Gene Kelly

  • 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.

  • Living in a Big Way (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Relying more on Gene Kelly’s comedic/romantic talents than his dance prowess, Living in a Big Way is sometimes identified as a comeback picture of sorts for him. After the doldrums of his military service, this is the film that offered him a chance to choreography a few numbers, work with Stanley Donen (who would co-direct many of his later hits) and develop his comic persona. The story is something that could only work in the immediate post-war period – servicemen coming back from the war to find that their hasty wartime weddings were not built on a solid foundation. Here, the dramatic conceit is taken to a comic extreme when his new wife proves to be much richer than he expected, and a chunk of her family leagues against him. Of course, it’s up to Kelly’s usual charm, his dance routines (including a number set on a construction site that is classic Kelly) and the intervention of the movie gods to set things straight. Living in a Big Way is not a great movie despite the pedigree of writer/director Gregory La Cava – while the post-war setting definitely makes this a film of the late 1940s, there’s a feeling that the film tries to recapture the screwball comedies of remarriage of the 1930s without quite making it work. It’s still worth a look for Kelly fans, but only just.

  • Thousands Cheer (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Hollywood propaganda musicals were a surprisingly robust subgenre in 1942–1945 and you can easily picture why: From a production standpoint, it meant that studios could get away with a threadbare story to focus on a string of guest appearances by musicians, comedians and other entertainers. From an exhibitor’s perspective, it meant solid revenue from people interested in a variety show featuring some of the era’s better-known names. From a propagandist’s point of view, it meant an uplifting film celebrating American values and promoting the war without being depressingly about the war. (Also: Buy your war bonds today!) For overseas soldiers, it meant an easy-to-watch film featuring songs, music and cute girls without the burden of complex plotting and unpleasant issues. For modern historians, well, it means that those films captured in high resolution and audio fidelity some timeless and ephemeral entertainers alike. Thousands Cheer is perhaps more interesting in that it’s not the best of such films. It’s certainly not timeless, and its selection of stars is not immortal. Perhaps more significantly, it’s a film where nearly everyone brought their B-game, maybe even their C-game: even known names aren’t quite as interesting as they are in other films, and the entire production has the feel of an afterthought, made to answer concerns far removed from artistic quality. But as I’ve mentioned a few times before, the best representation of an era is not found in the timeless classics as much as the more ordinary material unconsciously reflecting life as it was. There are two halves to Thousands Cheer—a romantic melodrama about two young people trying to achieve their dreams, and a show being put on for soldiers. While Kathryn Grayson and Gene Kelly (in a largely, but not entirely dramatic role) make for likable romantic leads, the second half of the film relegates them to supporting roles in order to feature the MGM stars on display during the show. Kelly’s presence here is not wasted, as he performs a well-known routine with a mop—but despite an amazing cast, the impact of the rest of the film remains muted. Eleanor Powell shows up to tap-dance (in colour!), Kay Kyser and crew have a bit of orchestral fun, Virginia O’Brien sings a typically oddball take, Lena Horne is typically solid, Red Skelton showboats, pianist-conductor José Iturbi makes his first of many film appearances and there’s some space for Judy Garland, Lucille Ball and Mikey Rooney to do their thing. Rooney’s shtick has not aged well at all with the aggressive catcalling, but remember what I said about ordinary films being better representatives of their times. Despite this amazing cast, Thousands Cheer remains stubbornly second-rate: It’s certainly enjoyable—especially if you already know who these people are—but the result feels like outtakes from better films of the time. Still, audiences have been happy with the result, and we twenty-first century viewers can revel in the film’s colour capture of some early-1940s legends.

  • The Cross of Lorraine (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) The first draft of history usually resembles but is not identical to the more definitive version, and so there’s a constant sense of underlying weirdness to the way the French Résistance is portrayed in The Cross of Lorraine. It’s not just about seeing Gene Kelly (clearly a Francophile even at this early stage of his career) in a straight dramatic role as a Frenchman who suffers from a crisis of courage but ultimately chooses to fight against the Nazis—it’s about the portrayal of Vichy France and the burgeoning Resistance even as it was going on. By the time The Cross of Lorraine was released, let alone produced, there was no D-Day to draw upon and no oral histories of partisans fighting the Nazis. If the film feels like a piece of propaganda high on ideals and low on details, it’s because no one knew what la resistance was doing at the time: this was aimed at the American home front as a way to shore up support for the war effort, not as a serious historical examination of what was going on. So, if The Cross of Lorraine feels quite different from what you’ve seen elsewhere about France’s WW2 occupation, there’s a good reason for that, and it’s one of the factors why the film feels more interesting than it should. Not that it doesn’t have a few intrinsic qualities of its own: besides a rather good turn from Kelly, it also features small roles for Hume Cronyn and Peter Lorre and competent technical credentials thanks to MGM’s usually high standards. Still, for modern audiences, the propagandist aspect of The Cross of Lorraine takes the first spot, as is the film’s ignorance of the tropes that would come to dominate any representation of La Résistance in later years.

  • The Cheyenne Social Club (1970)

    The Cheyenne Social Club (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) I have no doubt that the filmmakers behind The Cheyenne Social Club did exactly what they intended in casting James Stewart as a cowboy who inherits a brothel. Even at a time when New Hollywood was breaking all of the rules, Stewart’s aw-shucks appeal meant that this wasn’t a film that was out to offend sensibilities. At best, it uses the suggestion of naughtiness as a lure, but doesn’t do anything that could be misconstrued as offensive. (The closest it gets to actual naughtiness is in its repeated suggestions that the house of ill repute is actually a boon for the town… and clearly not of ill repute.)  Stewart plays a laconic cowboy thrust in a situation he doesn’t want — it’s a rather familiar role, and the demands of the comedy don’t stretch his range too much either. Where the film does get more interesting is in pairing him with his good friend Henry Fonda in front of the camera, with none other than Gene Kelly as a director. The plot is thin to the point of aimlessness, an impression that is not helped by a rather disappointing conclusion that fails to show growth for the protagonist. Except that maybe that’s the point — such a fundamentally conservative film (despite Kelly’s often-bawdy instincts) could not end in any other way, and that’s probably the biggest joke in the entire story. Still, even with its flaws and lack of audacity, The Cheyenne Social Club remains a smooth film to watch — more light-hearted than many of Stewart’s previous westerns, and with some cleavage on display. I don’t think it fully uses the elements at its disposal, but that’s the case for most movies anyway. The paying public probably wouldn’t have stood for anything too daring.

  • Marjorie Morningstar (1958)

    Marjorie Morningstar (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) Merely calling Majorie Morningstar not one of Gene Kelly’s finest efforts is probably looking at the film from the wrong angle. As a Kelly musical, it’s definitely underwhelming—the song-and-dance numbers are few and short; he’s badly matched with a heroine (Natalie Wood) twenty years younger than he is; he’s asked to play a character of Jewish ethnicity (a stretch for Irish/German stock); and (thankfully?) he doesn’t get the girl. But that’s an awfully reductive way of looking at the film, which is an adaptation of Herman Wouk’s massive coming-of-age novel, dealing with issues of tradition and modernity clashing as our protagonist grows up and tries to find herself a suitable husband. Majorie Morningstar is noteworthy (says Wikipedia) for being unusually forthright at the time about showing Jewish traditions and rituals and explicitly having Jewish character. But that does mean that the film is, at heart, a messy romantic drama more focused on the protagonist finding herself than presenting a romance—quite a change from the usual musical comedy formula that Kelly evokes by his presence. It does make for interesting viewing—the look at NYC’s 1950s Jewish community is often interesting, and even includes a side-trip to the Catskills resorts. Wood looks great in one of her first post-adolescent roles, and some of Kelly’s dramatic material can be surprising for fans of the actor. (He also looks pretty good with stubble.)  But at more than two hours and an intentionally subtle conclusion, Majorie Morningstar does feel like a let-down of a film: something that approaches, even courts being a Technicolor musical comedy for marketing purposes, but really should have been executed in a lower-key, more dramatic form featuring lesser-known actors.

  • Les Girls (1957)

    Les Girls (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) Just as I thought I had run out of high-profile Gene Kelly musicals, here’s one I had missed: Les Girls, an expensive production signed by none other than veteran director George Cukor that marks Kelly’s last MGM contract movie. The plot has to do with a tell-all exposé about a dancing troupe, leading to different versions of the same story. Kelly plays the troupe manager, with the three leading dancer roles filled by Mitzi Gaynor, a very funny Kay Kendall and a rather bland Taina Elg. Often heavier on comedy than music, the result nonetheless has some very good numbers — including Kelly riffing off Marlon Brando in a number with Gaynor. For Kelly, Les Girls had the opportunity to play with very familiar themes: ballet, Francophilia, choreography and portraying a bit of a cad. The result is fun, even if it’s not as memorable as many of his other musicals from earlier in the decade. Indeed, the late 1950s were the end of an era at MGM with contracts not being renewed and the Freed unit down to its last musicals. Les Girls marks another solid production — a step short of being a classic, but still wonderfully polished and enjoyable by itself. I have a feeling I’ll enjoy revisiting this one eventually, even if it doesn’t play as often as its more famous contemporaries.

  • 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.

  • For Me and My Gal (1942)

    For Me and My Gal (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) While rough and unpolished around the edges, For Me and My Gal owes much to its early pairing of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. For Kelly, this was his film debut, and while it’s far from taking advantage of his talents in dancing or choreography, his considerable charm as a performer is already apparent. For Garland, this was a first adult role after some time as a child or teen star — to twenty-first-century audiences, she here appears unusually cute and relaxed, before her drug abuse and personal issues prematurely aged her. As a couple, both of them are quite likable. As for the story itself, it’s an often-unwieldy fusion between vaudeville comedy, wartime heroism and conventional romance, as Kelly’s character mains himself in order not to be drafted into World War I, then changes his mind after being called a coward by everyone. Don’t worry — For Me and My Gal ends well, but there’s a good chunk of the film that steps away from comedy and into more serious drama right on time to whip American audiences to serve in the first days of America’s involvement in World War II. Still, the fun of the film is in the musical numbers, Kelly’s early performance as a young man and Garland looking unusually good. It’s an early prototype for other movies Kelly would make later (two more of them with Garland, although she was struggling by the time The Pirates and Summer Stock rolled around) but you can already see the greatness here in Kelly’s ease in front of the camera and as a singer/dancer. For Me and My Gal is a minor entry compared to what would follow, but it’s well worth a look.

  • Cover Girl (1944)

    Cover Girl (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Just as I thought I had seen all of Gene Kelly’s better musicals, here is Cover Girl to reassure me that I’d missed at least one. A good musical by most standards, Cover Girl was singled out by at least one film historian as the first in an illustrious series of musicals in which the plot was advanced during the songs, and the first collaboration between Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. It’s also one of Kelly’s first efforts at choreographing his own dance numbers, and a film that hones in the typical self-aware style of Classic Hollywood musicals with wit and humour. Rita Hayworth shares the screen with Kelly, a pairing that works surprisingly well. The dance numbers are varied and well-executed, with a decent amount of visual innovation throughout the film. Surprisingly enough, it’s not an MGM musical — Kelly was loaned to Columbia (for their first colour musical) on the promise that he’d be able to stage the film’s numbers, but MGM definitely took notes when the film was a box-office success. Latter MGM/Freed films would come much closer to the example set by Cover Girl, and the result was an extraordinary string of timeless musicals. As for Cover Girl itself, it’s good — not great, but interesting enough in its own right that it’ll charm musical fans. Oh, and there are plenty of cover girls to gawk at, so the title is not misleading advertising.

  • The Devil Makes Three (1952)

    The Devil Makes Three (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Even when not singing and dancing, Gene Kelly was blessed with considerable charm as an actor, and his presence in The Devil Makes Three transforms what could have been an unremarkable postwar genre picture. Here he plays an American aviator who returns to Germany (during his annual Christmas vacations!) to meet again with a family that saved him during the War. Shot on location to take advantage of tax breaks, the film makes good use of wintertime German landscapes to tell a story of postwar black-market shenanigans and neo-Nazis. One sequence of historical interest is the climax, shot in the ruins of Hitler’s house right before it was demolished. In strictly entertainment terms, The Devil Makes Three is merely average: Kelly is very likable, co-star Pier Angeli is cute enough, the genre elements are deployed effectively, but the result somehow fails to ignite much interest. Still, it’s a good illustration of Kelly-the-Actor’s strengths, and a decent-enough period piece set in the murky Postwar period away from Berlin.

  • The Happy Road (1957)

    The Happy Road (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) Gene Kelly was an outspoken Francophile, and while you don’t have to dig deep in a filmography that includes An American in Paris and Les demoiselles de Rochefort to realize it, there are a few other films lower down his filmography that make an even bigger case for it. How else, for instance, would have Kelly found himself in a film entirely set and shot in France, playing a father on a road trip to find his boy after he ran away from school? Today, The Happy Road ranks as one of Kelly’s least-remembered films—a lighthearted trifle in which Kelly teams up with the mother of another runaway from the same school in a series of adventures from Switzerland to Paris, going through the back roads of small-town France. It’s more lighthearted than funny, often a bit too twee in the way it finds the escapades of the kids funny rather than terrifying for the parents trying to reunite with them. The Happy Road is not a low-budget affair—by the end of the film, we even run in the French army conducting manoeuvres in the field. Kelly is his usual charming self, helped along by co-star Barbara Laage in a role that inevitably turns romantic. The Happy Road can’t be classified as an essential film, or a particularly memorable one. But for Kelly fans, it’s a welcome illustration of one of his most endearing traits, and another occasion to see him set against a French backdrop.

  • The Tunnel of Love (1958)

    The Tunnel of Love (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) The late 1950s were a turning point for legendary singer-dancer-actor Gene Kelly: getting older, he turned his MGM fame into an opportunity to start directing movies. The best known of them probably remains Hello Dolly!, but the first would be the comparatively little-known The Tunnel of Love, a romantic comedy that pushes some disquieting buttons, such as marital infidelity. (Heck—much of the film’s later half is built on the suggestion of infidelity leading to a pregnancy leading to a baby being adopted by the man and his increasingly furious wife.) With such touchy material, it’s no wonder if the film flopped and the critics were not kind—with a number of contemporary reviews being particularly uncomfortable about the boundaries that the film was pushing in terms of sexual frankness. The Tunnel of Love feels tame today, but there’s still some material in here that seems cruel to the female lead: a combination of patriarchal aloofness and contrived avoidance of essential discussions that makes the film less than pleasant to watch even today. (This is one of those films where the plot falls apart if the two main characters had good ongoing communication.) Filmed in black-and-white, it also carries a connotation of seriousness that other colour comedies of the time didn’t have. Richard Widmark is not entirely suited to a role that crucially carries the film—Doris Day, meanwhile, is more pitiable than comic as his long-suffering wife. The direction itself is somewhat unremarkable, perhaps more noteworthy for the topic matter than the actual craftsmanship that it demonstrates. Kelly would later do much better as a director: even in the same infidelity-comedy ballpark, A Guide for the Married Man, ten years later, would be funnier and more interesting to watch, probably buoyed by changing mores and acceptance of a saucy topic matter.

  • The Pirate (1948)

    The Pirate (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) Gene Kelly and Judy Garland worked together five times through the ebb and flow of their careers (She helped him on his first film; he helped her on her last MGM picture,) but you can argue that The Pirate was the most ambitious of their movies, and perhaps the beginning of the end for her. Little of the film’s troubled production shows on-screen, as we’re taken to a fantasy version of the pirate-era Caribbean, as a lothario actor (Kelly) is convinced to play the pirate and charms a young woman (Garland) in the process. Many musical numbers ensue, and since this is an Arthur Freed production, the quality is about as high as any musical of the era. Bright colour cinematography helps a lot, but the costumes and sets show where the film’s budget was spent. Kelly is having fun aping the Fairbanks and Barrymores of silent serials, his role enabling him to play the athletic dancer, the romantic singer (“Niña” is quite funny) and the entertaining swashbuckler—this is his movie, and it’s fun to hear the relish through which he tears through his better-than-average dialogue. He also gets to sneak in a bit of ballet. Garland is actually quite nice here, and I say this as someone who usually considers Garland a liability to most of her movies—but in The Pirate she looks healthier than many of her later films, sings well, dances well, emotes well and even looks stunning in a number with her hair down. The bit in which she spends a scene throwing most of the scenery decorations at Kelly’s character is one of the many highlights of the film. Elsewhere in the film, I now understand the fuss about the similarities between “Be a Clown” and Singin’ in the Rain’s “Make Them Laugh.” But the number that everyone has to watch is the dancing sequence featuring Kelly and the Nicholas brothers—a high-energy production in which Kelly barely manages to keep up with the spring-loaded energy of the brothers. The Pirate starts well, has a bit of a mid-movie lull but comes back strong—there are better movies in Kelly’s filmography, but it’s still quite a fun musical. I suppose I’m getting to be knowledgeable about MGM musicals by now, because I had a really good time reading about The Pirate after watching the film and finding out how its commercial failure led to 1949’s Easter Parade.

  • Black Hand (1950)

    Black Hand (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) In retrospect, it’s amazing that legendary singer-dancer-choreographer Gene Kelly would take a few months in the middle of his most productive years as a musical star to play the lead dramatic role in Black Hand, a very serious film noir about the Italian Mob in New York City. I mean, sure, he’s pretty good at it—but isn’t it a waste? He’s certainly not the weak link in this competent but hardly inspired gangster film: Director Richard Thorpe delivers a perfunctory product, slightly more stylish than similar 1930s urban crime films but not by much. Despite being produced by MGM, it often feels more Warners—not everything is polished to a sheen, and it really embraces the urban gangster theme. On the other hand, Black Hand does feel too long even at 92 minutes. Kelly would play plenty of dramatic roles before the end of his career, but this was the first and perhaps the hardest edged of them all.