Fred Astaire Cyd Charisse Oscar Levant Nanette Fabray Jack Buchanan James Mitchell
Cinematography:
Harry Jackson
Editing:
Albert Akst
Music By:
Howard Dietz Arthur Schwartz
Distributed By:
MGM
Release Date:
July 9, 1953 (New York City)
Runtime:
111 minutes
Country:
United States
Language:
English
Budget:
$2.9 million
Box Office:
$3.5 million
The Band Wagon is a 1953 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. It tells the story of an aging musical star who hopes a Broadway show will restart his career. However, the play's director wants to make it a pretentious retelling of the Faust legend and brings in a prima ballerina who clashes with the star. Along with Singin' in the Rain, it is regarded as one of the finest Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals, although it was a modest box-office success on first release.
Why It Rocks
While the film may be the last of the unequivocally great Arthur Freed musicals, it marked an apex and pinnacle for backstage musicals after the major successes in the two previous years of MGM's An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain. It was also one of the last original musicals, before film musicals mostly got replaced by adaptations of hit Broadway musicals.
As a "backstage" movie musical, it's satirically self-mocking, and takes shots at show business and those who were involved in musical-dance productions. It's a light-hearted look at how an entertaining musical show could be foolishly updated, reinterpreted and rewritten as a highly-dramatic, ill-fated Faustian tale. Said dramatic tale was previously a major flop, but then, through further revisions, it became a much improved and bigger musical hit. The film's insightful commentary illustrated the constant friction between two "genres" or art-forms of entertainment - serious drama and frothy musicals. Several of the characters are based on real-life artists.
Maniacal stage director Jeffrey Cordova was a combination of Orson Welles, Norman Bel Geddes, and José Ferrer.
The playwright team of Lily and Lester Marton could have been Comden and Green themselves, or Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, or even Oscar Levant and his wife June.
The lead character Tony Hunter was written specifically for Fred Astaire. The writers built in semi-affectionate jibes about the dancer’s well-known phobias: his height, his dislike of lifting dancing partners, his early career. What gave their portrayal real bite was the fact that Hunter, like Astaire himself, was considered something of a dinosaur. It had been over fifteen years since Top Hat, and yet the dancer was still associated with elegant clothes in black-and-white settings, with what one character refers to as Swinging Down to Panama.
The screenplay goes into detail about the stages of putting on a theatrical musical production - scripting, assembling a collaborative team, financing, casting and auditions, directing, producing, and choreographing. All the preparations then led to rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts - hopefully followed by a successful opening night on Broadway.
Astaire’s films were mostly romances, with his role as a hoofer either an impediment or a boon to love, but not the central point of the story. But this film has so much plot that there's little time for a love affair. This may be a reason Astaire has only one traditional production number with his dancing partner, Cyd Charisse. This was a breakthrough role for Charisse—in the previous year’s Singin’ in the Rain, her character doesn't even get to speak. Her character here, Gabrielle Gerard, has connections to Charisse’s real life. Both had training in ballet, and both fell in love with their teachers; Charisse ended up marrying hers.
Aside from Astaire and Charisse, the majority of the cast does a great job with their performances
Jack Buchanan -- a fixture in West End musicals and an occasional performer in films -- delivers a finely calibrated performance as Jeffrey Cordova, playing someone egotistical but not conceited, pretentious but also talented.
Director Vincente Minnelli provided an arsenal of tracking and crane shots, and a willingness to shoot everything possible in one long take. He may also be responsible for the shrill performances from Oscar Levant, MGM’s house hypochondriac, and Nanette Fabray, the star of several Broadway plays. This was her first adult film role, and, surprisingly, her only musical one.
Nearly all of the musical numbers are reliant for acrobatics and sight gags, to the point where none of the songs would work on a stage, aside from possibly "I'll Have to Change My Plans" -- an ingratiating soft-shoe routine with Astaire and Buchanan both in top hat and tails.
A gigantic closing production number had become protocol in Freed films. Perhaps because it is narrated, the twelve-minute “Girl Hunt Ballet” has more of a plot than the closing numbers in An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain. Astaire is game, but the piece seems more Kidd’s work than Astaire's.
It's most famous numbers today are “Triplets,” a novelty song that was painful for the three dancers involved to perform, and “That’s Entertainment,” a spur-of-the-moment bit Dietz and Schwartz tossed off to help advance the plot. It has since become a sort of signature song for MGM.
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