get there.

Take the dancing pianos in Golddiggers of 1935: on a black stage we see a host of white pianos played by women in white gowns. The pianos are moving - and under them, you can see men's legs, moving the pianos around the stage. The men are wearing black pants and black shoes - they are almost invisible on the black stage - but not invisible. It might be tempting (I don’t know if people do this or not - they didn't at the show I saw, but who knows) to mock - to think this is a continuity error - but that seems wrong. It would not have been hard to hide the legs - just drape something there... I think the legs are intentional - and that they add to the scene. One thing they add is an obvious sexual component to the scene - the pianos become men, the women playing them (and the men bent over, more or less into the girls' laps). They also emphasize the fact that the women are dancing with the pianos - you can see both partners. But I think beyond this, the legs are a reminder of the physicality of what you see - you see how things work, you see that these things are work, are being performed by people.

Something like this happens in too many of Berkeley's dances to ignore. I think this represents something of a fascination with machines, as machines. These numbers fetishize machines - they focus on the material, on the interlocking parts - it's reminiscent of 20s films, Vertov or Eisenstein or Lang, with their pumping pistons and such. But there’s also delight in how things work. Berkeley seems to want to go to some trouble to show you how the dancers are doing what they’re doing. The pool dance in Footlight Parade ("By A Waterfall") shows you the parts moving - you see the swimmers, but also the people supporting the swimmers. He tends, in many instances, to slow down the action enough that you can see the ways it is put together. And since he does not always do this - I think he is doing it deliberately.

Ultimately, this has three effects, I think. First - it shows the machinery, with a kind of pride, like an inventor showing off the way his stuff works - it has a Rube Goldberg quality to it. Second - I think it creates an interesting tension between the extreme abstraction of the dances - the way they are live action animation, the way they are so often reduced to patterns of color (black and white, in these films at least), to lines, shapes, plays of light, and so on - and the physicality of the dancing itself. And third, it creates a more abstract tension, between representation and abstraction itself. In this, it is similar to the way he shoots the city symphonies ("42nd Street" and "Lullaby of Broadway"), or big extravaganzas like "Shanghai Lil" or "Forgotten Man". There is always a stylization to these pieces - they are quite deliberate in maintaining a sense of irreality. They show realistic scenes, but in very abstract ways - they feel balletic. Partly, of course, because they are a clear precursor to Gene Kelly’s “ballet” sequences - which are also often meant to show simple enough things, but in an extremely stylized way. That’s here, too.

Berkeley’s habits of showing the machine - and the way, even in the most extravagantly impossible number, he will insert shots that refer back to the mechanics of a real stage production - seem to be meant to create the same feeling. I think that there is, in his work, a real sense of trying to transform the world. Getting back to Jane Feuer for a bit, she writes about the use of props in dancing (as well as the use of “natural” movements as dance) - these are both ubiquitous in Berkeley’s work. (The writers parody it in Footlight Parade - having Cagney complain that he’s made dances out of everything in the room). She emphasizes the way these devices are used to hide the technology required to make and film musical numbers - I don’t think that's quite what's going on in Berkeley's work. In his numbers, there is a clear sense that dance - and cinema - transforms the everyday. (Actually, I think that’s true of everyone who does this, actually - I think her argument about bricolage being part of the strategy to deny the difference between the everyday and Hollywood misses the point. First - the use of props in musical numbers derives at least as much from 20s silent comedy - Chaplin and Keaton - as from anything else; and second, I think the purpose of that kind of dancing in musicals is to imbue the everyday with the transcendent.) Berkeley’s dances routinely take everyday settings and actions and turn them into something extravagant - the sense of transformation is crucial - and it depends on the ties back to the mundane.

Berkeley - Stage and Screen

So - building on my last post, where do Berkeley's films, particularly the Warner Brother's films, fit in that schema? How does his choreography relate to the rest of these films? And - what does his choreography, and its relationship to the stage, say about film itself? For that is what these scenes seem to me to be about....

On one level, these films (42nd Street, Golddiggers 33 and Footlight Parade) are all backstage musicals - more than that - they are all strictly performance based. That is, all the music in these films is presented as if it were being performed, for an audience, even if just an audience of one. At the same time, though, the big production numbers completely abandon the stage - the "real" space of the performance. They do this without establishing any sort of fantastic space, however - the films don't present these numbers as anything other than literal stage performances. (And in fact, Berkeley occasionally seems to be deliberately reestablishing the stage as the space for these performances, often by detailing the mechanics of the dances [that will be the subject of yet another post! still to come!]... The exception, though, is Golddiggers of 1935 - which does introduce framing devices into the big production numbers, as we will see below.)

Berkeley's productions get more and more extravagant with each film - and often within each individual film. This is most obvious in 42nd Street, I think. The first number ("Shuffle off to Buffalo") is quite spectacular, with its chorus girls and sleeper cars, but perfectly believable on a stage - Berkeley even keeps the camera in a position to represent the audience, to some extent. The next big number, "Young and Healthy," still seems possible to mount on a stage, but the camera has abandoned the audience and headed for the flies - and the dance itself, with its spinning girls (and wheels inside of wheels) forming patterns only discernable from above - would be utterly pointless on a stage. The choreography here is aimed exclusively at the camera, even if the staging is sort of possible within the "real" space. This kind of choreography is, of course, already something of a Berkeley trademark - the overhead camera, the girls making patterns on the floor.... Usually, though - in the Cantor films I've seen, for example - these scenes are part of the first type of musical - they are not meant as performances as such. In 42nd Street, they are performances - for an audience that couldn't possibly see them. And in the third big number, "42nd Street" itself, the stage space is completely exploded - oh, the dance may start on a stage, but the camera goes diving into the set, and the editing, sets, camera work, choreography, everything is used in a purely cinematic way - creating a number that could exist only on film. It uses space cinematically - in ways that seem deliberately to negate the stage.

In the subsequent films (including, with some variation, Golddiggers 35), this obliteration of the stage continues. Golddiggers of 33 starts, like 42nd Street, on the stage ("We’re in the Money" is completely stagebound), but that's all - the rest of the film takes full advantage of the camera - changing sets on the fly, having the dancers go through multiple costume changes, using editing tricks, and of course making art out of the camera movements and angles and lighting. The usual array of Berkeley devices can be seen - cameras going between the dancer's legs, the overhead shots, the live action animation (dancers forming patterns and pictures), abstract use of light and dark, shapes, tricks with depth and angles of perception, his customary practice of superimposing things - dancers, objects, etc. - on top of one another (the lines of dancers peeling off, revealing another dancer where the first had been. This is often interpreted politically (and another subsequent post will discuss politics, in relation to Mark Roth's essay on the New Deal and Warner Brothers musicals) - as a way of erasing the individuality of the dancers. There's something to that, though I don't know quite what - what's clearer, I think, is the abstraction of these devices. They take on a pure graphic quality - the dancers' faces or bodies replace each other on the screen, creating a kind of flicker - creating constant movement, yet without changing the image. (There might be some who read another metaphor for the cinema here. I will not dispute that interpretation - there doesn't seem to be much of anything in Berkeley's work that can't be read as a figure of cinema.) The graphic quality of Berkeley's work is always very powerful - all the pictures, shapes and such his dancers created - all the lines and circles and curves and patterns of light and dark they made. In dances like "Shadow Waltz", when the lights go out except for the electric violins the dancers are carrying - everything dissappears except the play of light and dark, the streaks of neon violins, arcing around the screen like, well, frames in a strip of film...

Now - in Footlight Parade there is no attempt to even pretend the big numbers are possible on a stage. They are short films - unabashedly. "Honeymoon Hotel" is set in a hotel, with multiple sets, elaborate camera movements, multiple camera angles, editing, and more; "By a Waterfall" - I mean - really*: sure, Dick and Ruby start out on a set that might, sort of, be doable on a stage (but on a stage shared by a movie screen? Though if you say, in front of a movie screen - so that Ruby Keeler leaves Dick Powell and goes into the movie - well - yeah... and symbolically, that's what all of these dances are doing, when you get down to it.) And "Shanghai Lil" looks like a movie set - it is staged like a movie - the sets change, the angles change, the thing is edited - everybody changes costumes half way through... it is pure cinema, without any pretense at anything else. It is as if Berkeley is seeing how far he can take this idea.

The answer is probably given in Golddiggers 1935 - though there are a couple differences in this film. One (stepping back a bit) is that there are musical numbers of the first type - Dick Powell offers up a couple songs out of the blue in this one. And one number - the opening dance by the hotel workers - is something - I don't know where it fits. Everyday life turned into a dance - it turns up in films often enough (like the dancing peasants in Beat Takeshi's Zatoichi, of all places), but it's hard to fit into my scheme, andI'm not sure it's common enough to justify adding a category of musical number. It's a variation on #1....

But Berkeley (who directed this film) also treats the big numbers differently. Specifically, he uses clear framing devices. For "The Words are in my Heart", we start with Dick Powell crooning to Gloria Stuart in a garden. The camera pulls back, and there is a dissolve to a shot of the garden as a model; the camera moves to show the model on top of a piano, with four women reprising the song; the camera then dives into the piano and comes out on a spectacular stage with an army of women in white playing white grand pianos - which start dancing with them, forming typical Berkeley patterns. When it ends - the camera dives back into one of these pianos, coming out to the four women and one piano - then it dives back into the garden model and comes out to reveal Dick Powell and Gloria Stuart again. There is nothing like that in the '33 films - Berkeley's numbers in those films always start by showing a dance performed on stage - and just shifts to the cinematic production number without any transitions of frames.

"Lullaby on Broadway" also has a framing device - it begins with a woman (Winifred Shaw) singing -we only see her face, small and white in a sea of black - the camera comes in closer and closer until she is in closeup as she ends the lyric; the camera spins, so her face is upside down, and there is a dissolve to an map of New York City in place of her face (more graphic matching, if you're looking for that) - the camera then dives into this map and we get the full number. I must drop the pose of studied neutrality here to agree with the critics, and Berkeley himself - this is the peak of Berkeley’s career: this is his best work. "Lullaby on Broadway" is a city symphony - it has all the elements - the dawn to dawn structure, the attempts to show all aspects of the city - the pacing, the musical style. It is also explicitly cinematic - the framing devices ensure that, as do the sets, the story line, the whole structure of the piece. There is a fairly explicit sense of leaving the stage behind and dreaming about the city. It is, thus, the closest of all of Berkeley's numbers (that I have seen) to the third type of musical number - the fantasy sequence. This is true even though it contains one of the best sustained “real dancing” numbers in Berkeley’s career, the tap dance in the nightclub. It's notable that even here, the dancers are subordinating to the camera. Even at the beginning, the two dancers, descending a staircase like Fred and Ginger, are subordinated to the set, the staging, the camera. The camera pulls back as they dance down a huge winding staircase, and they are swallowed by the set, and - more importantly - the full design is revealed: a huge multilevel stage, stairs in the background, and platforms to the left (with a group of revelers - or the orchestra - my memory fails me), and right - where Dick Powell and the girl sit, alone, high above the floor, looking down on the dancers. Then, of course, a veritable army of dancers come out and do an extravagant tap dance - and the camera goes giddy with excitement, and starts shooting from everywhere - even through the floorboards. (And that has to be one of the high points of American cinema.)

When it's done - the camera returns to the map of New York, which dissolves to the singer's face, then pulls away, leaving her, again, a receding white face in a dark field....

And that's a good place to leave it, for tonight. Coming up next - something about the "machinery" of Berkeley's dances, and a postscript on politics and meaning.

*For those looking for a description: Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are lounging on a riverbank, "By a Waterfall" - they croon the song... then Dick takes him a little sleep, and Ruby sneaks off for a swim - plunging into a series of ever larger pools, full of more and more bathing beauties, who end up enacting a number of common Berkeleyisms - the camera goes between their legs while they're swimming, they form a giant zipper, which someone dives into and unzips, then zips back up - etc. You sit back and enjoy the ride along about here somewhere, wondering what he could do to top it....

Types of Musicals

Before I dive into Berkeley proper, I think I have to say something about musicals in general. There are, I think, three main types of musicals* - defining them by how the music is integrated into the rest of the film.

1) Music as expression of emotion: This is what most musicals seem to do. Characters will break into song in the middle of a scene, in the place of "normal", representational interaction. This is usually a means of expression the ineffable - when the emotion gets to be too much, they start to sing or dance. Sometimes these performances are rationalized as performances - or combined with performances, on stage, etc. - this happens in most Fred Astaire films - he is usually a professional dancer - but one who, when he meets that right girl, will break into a spontaneous bit of hoofing. This is what people tend to think of when they think of musicals - especially when they are inclined to make fun of musicals. It requires some suspension of disbelief, as we are expected to accept the fact that people start singing and dancing in the course of their daily lives. But it is a very powerful way of expressing emotion, especially - well, love, joy, desire, sex - it works as an intensification of the emotions, a realization of emotions in movement and sound. And hell, most of us, when we are happy, are inclined to do a jig or croon a bit... aren't you?

2) Performance-based musicals: this is the premise of the backstage musical - that the musical performances in the film (as film) are also performances in the story in the film. People in these films do not start singing when they start falling in love - they sing because they are on stage, or rehearsing, or to impress someone with their singing or dancing. In these films, music remains subordinated to the representationalism of the film - the musical numbers are always naturalized in the story. Films that are not always taken as musicals do this - Marlene Dietrich's films - Blue Angel, Morocco, Blonde Venus - do this. She never sings to express her inner being as such - she sings because she is a professional singer. Obviously, the songs can be expressive of what she really feels - but they are still presented as performances in a realistic (in this sense at least) story. Documentaries also do this, of course - as do mockumentaries, and musicals about rock bands, biopics, and the like.

3) The Singing Detective style musical: this type of musical number is not very common in the 30s. Here, the musical numbers are presented as imaginary. That is - in the performance-based musicals, the music is shown as a more or less realistic performance in a diegetically consistent world. In "expressive" musicals, characters start singing in places they would not in "realistic" films - their singing and dancing is not presented as a performance in the film - but as an extension of their normal behavior. It is, however, completely, literally real, in the world of the film. This third type of musical, on the other hand - represented by films like The Singing Detective, The Hole, etc. - depicts the musical numbers as imaginary - it creates a second order of reality, a fantasy world. In The Singing Detective, the characters don’t literally get out of bed and start crooning - they only imagine it. I'm not sure what the original of this is - but it has a clear precursor in the “ballet sequences” in some of Gene Kelly’s films. They are set apart from the main diegetic world of the films (which in most cases does include "expressive" singing and dancing, and usually performances to boot) - either as explicit dream sequences, or as deliberately non-diegetic inserts.... This kind of musical is much more common now, in the 80s-00s, then it was in the classic days, and it occurs in a much purer form now. Kelly's films, even if you consider the ballets to be the ancestor of this kind of film, always contained conventional performances, of both types. Films like The Singing Detective do not - the music is always fantasy. They also tend to make these kinds of musical numbers functions of their characters' psychology as well - rather than as formal devices, dropped in by the director, say, to comment on the material, or just for the hell of it.

These types are interesting to Berkeley for a couple reasons. First - the 33 films are strictly backstage musicals - characters do not start dancing or singing to express their emotions - they always perform. (There may be a couple exceptions but I don’t remember any.) Now, these performances often carry the same function as the other kind - but they are still naturalized. Take Dick Powell singing to Ruby Keeler in Golddiggers of 1933 - he’s obviously pitching woo to her, but he does it in a completely diegetically plausible context. He is demonstrating his latest song, which happens to be about her. Second - though the singing and performances are always naturalized in the film - always presented as performances - the actual dance numbers are completely impossible. This is one of the things that makes those films so striking, formally. It gives them (among other things) some of the affect of the third type of musical number - it creates another world, existing purely in the film. This effect is particularly strong in numbers like "42nd Street" or "Lullaby on Broadway" - these pieces create imaginary worlds, that only refer to anything in the film outside them obliquely, maybe symbolically - they are self-contained, and primarily self-referential.

Next up - turning to the films themselves, and seeing what we can find there.

*Actually, that's silly - there are a lot more than three - what about, oh,
Umbrellas of Cherbourg? Forgive me for oversimplifying... The three are the ones useful for talking about Busby Berkeley.

Busby Berkley - An Evaluative Overview

Here we go then. Busby Berkeley. But before we really get going - I rather tiptoed around evaluating Berkeley's career, the grand overview - so let's start there. He is, I'd say, an "auteur", even if he wasn't a director for his whole career. He was certainly more significant as a choreographer than as a director, but that hardly seems to undermine my claims that he was an auteur - even in fairly narrow cinematic terms. You can see some hints of his choreography in his directing - the way the camera moves, the way people move, the way things sometimes form those little patterns he loved - certainly, the way music and the story are combined. But his greatness is as a choreographer. What's more, as a choreographer, he was intensely cinematic - his dances are aimed at the cameras, and the best of them work much more as short films than as dance routines in a film. The 4 Warner Brothers films I've seen (which I'll be analyzing in some depth in the rest of this series) take this the farthest - they may set their musical numbers on stage, but they explode the stage - the spaces are impossible, the camera goes into the space, and shoots from all kinds of angles - the dances are staged for the camera, using the angles and editing for their effects, and so on. And because of this, I think it is fair to compare him to directors, more than to other choreographers...

Now then: a quick overview of the films of his I have seen. Some more than once - most not though.

Whoopie - 1930 Eddie Cantor film - he runs off to a dude ranch with a girl. He compares operations. He sings and dances and makes waffles. 2 strip technicolor! I saw this many years ago, and can't remember the Berkeley numbers all that well - I remember Eddie, at his swishiest.

Palmy Days - Eddie Cantor vehicle from 1931, in which he gets set up as an efficiency expert at a bakery through the machinations of a phony psychic. The Goldwyn Girls bare most of it, and what they don't bare they flaunt. 2 fine Berkeley pieces - one with the girls in a gym (shot in a freezer from the looks of the girls - as Guy Maddin might say, the boner quotient is very high), the other Cantor's "My Baby Said Yes, Yes" number, which adds dancing girls and trains and extravagent camera angles before it is through. This is a delightfully silly film.

Roman Scandals - another Eddie Cantor vehicle. In this one he dreams he's in ancient Rome, where he is sold into slavery, discovers a magic smoke that makes you laugh (oy), does a blackface routine in a bathhouse (double oy), and exposes corruption in the dream and real life. Contains great comic chariot chase, but the rest is pretty flat; even the Berkeley numbers are dull, even with some barely concealed nudity.

42nd Street - the most famous Berkeley musical, and a masterpiece - backstage comedy and melodrama, with a good deal of fairly technical backstage stuff, not to mention political metaphor (putting on a show as the New Deal!). Bebe Daniels breaks her ankle, Ruby Keeler is pointed to the stage - then Berkeley takes over - his dances exploding the illusion of the stage, leaving it far behind. A good deal more to come on this humble blog about these films.

Golddiggers of 1933 - Ned Sparks would put on a show, if he only had the money. Dick Powell writes songs and checks, and then saves the day on stage when the regular juvenile succumbs to old age. But wait! Dick's from Boston! so Warren William as his brother and Guy Kibbee as the family lawyer come to save the family name - but they weren't counting on Joan Blondell! this is fine fast and furious Warner brothers comedy, with Berkeley's bits tacked on more haphazardly than usual - but they are perfectly magnificent bits.

Footlight Parade - the stage is dead! replaced by Busby Berkeley musicals! But Jimmy Cagney finds a niche, staging preludes to movies - he has to bang out a dozen a week, and he's going mad - somehow that's not enough, he has to bang out 3 in 3 days, and play all three in one night. Does he do it? "Honeymoon Hotel", "By A Waterfall" and "Shanghai Lil" follow - by this time, Berkeley wasn't making the least pretense at keeping his production numbers on stage, even though they are incorporated into the story as stage productions. These numbers are made for the cameras, made in the cameras, with multiple sets and editing effects and the works.

Gold Diggers of 1935 - first film directed by Berkeley - set at a hotel, where everyone is trying to skim from everyone else. A rich miser arrives with a useless son and a beautiful daughter who waste little time hooking up with a pair hotel employees (who cheerfully drop each other for the chance to marry money) - Adolph Menjou as a Russian producer. Then the music starts - dancing pianos, and the spectacular city symphony, "Lullaby of Broadway".

Babes in Arms - Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland are the children of vaudevillians, whose parents have hit hard times, thanks to Hollywood Musicals. They decide to put on a show - unfortunately, this is at MGM, so the production numbers are resolutely physically plausible, the camera seldom ventures above the top of the actor's heads (and they're all frigging kids!), except for one scene of the kids marching through a town singing and starting fires.... One thing worth noting - in both this and the next film, even though everyone's well being depends on the kids putting on a show - they never seem to actually do it. But they get rescued by a broadway impresario ex machina anyway.

Babes on Broadway - second Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland film Berkeley made for MGM. Has some moments of Busby Berkely in it, but not enough. Has some first rate singing and dancing in it, though more conventional than in BB's WB days. This film is prettygood, though - and the leads were in fact damned good at what they did - there's a reason those two got to be such stars, and for once it has to do with their actual abilities.

Busby Berkeley Part 1

The Harvard Film Archive recently ran a Busby Berkeley retrospective, and I managed to catch a good part of it. It's very inspiring. Those are some inspiring films. I saw, of their series: Forty-Second Street; Golddiggers of 1933; Footlight Parade (Warner Brothers' trio of 1933 musicals, all with huge production numbers by Berkeley); Golddiggers of 1935 (a similar film, directed by Berkeley); Palmy Days and Roman Scandals (a pair of Eddie Cantor musical comedies); and Babes in Arms and Babes on Broadway, with Berkeley directing Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland for MGM. I missed a couple - Dames particularly - that I wish I could have seen - but I am human, and I need my sleep, once in a while*.

The Warners films, especially the '33 films, were the high point of the series. That's not surprising - they would be the highlights of most series'. They have many virtues, almost too many to count. The musical numbers, of course - but even without them, they are funny and sharp, cynical in that Warner Brothers way - they feature great casts - Golddiggers of 33 has Joan Blondell and Ginger Rogers, Aline MacMahon, Warren William (whose presence alone makes most films great) and Guy Kibbee - along with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, and all the Warners' character actors (Ned Sparks and the like)... Forty-Second Street has Warner Baxter; Footlight Parade has Jimmy Cagney, hoofing and crooning, as well as putting on a show... it's great stuff! Seeing the films all together like that has some odd effects - like - I began to really get Dick Powell. He takes his lumps - not as bad as poor Ruby Keeler (the Boston Phoenix called her a "roped steer"), but he gets them... But he's not half bad. I didn't quite notice it until I saw hism in 4 films in a row, but he is quite deliberately self-deflating. He's a target because he makes himself a target - he seems to be quite aware that he is playing the charming crooner as a bit of a clown. He is willing to look ridiculous - his love scene with Frank McHugh in Footlight Parade comes to mind. It is interesting that Blessed Event was his first film - it looks like a parody of his persona, but it came before the persona did. There is plenty of parody in the persona itself. The fact is, he is very funny, and I suspect that he only seemed to not be in on the joke - not being in on the joke is the joke...

But good as the rest of the films are, it's the Berkeley numbers that lift them into the stratosphere. You need some kind of hyperbole to discuss the dances, especially in the Warners' films - they are so disruptive, so extreme, they explode off the stage - pretty close to literally. That is, in fact, the gist of this post - or rather - series of posts. How Berkeley's numbers relate to the films they are in - how they relate to other musicals - how they relate to the stage and screen. I know much ink has been spilled on this subject before - but I'm still going to try to work it out. This post, in fact, is something of a warning of things to come: I am going to offer my thoughts on Berkeley's production numbers here in subsequent posts; these may get excessive, but that is life. I can't make too many claims for this - I feel guilty in that I have seen most of these films just once (a few of them more than that) - to do this well, I should have them on hand, to pore over - at least, I should see them a couple times and try to memorize them. But that's the advantage of a blog - you can wing it a bit more....

So that's what's coming. Something like a draft of a longish essay on the musical, especially, the structure of the musical - with Berkeley's work (especially in the Warner Brothers films) used to illustrate those ideas, and examined for the ways it is different from most musicals. There may even be some theory involved - I have reread Jane Feuer and Mark Roth for this, and if I find other commentaries in the next few days, may work those in too. The best thing about this series of posts is that you shoulnd't have to wait the usual three weeks between substantive posts here - a lot of this stuff is close, and just needs some editing and organizing. I should be able to add something every day or two. I'm not promising the world - just - this stuff fascinates me, and I find there are usually people around who share my interests. So here we go!

* The real problem, the reason I missed this film, is extremely deflating. I took chicken out of the freezer over the weekend, and had to take a night to cook it - it was either Dames or the Eddie Cantors, and since I'd seen, and loved, Whoopie! back in the day, I opted for the Eddie Cantor. I wasn't disappointed, though I wish I had seen Dames as well. I should have been thinking ahead before I started defrosting stuff.