Cyd Charisse

  • Brigadoon (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, June 2022) All right, this is it – not that I think anyone will care, but this is the final film from legendary MGM musicals producer Arthur Freed that I hadn’t yet seen. Compared to the other last few titles of the Freed Unit filmography, Brigadoon is not all that racially problematic, lower-budgeted or stuck with unfamiliar actors. In fact, it’s also one of the last few musicals featuring Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse that were left on my list. No, if it took that long, it’s because the film somehow isn’t legally available for broadcast in Canada – TCM regularly shows it for the American market, but substitutes other titles for its Canadian simulcast. No other channel or streaming site seems to have it. The version for sale on Amazon is said to be Region-2 only. So, I had to be inventive in how I saw it. Alas, I can’t say that the result was worth the trouble. Surprisingly dull and twee, the film features Kelly as an American tumbling upon a fantastic village in the depth of the Scottish highlands, a village bound by complex romantic rituals that is set to disappear for another hundred years within days. The film’s lavish number of dancers doesn’t manage to make it feel any more real than its soundstage shooting location – something even apparent in the film’s best moments, the anthology-worthy dance duet between Charisse and Kelly to the tune of “The Heather on the Hill.”  Despite some moments where the film becomes mildly intriguing, much of Brigadoon feels as flat as its soundstage backdrops – forgettable songs, a few set-pieces, overdone Scottish mythmaking and a contrived fantasy narrative that’s just an excuse for “We don’t need to justify a happy ending.”  It’s tedious more often than not, and increasingly drawn-out as the third act gets underway. It’s a surprising dud for Kelly, Charisse and director Vincente Minnelli as well – a project that was launched with care and hopes, but failed to rise to meet expectations. Brigadoon is not a particularly good way to end my trip through the Freed filmography – but, hey, at least there’s no blackface in this one.

  • Tension (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Now here’s an intriguing film noir, even if it’s completely ludicrous at times. After an ominous voice-over opens from the film’s detective character (“The only way to solve a case is to apply tension until someone snaps”), Tension features a mild-mannered bespectacled man (Richard Basehart) who, upon being left by an ungrateful wife, creates a second glasses-less identity in preparation for a nefarious goal and is eventually involved in the murder of his wife’s new boyfriend. There are many complications, including a good girl played by Cyd Charisse in one of her most sympathetic turns of her pre-stardom 1940s. Meanwhile, Audrey Totter plays the deliciously quasi-caricatural evil wife with some devilish relish. Still, Tension is a pretty straightforward film noir with a lead character turning to the dark side and not being sure of getting away from it. Not all of the pieces of the film work together: the opening voice-over suggests something harder than what follows, and the transformation of our protagonist into some other personality (complete with a new apartment!) stretches a great deal of credibility. Still, there’s a pleasant atmosphere coming from Tension that makes it worth a look, especially if you’re looking for some sunny California Noir that straddles the line between 1940s formalism and slight ludicrousness.

  • The Wild North (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) As I make my way through the second and third tiers of Cyd Charisse movie, it’s easy to notice a trend that’s simply as obvious from her best-known movies: Given her dark hair and middle-European facial features (she was of German/Austrian ethnicity), she could reasonably pass as someone of non-Caucasian ethnicity and Hollywood certainly noticed: She was cast as a Mexican in at least two films, while in The Wild North she gets to play Native-American. Or rather First Nation, as the film takes place in the Canadian North. Now, it doesn’t hurt to say that Charisse looks really cute in stereotypical tresses… but in-between her casting and Stewart Granger’s oversized French-Canadian accent, it’s difficult to take the film seriously. Which may not be as scathing a criticism as you can imagine, considering that the film is made in the overblown tradition of the MGM technicolour spectacles, in a reality somewhere adjacent to ours. Even the plot goes back to basics with a French-Canadian trapper accused of murder, a steadfast Mountie tasked with bringing him in, and the First Nation girl showing up at infrequent intervals to make things more interesting. There are some good things about the result if you’re willing to be indulgent: most notably some good action scenes set in the wilderness, thankfully shot in colour rather than black-and-white. The dialogue-heavy portions of the film, on the other hand, veer closer to comedy than thriller. As a French-Canadian, I’m not entirely unhappy with Granger’s broad accent—he behaves in such an over-the-top way that it’s more charming than insulting. Still, this all makes The Wild North a bit of a draw: uneven, often disappointing, sometimes interesting. I may need a second viewing to make up my mind.

  • Sombrero (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) While Sombrero features a mildly intriguing opening act that introduces a small Mexican village through fractious beauty contest, little of it sustains the entire film. The Mexican setting, MGM production and cast (with Ricardo Montalbán, and Cyd Charisse once again asked to play Hispanic) may bring to mind 1947’s Fiesta, but Sombrero struggles to maintain the same dramatic intensity—perhaps an artifact of having been adapted from three blended short stories. To be fair, some of the colour cinematography is sumptuous, Yvonne De Carlo looks amazing and Charisse gets a dance number to herself, even if it’s a weird one. But the film fails to take off. As for it being a representation of Latin America in Hollywood, well, it’s probably best not to look closely: The stereotypes run fast and thick and half the actors look as if they’ve been miscast. Yes, sure, Hollywood didn’t know any better then… but that’s not much of an excuse to twenty-first century viewers.

  • Fiesta (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) I haven’t seriously started digging into that filmography, but Classic Hollywood often looked south of the nearest border for inspiration, and there’s a not-inconsiderable corpus of films embracing Mexican culture even in the 1930s–1950s. Not many of them are particularly good or well-remembered, though. Fiesta feels like a lot of them: More exotic than the usual Hollywood films of the time, but still curiously dull despite an impressive cast and some melodramatic flourishes. Hailed as Richard Montalban’s Hollywood debut (and indeed, you can use much of Montalban’s early filmography as a first cut at the whole Hollywood-does-Mexico subgenre), it also features Esther Williams and (in a very minor role) Cyd Charisse cast as Mexican women. (While admittedly weird for Williams, the dark-haired Charisse had a substantial number of roles in which she was cast as being of non-white ethnicity.)  The story itself is a toreador melodrama in which Williams passes herself off as her brother in order to fight bulls in the arena, while said brother finds artistic achievement as a music composer. It sounds wilder summarized like that than it does in the film, where the slower pacing and colourful asides almost help viewers overlook the insanity of the plotting. Fiesta itself is okay—not particularly engaging despite the atmosphere, but with just enough interest to prevent viewers from drifting away. A young pre-stardom Charisse is striking in her few short scenes, while young Montalban is a delight and Williams gets away from the water-based roles that characterized much of her filmography. But Fiesta doesn’t measure up to its own wild production history as summarized on Wikipedia, with on-location shooting leading to the death of two crewmembers by cholera, bullfighting sequences leading to four stuntmen being injured badly enough to require hospitalization, fighting between the crew and the locals, as well as considerable controversy about the local toreador hired (or rather: not-hired) for the film and the bulls being killed (or rather initially not-killed) at the end of it. Never mind remaking Fiesta—I’d want a movie about the making of Fiesta.

  • Five Golden Hours (1961)

    Five Golden Hours (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) By the time the 1960s hit, Cyd Charisse was out of a persona — as wonderful as she could be playing the icy leggy dancer in MGM musicals, her acting range did not always extend gracefully to more demanding non-dancing roles. When the MGM musical died of overexposure in the late 1950s, her career did not immediately stop — she was attractive enough and had sufficient name recognition to parlay her presence in other films and genres but the results of her later work are not as transcendent as the films she’s best known for. In Five Golden Hours, for instance, we see her try her hand at comedy alongside noted comedian Ernie Kovacs, with George Sanders in a supporting role. The plot has a con man taking aim at Roman widows, but eventually facing women with sharper and deadlier instincts. The result is… mixed. While Kovacs gets a few opportunities to shine, much of the film is a disappointment — a bit weak, slightly mishandled in matters of tone, not quite as eager to fulfill its potential. In that light, Charisse’s presence also feels not-quite-there: her talent for beautiful ice princesses is a good portion of what the role requires, but she can’t quite go the extra mile to round off a character with hidden depths. Shot in Rome by Mario Zampi, Five Golden Hours does remain worth a look for Charisse fans — it’s generally amiable even when it doesn’t reach its goals, and you can watch it while knowing that Charisse also used her Italian trip to film the much better-known Two Weeks in Another Town.

  • Twilight for the Gods (1958)

    Twilight for the Gods (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) I like Cyd Charisse a lot, but let’s face it — it’s more for her beauty and dancing performances than for her limited acting skills, which barely budge from icy to reserved. Still, she does really well in late-career entry Twilight for the Gods, stuck onboard a slowly sinking steamship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with Rock Hudson and a motley crew of passengers who all have a secret to hide. There’s an admirably theatrical concision to how the action remains limited to the damaged ship, even as the cinematography makes the most out of its oceanic surroundings and sustains the film’s noticeable atmosphere. The gradual revelations about the passengers make for steady dramatic fuel, and the ending does cap off a nice harrowing journey. This being said: Twilight for the Gods is dramatic but not all that exciting, which does hint at ways the result could have been improved… if it wasn’t being so slavishly faithful to its literary origin. Despite the danger of the ongoing degradation of the ship, the film can’t quite bring danger to top off the excitement. There’s also a notable lack of action from the characters (primary and supporting) that annoys a bit — the tension of the film seems to be in waiting to see if they will outlast their trials, not which action they take to fight against the danger. Still, by the end of the film, it does feel like a journey completed. For Charisse, it’s one of her better dramatic roles — by the time this film was completed, it was clear that the classic MGM musical was losing steam (ooh, there’s a parallel) and that she needed to branch out even as she was aging out of the job. (Indeed, looking at her filmography, I can’t find any full-blown musical role after this film — Party Girl is an edge case, and her presence in Black Tights is only for a segment of the film.)  Twilight for the Gods is a decent movie — it could have been better, but nothing is worth complaining about too much.

  • The Mark of the Renegade (1951)

    The Mark of the Renegade (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) You can approach The Mark of the Renegade in a few different ways. Factually, it’s an early 1950s MGM western adventure set in Mexico, featuring Ricardo Montalban and Cyd Charisse. There are obvious Zorro similarities in the setup of a Mexican adventure featuring a lone adventurer fighting a local lord and romancing a luscious heroine — and we’re blessed by history that a dashing young Montalban plays him. (The similarities are not just me pulling out “um, Mexican adventure… Zorro!” out of a hat, considering that the film is based on a novel by Johnston McCulley, who created Zorro.)  As a Charisse fan, I’ll note that the film is one of the last of her pre-stardom days and the third I’ve seen in which this German-ethnic actress played a Mexican character. The two other films (Sombrero and Fiesta) also played on a similar register, purporting to bring some Mexican content to Hollywood but often perpetuating stereotypes. I would like to be a bit more enthusiastic about the swashbuckling adventure aspect of the film, but there’s not much here that’s overly memorable on that front. It’s more perfunctory than anything else, with the notable exception of a dance number between Montalban and Charisse — those two were dynamite together and The Mark of the Renegade is one of their hottest pairings. (I have seldom envied another man more than when seeing Montalban’s suave dance moves with Charisse and Ann Miller in 1948’s The Dancing Bandit, but I’m digressing.)  In other words — I’m happy that The Mark of the Renegade exists and it certainly has its strength, but it could have been much, much more memorable and it just isn’t. That’s really too bad: it’s watchable, but you may not remember much of it the next day.

  • On an Island with You (1948)

    On an Island with You (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) One of the differences between casual filmgoers and confirmed cinephiles is often the amount of meta-knowledge that the later carry around — including extensive knowledge of actors and their personas. That’s usually an advantage—except when it isn’t, for instance when an all-star cast comes together to produce something decidedly underwhelming. Such is the case with On an Island with You, a minor MGM musical of the late 1940s that brings together a truly interesting cast but doesn’t really do much with them. I mean: Esther Williams, Ricardo Montalban, Cyd Charisse and Jimmy Durante are four strong performers that could have been brought together in a way to play to their strengths. But what they get to do here is, at best, a pale shadow of their potential. With a script that’s only mildly funny or musical, On an Island with You struggles to establish itself as something worth remembering — the look at a film production is intermittently interesting, and doesn’t lead to any highlights. It’s probably important to note that MGM intended the film to be a success — while the film wasn’t part of their flagship Freed unit, it was shot on location in expensive Technicolor and clearly found a good audience during its theatrical run. But it clearly fell into disfavour since then — much better musicals with better roles for its stars followed, and its premise of having its female lead kidnapped by its male lead (assorted with misogynist remarks that would have most audiences up in arms) certainly hasn’t helped the film find new fans in the years since then. As a result, On an Island with You now ranks as a minor MGM musical, barely seen when compared to the better films of the era. Audiences aren’t wrong on this one, so beware if you’re tracking down the filmography of the actors involved. Too much knowledge can create false expectations!

  • The Unfinished Dance (1947)

    The Unfinished Dance (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) There are many intriguing elements in The Unfinished Dance that, by all rights, should make it a better film than it is. All of it revolves around ballet, and specifically a school where the young protagonist idolizes a dancer (played by Cyd Charisse, with her customary dancing excellence) and despises another, an obsession that soon leads to her causing an accident with life-changing consequences. Executed with all of the gloss of MGM musicals of the time but very little of the humour, it’s an excessively melodramatic film all the way to the weepy forgiveness that caps the film. I can see how the film is best suited to a specific public: Like The Red Shoes a year later, it’s a perfect film for young ballerinas and anyone else interested in the art form. But by being so exceptionally focused, The Unfinished Dance doesn’t quite manage to rally larger audiences, and the lack of humour doesn’t help either — although it would have been difficult to be otherwise considering the film’s central drama. Margaret O’Brien is quite good in the lead role, with Charisse providing dancing firepower when the film needs it and Karin Booth getting a rare prestige leading role as the other dancer, even though her lacks of dancing abilities are more apparent. While I don’t exactly dislike the result, The Unfinished Dance didn’t grab me as readily nor as profoundly as other musicals of the time — it’s a bit of a niche film, and I happen to be standing outside of it.

  • Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956)

    Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) Film history tells us that the classical movie musical was losing steam by the mid-to-late 1950s, and you can almost sense this exhaustion at work in Meet Me in Las Vegas, a lavish MGM musical that took an interest in that new(ish) American playground — Las Vegas, conveniently close enough to Hollywood as to allow for extensive location shooting. The plot premise has something to do with a gambling rancher (Dan Dailey) falling for a lucky ballerina (Cyd Charisse, in one of the biggest roles of her career), but one senses that the point of the film was to use the flashy lights and growing reputation of Las Vegas as a backdrop to a movie musical. There are plenty of small appearances and cameos from people such as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin (anticipating the Brat Pack), as well as Peter Lorre and Tony Martin (who wasn’t a relation to Dean, but was married to Charisse). It also features Lena Horne’s last film appearance as a singing performer, which further buries the end of an era. Still, the film’s intended showcase sequence is a rather entertaining parody of “Frankie and Johnny” — even in a career full of highlights, this feels like an anthology piece designed for Charisse. For her, Meet Me in Las Vegas as a whole is one of her best and comes toward the end of her best run of movies as a headliner (the superior Silk Stockings would soon follow, but also mark the end of her MGM dancing/acting period): she gets some decent dance numbers, a substantial dramatic part and a character suited for her not-always-warm persona. If you get away from Charisse’s performance and the musical numbers (which are fewer in numbers than you’d expect from a 1950s MGM musical), the film doesn’t quite fare as well — while the atmosphere of circa-1956 Las Vegas is interesting in its own right and sometimes gorgeously captured, the film has frequent lulls and a finale that doesn’t quite hit the mark. As I said — the MGM musical was a specific kind of film, and it wasn’t necessarily well suited to tackling an environment such as Las Vegas. Director Roy Rowland was nearing the end of his career at the time, and so was the “Freed Unit” (of which Meet Me in Las Vegas was not a production). You can certainly see the film as stuck between two sensibilities — the earlier musical style and the younger brashness of the Vegas environment, whose musical style was not necessarily that of musicals.   Comparisons with Ocean’s Eleven, three years later, are most instructive in seeing how even the musical genre changed in order to accommodate Vegas.

  • Words and Music (1948)

    Words and Music (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Hollywood based many musicals on the life of Broadway composers—you wouldn’t believe how many. On one level, the attraction is easy to understand: it’s a made-to-order way to insert musical numbers as part of the show, the rights to the music come in as a bundle, and audiences of the time presumably had fond memories of the tunes and their context. A modern equivalent would be the musical jukebox-musical biopic, which is alive and doing very well. On the other hand, Hollywood often mismanaged the material: The lives of the composers were often scrubbed of any detail that wouldn’t be acceptable by the Production Code (and considering the higher-than-average proportion of homosexuals as Broadway creatives, there’s an entire aspect of early Twentieth-century pop culture that simply isn’t covered in its Hollywood dramatizations). Nowadays, “Rodgers and Hammerstein” is a legendary duo of composers, but in 1948 the audience knew the duo as a still-fresh replacement for “Rodgers and Hart,” and Hart’s story is the one we see in Words and Music. Played by then former boy matinee idol Mickey Rooney, Hart’s character is not faithfully represented at all: Alcoholism and depression? Yes. Homosexuality? Again, no. (Which led to some hilarious reviews telling viewers that the film wasn’t accurate, but the reviews themselves were unable to specify why.)  Generally speaking, Words and Music is not all that interesting in its first half, as both the successes and the tragedy ramp up quite a bit in the second half once the duo makes their way to Hollywood and Hart’s self-destructive actions reach a tragic ending. From a musical fan’s perspective, the film (from the fabled Freed unit) is far more interesting at the edges than in the core of its story, because that’s where we find short appearances by MGM players such as Gene Kelly (dancing with Vera-Ellen in—yes—a gangster ballet), Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse and, far more strikingly, Lena Horne — Her first number “Where or When” is a sedate reminder about her talents as a signer, but then she starts tearing into “The Lady is a Tramp” and we know it’s the film’s single best number. Meanwhile, the central story of Hart and Rodgers unfolds along predictable lines all the way to the tragic ending. Rooney is not bad as Hart, with the movie making good use of his small stature in portraying a man complexed by his own short height. Words and Music is not near the top of MGM’s best musicals, and its appeal can be found in either appreciating the contributions of the bit players, or seeing this as the cleaned-up prequel to the far better-remembered Rodgers and Hammestein partnership. Either way, it’s a movie that is perhaps best defined by factors other than its main premise, which is a bit odd but not uncharacteristic of other second-tier MGM musicals at the time.

  • The Harvey Girls (1946)

    The Harvey Girls (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) I’m overdosing on Broadway musical comedies at the moment, so any musical comedy that heads out in a different direction is good news to me right now, and The Harvey Girls does offer a noticeable change of scenery—heading out west on a train, with a small crew of young girls ready to start working at the frontier Harvey House. Following the tangents of classic Hollywood movies is often as much fun as watching the movies themselves, and that’s how I ended up reading about the Harvey Houses (whose openings, as railway lines were extended throughout the 1880s, marked the arrival of modern comforts in the west) and the Harvey Girls (who often found husbands in frontier towns, further contributing to colonization). But little of that knowledge is essential to enjoying the song and dance numbers of the film. Judy Garland stars as a young woman seeking an engagement to a pen pal, with some support from notables such as Angela Lansbury (playing a dancehall madam), Cyd Charisse (in her first speaking role) and my own favourite Virginia O’Brien in what is best called a featured half-role. (The arc involving her character was cut midway through during the very long shooting due to her advancing pregnancy—but she gets “The Wild, Wild West,” a rather wonderful comic scene in which she sings in time with some blacksmithing and horse comfort.)  If you’ve been waiting for a film in which Garland, Charisse and O’Brien share a musical number—here it is, to the tune of “It’s a Great Big World” (even though Charisse is dubbed). The film’s biggest number is probably “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” (which ended up being a national hit song), with an honourable mention to Ray Bolger’s energetic tap-dancing during “Swing Your Partner Round and Round.”  The combination of favourite actors, memorable numbers and a more original than usual setting makes The Harvey Girl at least a second-tier musical and a solid hit for MGM’s Freed unit. It’s decently funny, historically interesting (as per my extracurricular reading), and romantic enough to wrap things up when the comic numbers end. I wonder what kind of career O’Brien would have had if she had been able to complete her character arc here—The Harvey Girls came toward the end of her brief filmography, with only a few more roles (including the female lead in the following year’s Merton of the Movies) before the end of her MGM contract and disappearance from the big screen.

  • East Side, West Side (1949)

    East Side, West Side (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) There’s a glorious, fascinating messiness to East Side, West Side that shows how the Hays Code era wasn’t necessarily an impediment for some heavy-duty melodrama. The film begins with a seemingly-happily married couple. But this façade soon comes tumbling down when, first, an ex-flame of the husband comes to town and then an ex-crush of the wife comes to town. That would be enough to power a film by itself, but the script peppers complications throughout, throwing in performers such as Cyd Charisse in a minor role that serves no real big purpose, then hinges an entire third act on the murder of one of the four main players, leading to a detective subplot that suddenly involves another main character. (It also leads to a fairly long and now-shocking sequence in which the male detective gets into a slaps-and-punches struggle with a female killer.) There are characters and sudden shifts of tone here that add a lot of texture, at the expense of what we would consider a polished script. It’s messy but a lot of fun, although you’ll have to work harder than usual to keep up with the twists and turns. An all-star cast sweetens the deal. James Mason is quite good in his own distinctive fashion as the protagonist cad, while Barbara Stanwyck is equally compelling as his increasingly estranged wife. Ava Gardner is the temptress that exposes the fault lines in their marriage, while Van Heflin rounds up the main cast with a character that increasingly reveals how resourceful he truly is over the course of the film. Top dialogue keeps things rolling, while the cinematography gives a noirish edge to New York City. Director Mervyn Leroy has enough experience to keep all the moving pieces together, and the result is a strong drama that will keep you invested from beginning to end despite its lack of clear focus.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, June 2021) The interesting thing about revisiting East Side West Side, even after a few months, is its all-star cast. In-between James Mason, Barbara Stanwyck, Eva Gardner and Van Heflin (with none other than Cyd Charisse being fifth-billed in a remarkably small role), it’s very much a collection of some of my favourite actors in the business at the time. But here’s the thing: It took me an embarrassingly long time to become a fan of Stanwyck and Gardner – While Mason is distinctive and easy to like, and a previous viewing of East Side West Side made me an instant fan of Van Heflin largely thanks to his remarkable character, it took me years to like Stanwyck given her lack of adherence to a rigid persona. Meanwhile, it took me until Night of the Lizard to finally see what others saw in Ava Gardner. But now that I’m on-board for all of them, East Side West Side takes on a different quality. Oh, the film more than stands on its own as a 1950s Manhattan melodrama – With the plot revolving around an ill-fitting couple contemplating affairs with past flames, it’s rife with dramatic situations, including woman-to-woman verbal combat and a superb mother-in-law-to-no-good-husband put-down. Mason is (as often) surprisingly good as a bad husband, while Heflin gets to play a character than, in most other movies, would be the protagonist: an immensely capable special forces operative with an uncanny ability to solve problems. One of the film’s highlights remains the physical altercation he gets with a murder suspect while they’re both sitting in a car – the fact that it’s a male/female fight is surprisingly shocking, perhaps even more so given that he’s clearly in the right in subduing a killer. The slapping, pulling and grabbing goes on for a surprisingly long time, and the close quarters of the car’s front seats mean that there’s nowhere to go. It’s not necessary to like the entire film (including a slow start and adequate finale) when it has those highlights and those stars. East Side West Side is well worth a revisit, especially if you get to appreciate the actors in other films in between those viewings.

  • Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)

    Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2020) Nominally a biopic about the life of composer Jerome Kern, Till the Clouds Roll By is perhaps best seen as an anthology showcase for MGM’s roster of musical talents. The story itself is perfunctory, largely fictional, and revolves around Kern’s best-remembered Show Boat. (Amusingly enough, Till the Clouds Roll By begins with a twenty-minute recreation of several of Show Boat’s set-pieces, years before MGM’s official adaptation—which also featured Kathryn Grayson in the same role.) There’s some additional resonance knowing that Kern died during filming—it’s too bad that his Hollywood years were scarcely covered here, the climax of the fictionalized story having occurred earlier. But that overall plot quickly gets forgiven and trivialized when you get down to the meat of the film, which is a series of nearly thirty musical numbers (some of them very short) featuring some very well-known names and fan favourites. The film gets off to a very strong start during its Show Boat sequence with performances by Kathryn Grayson, the always-funny Virginia O’Brien and a spellbinding Lena Horne. Later highlights include a surprisingly saucy Angela Lansbury, Dinah Shore, a trio of numbers by Judy Garland, Lucille Bremer with Van Johnson, a very short but still impressive dance number with Cyd Charisse, and a final rendition of “Ol’ Man River” by none other than a young Frank Sinatra. When you have such a strong cast of performers, the plot itself becomes inconsequential. While Till the Clouds Roll By doesn’t manage to create the alchemy required to become a great movie musical, it’s a strong collection of material and performers, and it will be best appreciated by those with some understanding (and appreciation) for the roster of mid-1940s MGM musical performers. [December 2021: Now that I’ve seen the 1951 version of Show Boat and read about its production, Till the Clouds Roll By becomes a precious document: a glimpse into an alternate reality where Lena Horne would have played the part that was so well suited to her rather than Ava Gardner.]