and i have committed to pain

as of those Arabian chords......

and everything seemed so beautiful to bear

as the watched-over-an-over dancing scene is

launching

after shinny parts of conversations and start

birds were murmuring in the dim distance

and everyday struck, every night,

where pretty ideas rest

in the white marbled arms

how soothing is the music

how soothing is the dance

and

how suffocated I am, alone

in a seat sunk

disabled like one in his deep of his love

你也會(huì)有

電影里點(diǎn)煙，也跟著點(diǎn)煙的沖動(dòng)嗎？

這是一份精美的禮物

送給她自己

二零二一年十一月二十七日，晚

Forget about AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951) or GIGI (1958), this is“the” genuine chef d’oeuvre of aMinnellimusical, THE BAND WAGON is a glittering meta-pomp jauntily fights its corner for the middlebrow fluff over the highbrow pretension, not to mention it is where THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT! standard derives from.

An over-the-hill screen star, is given an opportunity to headline a Broadway musical to resuscitate his ebbing career, if the protagonist were a woman, the film would be Billy Wilder’s downbeat elegy SUNSET BLVD. (1950), but thanks to the showbiz’s ingrained double-standard, for a nimble-footed Tony Hunter (a 54-year-old Astaire), everything is rosy and eventually he is able to have his cake and eat it too! (actualizing a consequential comeback and simultaneously winning over the heart of his much younger leading lady.) However, enveloped in his aw-shucks and avuncular bonhomie, he is fortuitously accorded with a laissez-passer.

Creative license is put into comical use through the character of an omnipotent triple-threat Jeffrey Cordova (Buchanan, flip but nevertheless, an able hoofer), a very persuasive producer, a conceited director and a grandiloquent luvvie, who has been on a tear in Broadway and idiosyncratically decides to transpose the show's fluffy original material into a boundary breaker, viz. a musical reinterpretation of Faust. Everyone has to humor him on the strength of his clout, only a disastrous tryout can drench him out of his airy-fairy excess. Thankfully he ekes out enough alacrity to let theself-knowledge-savvy Tony resumes the rein henceforward, and the movie's money shots transpire in a stringof pluperfect musical numbers, including the ingenious, knee-dancing ditty “Triplets” (Astaire, Buchanan and a sparkling, corn-fed Nanette Febray, who is particularly reminiscent of Astaire’s quondam partner Ginger Rogers), and is topped off by the entrancing“GIRL HUNT” ballet pas-de-deux between Astaire and a voluptuous Cyd Charisse in her crimson sheath dress, against a modern noir-ish scenography.

Endowed with a game and nimble cast (themonkey wrench in the works is a stooped Oscar Levant, often looks uncooperative and miffed on the sideline), THE BAND WAGON is a passé romance, lukewarm comedy but a sterling musical production, beaming with gems composed by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, choreographed by Michael Kidd, both ocularly and aurally, this first-time reviewer is stock-still bewitched with a waxing smile at the corner of his mouth.

companion pieces: Minnelli’s AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951, 6.2/10);Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (1952, 8.1/10); Mark Sandrich’s HOLIDAY INN (1942, 7.1/10).Forget about AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951) or GIGI (1958), this is“the” genuine chef d’oeuvre of aMinnellimusical/