Broadway Melody of 1940

I’ve had this DVD for almost a decade, but I’ve never gotten around to watching it. And that’s because the name makes it sound like one of those “cavalcade” movies — i.e., a bunch of hit songs from various stage musicals that year, strung together with a threadbare plot.

And some of those movies are really fun! Without the pressure of coming of with a real plot, sometimes the writers just cram in lots of jokes and skits, and keep things moving. And sometimes they’re just leaden.

I’m not actually sure whether this is one of those movies, though — Fred Astaire is perhaps too big a name to use in one of those.

Yes, indeed — it’s one of those cavalcade movies. I think? The excuse for this bit is that Astaire is visiting the theatre. They didn’t try hard. On the other hand, all the music is by Cole Porter, so perhaps this is more of a real musical…

Now they’re just encountering jugglers and stuff in an agent’s office.

She’s fun.

Oh my god! They dance so well together! I’m not really that familiar with Eleanor Powell, but that was amazing. They were incredibly tight together.

Begin the Beguine isn’t a very good tune, either.

I enjoyed this movie — I smiled a lot while watching it.

But let’s face it — it’s just a vehicle to show the audience all these stage performances. The plot isn’t very much, there’s not in the way of good gags, and there’s no… theme… to the various performances.

So any reasonable person would say this is pretty dire, but I’ve never been reasonable, and I’m certainly not starting now.

Broadway Melody of 1940. Norman Taurog. 1940. ⚃

Mean Streets

I’ve always liked that logo animation — so simple and so distinctive.

Oh, is that Harvey Keitel? So young…

OK, this movie is already annoying me — they’re showing what I guess is supposed to be Super 8 footage in the titles, and they’ve sped it up like we’re watching silent movies from the 1910s. To signal to the audience that we’re watching something oldie? It’s annoying!

I may never have seen this movie before.

Ooh, I see! These streets are mean!

Aha! This must be J. J. Abrams’ favourite scene ever as a child and he shaped his entire career around it.

I totally see what Scorsese is going for, but this is just kinda annoying. Scorsese is so interested in these guys but they’re so boring.

I’m starting to suspect that this movie is just going to be the camera following these low-rent petty criminals around? I guess it’s been a life-long obsession of Scorsese, these guys. He just finds these kinds of people so fascinating for some reason or other. Was he, like, twelve and these guys were on the block and he just loved them so much?

Well, this had more of a plot than I initially assumed it was going to have.

But I just had absolute zero interest in these characters. It’s kinda embarassing how Scorsese tries to give the Keitel character this… depth… by having him having this internal dialogue about religion and stuff.

I found the movie to be intensely boring for the most part.

But there’s some interesting things here, like the way some of the scenes are shot, and some of the editing is fun. But…

Mean Streets. Martin Scorsese. 1973. ⚂

Darling, How Could You!

Heh heh, this is brilliant. I’ve laughed out loud several times already.

Anyway, I think this is part of the Hazel Flagg collection? I was only able to find this on a Spanish DVD — which isn’t that unusual; they’re still going strong on physical media there. But it means a totally unrestored transfer, of course.

Wow, that’s an actual li’l baby. They usually substitute somebody a bit older…

This is delightfully stupid. I can’t stop smiling.

Heh heh. Joan Fontaine (34) plays the mother to Mona Freeman (25), and it kinda works — Freeman is laying, like, 15 I guess? And Fontaine is playing, like, 45, and they’re just putting their all in.

I haven’t laughed this much in yonks. When it was over I was like “what!? that was just fifteen minutes, surely!?”

Movies like this is why I love Old Hollywood — they had such a machine going, pumping out movie after movie on a high professional level. And sometimes you’d get some kind of masterpiece popping out of the machine, but more often you’d get something like this: Not a masterpiece, but a movie where things just click: Charming actors chewing the scenery in an amusing way, with a silly plot with low stakes and lots of good gags, and direction and cinematography that’s totally unremarkable, but very enjoyable. They just had a process of putting all these professionals together and getting something good out more often than any other era or place.

Darling, How Could You!. Mitchell Leisen. 1951. ⚅