GeneKelly Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I think we can all agree that the 1980 roller-disco romance Xanadu isn't exactly what most people would call the height of film making achievement. But as a 5-year-old girl (yeah, I watched movies at a really young age -- strange, I know), it was possibly the best thing I had ever seen. The story of a young artist named Sonny (played by Michael Beck) slaving away recreating album covers (is that even a job?) and the muse who inspires him to pack it in to start the roller disco of his dreams may have been a huge success on the Billboard charts, but the film barely broke even at the box-office -- my god, the spandex budget alone would have bankrupted the production. Of course, none of that mattered to me as I watched Olivia Newton-John glide across the floor to the tunes of E.L.O.

So in a movie chock full of guilty pleasures, the scene in which Gene Kelly and Beck envision their perfect club is by far my favorite. Combining a big band sound with the new wave rock of The Tubes may sound like a horrible idea on paper, but when you watched those worlds collide on stage it took two great songs and turned them into one. guess you could say this was my introduction to the mash-up.

Xanadu Fun Facts:

• The film was an unofficial remake of the 1947 film Down to Earth starring Rita Hayworth.
• John Wilson was inspired to create the Razzie Awards after catching Xanadu playing on a 99-cent double-feature with Can't Stop the Music.
• Andy Gibb was originally cast to play Sonny.
• Xanadu was Gene Kelly's last musical performance.

Dancin'

I'm not the most knowledgeable man when it comes to dance, but I'm at least a little familiar with Cyd Charisse. As everyone should be. Next to Ginger Rogers, she was possibly the most iconic female dancer in film history. Even those of us cinephiles who skip out on most dance musicals have at least seen her famous number from Singin' in the Rain (above). A few years ago, when Moviefone counted down the Top 10 Best Dance Scenes, it was #2 (just behind Dirty Dancing).

Charisse has died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 86, and she's hopefully joining old partners Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly for some of the best dance scenes ever seen up in heaven. With the former, she was paired up in The Band Wagon, Ziegfeld Follies and Silk Stockings (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination), and with the latter, she danced in Brigadoon, It's Always Fair Weather, Invitation to Dance and, of course, in Singin' in the Rain.

Image from legs.free.fr

The word "sour" is often used to describe It's Always Fair Weather, the 1955 MGM wide-screen musical at long last released on DVD. Pauline Kael described this film's tone as "a delayed hangover...sour." In his review of the boxed set Classic Musicals From The Dream Factory, a 5 DVD set that includes It's Always Fair Weather, the estimable Steve Daly of EW calls this cult musical "sour, cynical."  In Ethan Mordden's 1981 book The Hollywood Musical, Fair Weather is listed under the chapter "The Energy Peters Out."  And Mordden zeroes in on the sequence of buddies Dan Dailey, Michael Kidd and Gene Kelly singing about their loathing of one another as more than just the dissolving of a partnership; to Mordden, it's a sign of the end of the line for the classic Hollywood musical. 


Sour? Savory is more like it. There's no disputing palates, but Betty Comden and Adolph Green-scripted musicals were never completely gossamer dreams. New York-based cabaret-trained performers that they were, Comden and Green always included some razory satire of the entertainment business. They made a comedy out of the tensions of staying afloat in short-memoried showbiz in The Band Wagon, where 1930s icon Fred Astaire adjusts himself to the gaudy post-war world of Times Square, pulp fiction, and "Technicolor and stereophonic sound."  Singin' In the Rain is similarly about future shock, as sound technology comes in to mess up the comparative ease and order of the silent film world. The Comden-Green It's Always Fair Weather uses elements that's all over noir: post-war dissatisfaction, the Kefauver report on organized crime, and the pressures of conformity on the returning GIs. Golden hindsight reduces the 1950s in today's imagination to a decade-long dance night at Jack Rabbit Slim's. Cop a look at Peter Biskind's Seeing is Believing, not just to unearth the true meaning of 1950s monster movies as symbols of the nuclear menace, but of also to study the political strife between the radical right and the centrists that gave those bug-eyed-monster attacks deeper textual significance.  (President Dwight Eisenhower was a compromise candidate between these two political extremes. No wonder Ike was brought back as a figure of compromise in Why We Fight.) And no wonder Jacques Demy soaked up the undertones of the MGM musical and recreated them in his films, figuring it was appropriate to use musical comedy tropes in a story of a drafted gas station attendant and his pregnant girlfriend.

Way back in my college days, before I was 100% sure that I loved each and every musical ever made, I saw On the Town in a class (Yeah, I went to a pretty awesome college.) and was sold on the genre forever. I mean, hello -- it's Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in sailor suits. Again! And Frank is in love with a bossy lady cabbie? And there's actually a character called Miss Turnstiles? Plus, New York, New York is a fantastic song. What's not to love? Sadly, today, for the first time, I found something to hate.

Sky News is reporting that Christian Slater's success in a musical (thanks to the commentors for correcting this -- reassuringly, my source was wrong on the "musical" detail), stage version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Yeah, the world was crying out for that one.) has led to talks about him starring in an On the Town remake. Could someone please shoot me when that happens? Because, even if Hugh Jackman IS in it (that's part of the rumor, along with -- choke -- John Travolta, who would doubtless put on his "I'm so adorably goofy!" hat and play Ozzie), that's something I never, ever want to see. The mere thought makes me a little queasy.