Well, that took me by surprise. A musical that knows how to savor the music that made the ending show so much more epic instead of drowning the viewer out with unforgettable songs played through out. 

Don’t let the the slogan or headline fool you if you check it out before watching, this is surely more of a character driven story that works wonderfully due to its incredible performances and clever writing. Can’t really go in full detail for each character because they are all interesting but I can tell you two that stand out.

Warner Baxter as the shows director is phenomenal. He relishes his role as the man in charge to give the audience a show. Ruby Keller…

Choreographer Busby Berkeley was a genuine cinematic innovator, he created the most stunning geometric constructs with his musical sequences with both steps and movement, and many of them have become the most recognisable images in cinematic history. And while the story of 42nd Street, arguably the best known of all the Berkeley musicals, is incredibly clichéd, it's observations on the circumstances besieging a bankrupt producer's endeavour to mount one last Broadway success to enable his retirement is the archetype of backstage musicals.

It glides through its runtime and offers a portrait of the entertainment business that's distinguishable to other musicals of its era, and additionally paints an uncompromising (and pre-Hays Code) tale of notoriety on the crusades and painful truths…

"Matrimony is bologna."

This is my first foray into the work of Busby Berkeley, though 42nd Street is a film that Berkeley didn't direct, he only did the choreography and the staging of the dance scenes, while some other guy directed. For the most part 42nd Street is an above average movie about the behind the scenes of a musical called Pretty Lady. The acting is good, and the dialogue is quick witted, but there isn't much in the story department that makes this film anything that special. But, then the last twenty or so minutes kick off and the film is just fantastic from there on.

The last bit of the film consists of the musical that everyone has…

Film School Dropouts 2018

Week 6 - (2018) - Genre - Musicals - The Depression Era (1933-1939)

“I haven't seen you in ages
But it's not as bleak as it seems
We still dance on whirling stages
In my Busby Berkeley dreams
The tears have stained all the pages
Of my true romance magazines
We still dance in my outrageously
Beautiful Busby Berkeley dreams” - Magnetic Fields

There aren’t many dance choreographers whose work has been so impactful that the musicals have become synonymous with their name rather than the director of the film. Busby Berkeley musicals though... are Busby Berkeley musicals. Mervyn LeRoy insisted that Warner Brothers bring in the dance director, who’d already proven himself as an incredibly…

Begetter of half-a-dozen cliches if not a whole genre as we still recognise it, this is in fact less notable as a musical proper - there’s a scarcity of songs anyway, almost all crammed into the glorious final half-hour - but more as a notable Pre-Production Code way-marker of how adult Hollywood might have continued to develop had the local industry not adopted a stifling smokescreen from behind which to hide.

Not that hearing the rhyming couplet of Panties and Scanties indicates any notable maturity of form, but it does provide a small contradictory thrill that seems out of place in Black & White films of the era - perhaps more a matter of discrepancy than probity. The ills (not all)…

Well, that took me by surprise. A musical that knows how to savor the music that made the ending show so much more epic instead of drowning the viewer out with unforgettable songs played through out. 

Don’t let the the slogan or headline fool you if you check it out before watching, this is surely more of a character driven story that works wonderfully due to its incredible performances and clever writing. Can’t really go in full detail for each character because they are all interesting but I can tell you two that stand out.

Warner Baxter as the shows director is phenomenal. He relishes his role as the man in charge to give the audience a show. Ruby Keller…