For some reason the other day I was thinking that
someone somewhere far in the past must have been the first dance choreographer.
Someone who said instead of having people just move around at random how
about if we planned it and we had people doing the same move at the same
time. Wouldn't that be cool? And then they probably burnt him or her at the
stake. That would be the devil's work. But over time it caught on and we
have a wonderful display of dance caught on the screen for posterity in many
many films. Watching professional dancers is pure joy to me. I used to love
going out to dance. I was a whiz at the Minuet. Knowing that behind each
step, each tap, each graceful movement, each jump is a history of people
passing on dance from one to another. Of the years of training and dedication
that it takes to make dance look so effortless. This film is a history of
dance on film beginning back in the late 1800's up to the 1980s. Even during
the silent era there was dance.
But with the advent of sound musicals took off and all the studios knocked
them out quickly to such an extent that the audience soon got sick of them.
Musicals might have disappeared until this fellow named Busby Berkeley came
along with a new vision. At Warners he demanded that he get all the women
he wanted, that they were all slim, had great legs and lovely faces. He loved
close-ups and those famous geometric dance numbers where slim white legs
were in perfect unison. But it was a cutie pie making her debut that really
made musicals popular. Ruby Keeler. Maybe not a great dancer or singer but
people loved her and 42nd Street was a huge success. Berkeley went on to
make a number of films in which there were huge sets and wonderful songs.
Dick Powell and Joan Blondell were regulars. Blondell's The Forgotten Man
still sends a chill up my spine.
Over at RKO they went in an entirely different direction. Elegance and small
dancing numbers; often with only a couple. But that was some couple. As characters
in Flying Down to Rio in 1933 they were secondary to Dolores Del Rio and
Gene Raymond but at the end of the film they get up and dance to the Carioca
and history was made. Fred and Ginger went on to make a series of films that
were very popular. Astaire demanded that the dance numbers have as few edits
as possible and shot so that he is seen in full.
But the forties belonged to MGM with an enormous array of talent - Gene Kelly,
Astaire who had moved there, Garland and so many more. Plush and in Technicolor.
Over at Fox they had Alice Faye, Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda. Paramount
had Bing Crosby. In the 1950s and early 60s versions of Broadway hits became
the big thing. South Pacific, Oklahoma, West Side Story, The Music Man, Camelot
and My Fair Lady, The musical really died in general after these - the occasional
one but by the time we get to the 1980s their examples are Fame, Saturday
Night Fever and Flashdance. Kind of sad. The entire focus of the film is
on dance, not musicals where the singing dominated - so a lot of artists
are left out where the dancing was minimum. No Jeanette MacDonald nor Maurice
Chevalier. 104 minutes of dance narrated by Kelly, Sammy Davis, Ray Bolger
and Liza Minnelli.
