"The Band Wagon" *** (out of ****)The musicals have fallen on hard times. Hollywood doesn't make musicals the way they use to and younger audiences no longer have an appreciation of these type of movies.
In large part that is thanks to MTV and rapid edits as seen in modern musicals such as "Moulin Rouge!" and "Chicago". Traditional musicals such as "The Band Wagon" now seem boring to today's audiences.
Do the names Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, George Murphy, Cyd Charisse, Gene Kelly, Ethel Merman, Nelson Eddy or Eleanor Powell mean anything to my readers? I have a hunch they probably don't. But that's not your fault. These kind of movies don't play on television anymore. And if they don't play on television, how exactly are you suppose to know who these people are and the movies they starred in?
Vincente Minnelli's "The Band Wagon" is routinely cited as one of the all time great MGM movie musicals. And to offer a startling confession, I never saw it until recently. To shock you even more, it doesn't strike me as all that great. Good, worth watching, but, a classic musical? Not quite.
Now perhaps outside of professional singers and dancers, I love musicals just as much as the next person. And I especially love Fred Astaire. Growing up Astaire, for some reason, meant a lot to me. To a 4 year old kid Astaire represented the epitome of style and sophistication. I even made my parents buy me tails! I tell you this information not to bore you but so you know if I say I don't like "The Band Wagon" as much as others it is not because I don't like musicals.
"The Band Wagon", which was based on a 1930s Broadway production which starred Fred and Adele Astaire, has a lot going for it. Of course you have Astaire but you also have the wonderful dancer Cyd Charisse as well as funny man Oscar Levant, whom besides being an absolutely incredible wit was a fine pianist. I think I read somewhere he was a big fan of George Shearing. Rounding out this cast is Nanette Fabray. Outside of her work with Sid Caesar on "Caesar's Hour", I'm not too familiar with her. And Jack Buchanan plays a pretentious theatre director. Buchanan is a legendary singer whose work goes back to the early 1900s. He was very popular in England.
The thing that struck me the most watching this film was the idea of old v.s. new. Astaire stars as Tony Hunter, a one time great song and dance man, who hasn't been in a movie for three years. He is considered a has-been. When he arrives in New York, by train, he expects a mob of reporters to take his picture. There is a mob there but not for him. Another celebrity was on board, Ava Gardner (yes that's the real Gardner).
Tony may get a chance at a comeback, when two of his friends; the Marton's, a pair of screenwriters, Lester (Oscar Levant) and Lily (Nanette Fabray), tell him they have written a new musical comedy for him to star in and they have managed to get a famous theatre director, mostly of drama, to agree to direct the play, Jeffrey Cordova (Buchanan). If that is not enough incentive, his co-star will be the young and beautiful ballet dancer Gabrielle Gerard (Cyd Charisse).
Facing a possible comeback however doesn't make Tony as happy as one might think. Instead it puts added pressure on him. What if he isn't as good a dancer as Gabrielle. Tony hasn't danced ballet in a long time. Plus there is the issue that she might be taller than him, which causes some more insecurity.
The screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who were a great songwriting team, writing scores for movie musicals such as "On the Town" and "The Bells Are Ringing", know a lot about the world of theatre. The viewers gets the impression the Tony character has something to do with the real Fred Astaire. Astaire stopped making musicals after the 1968 film "Finian's Rainbow". He was quoted as saying something along the lines of, as he got older his dance partners got younger. And there is truth to that. Charisse was much younger than Astaire, as was another dance partner he had in the 1950s, Vera-Ellen. But by no means was Astaire a has-been. But he was an older man in a business which fuels itself on youth. Movies were changing from the time Astaire hit it big in the 1930s with Ginger Rogers to the 1950s. New acting styles emerged. And "The Band Wagon" is playful with this idea.
As the director, Jeffrey Cordova, Buchanan represents a new philosophy in stage acting and intellectual theory. He speaks portentously about the new direction he wants to take the theatre. How the musical and Greek drama are not really that different after all, since they share a common objective, the desire to emotionally move an audience. Tony just listens to this stuff and gets dizzy. At one point Tony even says he's not Marlon Brando.
Gabrielle represents to me the pretentious artist. She is a ballet dancer, doing musical comedy is beneath her. It is not up to her standards. Ballet is serious dancing, for the elite. Musical comedy is for the common audience. Naturally there is friction between the two co-stars.
These ideas take up much of the running time of "The Band Wagon". In fact, most of the musical numbers aren't used until the very end of the film when we see the dance numbers of the musical production on stage. And that's just one element that bothers me about "The Band Wagon".
The score is complied of previously written songs by the team of Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz. The songs include "By Myself", "You & the Night & the Music", "Something to Remember You By", "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plans" and the musical piece everyone refers to as the best moment in the film the "Dancing in the Dark" number, which is done as an instrumental as Astaire and Charisse dance in the park. Too bad no one sings the song in the movie. It is a beautiful song but I don't find this particular moment in the movie to be as magical as everyone else does.
It is hard for me to say why I don't like this movie as much as others. It is just a personal feeling I get. I'm not as involved when I watch this as I am other musicals. The film runs too long, One hour and 52 minutes. The musical numbers I think are spaced too far apart. I hate when musicals do that. "Footlight Parade" is another example of a so-called great musical which does the same thing. The entire film is really done without music. It could serve as drama. It is only at the end of the film, when we see the show they have been working on that we hear the songs. And some of the songs make no sense, as far as this plot is concerned. "Triplets" about siblings who hate each other, doesn't belong in this movie. I'll never figure out why "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plans" is sung as a duet between Astaire and Buchanan. And too bad Levant is given more to do. Watch him in "Humoresque", "An American in Paris" and "The Barkleys of Broadway" (also with Fred Astaire) to see what he can do. He doesn't even get a piano solo here.
Though I have no problem watching Astaire without Ginger Rogers, I still prefer some of his older musicals to the ones he did in the 1950s like "The Broadway Melody of 1940" with Eleanor Powell. Of the 1950 musicals I prefer "Royal Wedding", supposedly based on his partnership with his sister Adele. And "Three Little Words" with Vera-Ellen. But nothing beats the RKO musicals with Ginger.
Vincente Minnelli is a good director. Not one of my favorites, but good nonetheless. He won the Oscar two-times for "Best Director" for the films "Gigi" and "An American in Paris", both also won the "Best Picture" Oscar as well. Besides musicals he directed the comedy "Goodbye Charlie" with Tony Curtis and Debbie Reynolds and the back stage Hollywood drama "The Bad & the Beautiful" with Kirk Douglas.
I can't quite figure out why so many people seem to regard this so highly. "The Band Wagon" is a decent musical. Worth watching if you've never seen it before. But make sure you've seen Astaire's other musicals first and "Singin' in the Rain" before this one.
The film was nominated for three Oscars, including "Best Screenplay" and "Costume Design".
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