Sherry Chandler » All singing, all dancing, all talking
All singing, all dancing, all talking
In a comment to Rebecca about the Betty Boop Minnie the Moocher cartoon with Cab Calloway, I quoted this aricle
When the animation begins, Betty and her father, a Jew from Austria, perhaps based upon the Fleischers’ own father, are arguing. He insists that she must follow the family tradition and eat a traditional dish. Betty tearfully refuses. The scene is a thinly disguised parody of “The Jazz Singer.” Like Jakie Rabinowitz, Betty decides to run away. Like Jakie, she too runs toward jazz music. But, unlike Jakie, Betty runs toward the real thing. No “Toot, Toot, Tootsie” for her. With her boyfriend, the dog Bimbo, she runs off to the strains of “Minnie, the Moocher.”
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These cartoons were the first opportunity many viewers had of seeing Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway perform. For some in the audience it was the first time they heard real jazz rather than the “jazzy” songs of Jolson.
“The Broadway Melody,” released by Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer in February 1929, is another example of a movie with “jazzy” songs, though without the blackface. Advertised with the tagline “all singing, all dancing, all talking,” it was the first talkie to win the Oscar for Best Motion Picture. Although it retained certain features of the silent pictures, like flash cards to explain the scene, it included a very early technicolor sequence (now lost). It was the top grosser of its year, according to Wikipedia.
An impressive list. But beyond that, I see nothing to make me disagree with the consensus review at Rotten Tomatoes:
…interesting as an example of an early Hollywood musical, but otherwise, it’s essentially bereft of appeal for modern audiences.
It’s almost as though sound made these guys forget everything they knew about making a movie, or even putting on a show. See this review I found at Not Coming to a Theater Near You
The Broadway Melody won the Academy Award for the best picture of 1929, but I am at a total loss to explain how or why. Looking at some of the other nominees—Alibi, The Hollywood Revue of 1929, and In Old Arizona—all films otherwise forgotten, I am tempted to imagine that 1929 must have been a shitty, shitty year for motion pictures. I suppose I should make concessions to the fact that the coming of sound changed, from top to bottom, back to front, the way films were made, but this cannot possibly be an excuse for all of the flaws in this film. I will allow that it explains why, when actors move out of frame, the camera seems unable or unwilling to follow them, and I will allow that it explains why, even in scenes taking place in hotel rooms or backstage dressing rooms, the camera sits at an aloof remove from the action, threatening to reveal a theatrical proscenium arch at any moment. It does not explain, however, why the screenplay requires the actors to repeat the same conversations over and over or why the musical numbers feel so flat and forced. Surely centuries of theatrical tradition would have alerted the filmmakers to what would be acceptable in what is, in essence, a filmed version of a Broadway revue.
That last’s the thing. I mean, you don’t really expect a musical to have much of a plot, but this one doesn’t have much of a show either. There are some really impressive stage sets, but the chorus line is out of sync and the camera doesn’t ever seem to be in the right place. Sometimes it seems to be in the orchestra, where it cuts the dancers off at the ankle. Particularly egregious for the woman who did the tap dance en pointe. The novelty of that wore off well before her sequence ended. Even tapping en pointe should be interesting. IMDb reviewer lugonian describes her “constantly waving her arms as if she were prepared to fly away after getting the go-ahead for takeoff.” Would have been more fun if she had.
There is one extravagant production number (the one that was done in technicolor), “The Wedding of a Painted Doll,” in which some amazing stuff is going on, but the stage is chaos, more like a three-ring circus than the precision choreography of Busby Berkeley that will hit it big in just four years.
The sister act at the center of the film is pathetic (no dubbed vocals and Anita Page apparently couldn’t dance at all), and speaking of jazzy music, “Truthful Parson Brown” as performed by the guitar quartet Earl Burnett and his Baltimore Orchestra is twelve-bar blues as Presbyterian hymn.
Add to that, the leading man’s a jerk who leaves the older brunette sister for the younger taller blonde on the basis of one decidedly unsexy kiss, the sisters’ agent stutters, a schtick that seems to relieve him of the need for any funny lines, the costume designer is campier than Dom DeLuis doing “The French Mistake” (without the irony), and the sisters, whose love for each other is the real emotional center of the pic, are so busy sacrificing themselves for one another that they forget to put any tension into the plot. One evil, self-centered thought would have been welcome.
But then I never think the Oscar winner for any year is the best film. I’m seldom all that enthusiastic about any of the nominated ones.
P.S. The blackface may come in with The Duncan Sisters, famous for their performance of “Topsy and Eva in the 1920s. “The Broadway Melody” is said to be loosely based on their lives and they were originally slated to play the lead roles. “Topsy and Eva,” a musical play based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was made into a film in 1927, just missing its opportunity to be a talkie. D. W. Griffith was involved and
It has been said that Griffith’s reputation as a racist is actually based on this film and not The Birth of a Nation
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