One of my secret fantasies - well not so secret
since I am putting it in this review - is that life was a musical. Our daily
lives are so static and dull much of the time that I think if we just broke
into song and dance when the occasion called for it, it would be delightful,
delicious, delovely. As you walk down the aisle of a grocery store you look
at a can of corn and break into a song and the music swells from nowhere
around you and instead of people looking at you like you are crazy they join
it. Kick up their heels. "It's corny, it's candy corn like a blowing horn
from a man forlorn". When I get on to elevators and no one is in there I
start singing words that come into my head and since I can't remember lyrics
I just make them up as I go. It feels great. And truly I can't sing a lick.
I may be the only person ever to get booted out of Music Introduction in
college because I was so tone deaf. But to me I sound grand.
In a sense that is what Peter Bogdanovich does here. He makes a film steeped
in the musicals of the 1930s but instead of filling them with an Astaire,
Rogers, Chevalier, Keeler or Powell he hires four actors who are at best
decent singers who can't dance beyond a few basic soft shoe steps. Burt Reynolds,
Cybill Shepard, Madeline Kahn and an Italian, Duilio Del Prete. Kahn can
sing to a point and Prete is solid but Reynolds and Shepard at moments flail
about and whenever Shepard tries to hit a high note it goes off like a runaway
horse. The music and songs were recorded live on the set and there are some
extended bits that had to make Bogdanovich squeeze a lucky charm. The plot
is romantic fluff and much of it is taken up by the actors playing out my
fantasy and instead of talking, they sing to express the emotions that talking
can't. But not just words that come to mind but the songs of the great Cole
Porter. Many of his great classics and a few that I have never heard. It
is a marvelous idea. It is very playful and rather adorable.
And the critics hated it. Reading a few of the reviews that came out at the
time is like reading the obits of Nazi war criminals. Real anger that Bogdanovich
had dared to make this film. Like their own money was invested in it. This
was typical critical backlash - they made him with his first few films and
now it was time to crush him. His making fun of critics on talk shows probably
didn't help. The film died a lonely death at the box office. Bogdanovich
felt so awful that he published an apology for the film in the papers. He
tried fiddling with it a few times - cutting scenes, adding scenes - but
it was much too late. No one was going to see it now. Then in the late 1970s
an editor on his own made his version of it running at 2 hours. It still
sat in a closet for years until Netflix picked it up and started showing
it. And it began to be re-evaluated - even by Bogdanovich who saw it
and said that's not my film - it's better. This still scores miserably on
IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. But I think it is brilliant. I loved it with all
its many flaws. In fact, those are its charm.
Bogdanovich fills the screen with glamor, luxury and artifice using the white
décor and mirrors to emphasize the sleek deco look of the film. Like
all those old Depression musicals and comedies the film is set among the
wealthy - the indolent wealthy whose money comes from the family. Reynolds
is enormously rich who does nothing but party and chase after women with
his driver and all around man-servant played by John Hillerman (Magnum) who
also sings quite a bit. After one night of hijinks he is riding on the car's
running board and falls onto Kahn. She is a Broadway singer and they hit
it off immediately. Off in another part of New York City Cybill has run out
of money though she is an heiress with the money under her mother's control.
She and her maid played by Eileen Brennan (she sings as well) figure they
better find a rich man quickly before the hotel throws them out of their
luxury suite. They think they have found him when they run into Prete at
the race track. But the wealth is a front. At Kahn's show the four of them
run into each other and become friends (a big song) but no one can really
decide who they want to partner with.
There are scenes where you wish you had some great dancers who could take
off. It is easy to imagine what Astaire would have done as he danced across
the floor to I Get a Kick Out of You or on the street to Just One of Those
Things. But with the use of editing and cross-cutting the songs are great
and plentiful - 19 of them. I would love to see this on the big screen
- the eye-popping sets, the music and the charms of the actors. Reynolds
looks like he is doing Gable but out Gables him, Shepard just looks to be
having a great time and to be a great sport, Kahn is as always wonderful
and Prete who mainly appeared in European films (though he was in Bogdanovich's
Daisy Miller) is as charming as all those Europeans who came over in that
period. Ya, that felt good. Damn the critics.
