Sweet Charity (1969)

(On Cable TV, August 2020) I hope no one ever asks me to write a book about Hollywood musicals, because one of the middle chapters will be called, “How Bob Fosse destroyed the musical and yes, it’s all his fault.” I exaggerate slightly for comic effect, but not by much: Fosse was the leading director of musicals during the 1970s’s New Hollywood (probably the worst decade for musicals) and nearly everything I’ve seen from him I have disliked. [September 2020: I take that back! Lenny and Star 80 are decent, while All that Jazz is a really good musical.] His approach made musicals grow up, but in retrospect that was a terrible idea. Sweet Charity is a case in point, bringing together many things that I dislike. Fosse adapted his own Broadway show based on Nights of Cabiria (a film I dislike) having cast Shirley Maclaine (an actress I dislike) and wallowing in a dark cabaret style (an approach I dislike) to end with a bittersweet ending (another choice I dislike, so we’re not doing well here). I’ll grant that Maclaine is a lookalike for Giulietta Masina (further dislike), but otherwise, eh, why even bother. While the film manages a few comic moments and hums the familiar tune of “Hey, Big Spender,” it’s remarkably unfunny as a comedy, tinged with freeze-frame melancholy as it follows a girl with few stable prospects in a big city designed to eat such people alive. (One welcome exception: the wonderfully weird and high-energy number featuring Sammy Davis Jr.) Even the ending, which initially seems destined for a bright and colourful happy finale, ends up pulling the rug under the protagonist’s feet. (I can’t help thinking that for classical musical fans, this is a cruel case of “this is why you can’t have nice things” and no, I don’t care if it follows the original stage musical.) The dark and moody cinematography of the film is very New Hollywood, a now-dated style which isn’t a good match for the exuberant joie de vivre of the classic (and timeless) Hollywood musical. I don’t exactly dislike the film (especially on a curve, as there are Fosse movies that I actually hate, starting with Cabaret) but in many ways Sweet Charity is just close enough to the glory days of the Hollywood musical (I mean—it was released the same year as the far more enjoyable Hello, Dolly!) to feel like a grotesque perversion of the form. It flopped in 1969, and I don’t think it’s any more likable today.