Orchestra Wives is one of the 20th Century Fox musicals of the 40s that were made on B-budgets, but are elevated to A-status by their music and cinematography. It’s a dreamy jazz band movie with almost zero narrative — but very funny and erotic, with great music and the best routine by The Nichols BrothersContinue reading “Orchestra Wives (1942)”
Author Archives: Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.
Three Smart Girls (1936)
Three Smart Girls was Deanna Durbin’s first movie. It has a good backstory. Its director, Henry Koster, had recently arrived in Hollywood after fleeing Europe. He had begun a career writing and directing in Germany, then in exile in France, and again in Hungary, where he made films in German and Hungarian for the EuropeanContinue reading “Three Smart Girls (1936)”
Her Cardboard Lover (1942)
Her Cardboard Lover was directed by George Cukor two years after Philadelphia Story and two years before Gaslight. The movie has its fans, but to me it’s a royal mess. It’s clearly an adaptation of a French bedroom farce — literally, in fact, since it’s based on a 1927 Parisian play that was immediately translatedContinue reading “Her Cardboard Lover (1942)”
One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937)
One Hundred Men and a Girl was Deanna Durbin’s second film, and like the first, Three Smart Girls, it was conceived and directed by Henry Koster. Its premise is sweet and daring. Durbin plays the daughter of a down-and-out symphony orchestra director, John Cardwell (Adolphe Menjou), whose one-hundred person orchestra is out of work. TheyContinue reading “One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937)”
Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937)
Variety-show comedies were extremely popular in the 1930s, even before they hit their peak during the war years. They were patterned on vaudeville, music hall, and cabaret stage shows that included a lot of different kinds of acts — hence “variety” — and could be built into spectacular star vehicles in New York, Paris, andContinue reading “Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937)”
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
The Philadelphia Story is in a class of its own. If you tried to construct a canon of Hollywood high comedy of manners, it might be the only member. Lubitsch is satirical about that genre to the point of camp. There are several British films that fit the category but American producers insisted that thereContinue reading “The Philadelphia Story (1940)”
Little Miss Broadway (1938)
Little Miss Broadway isn’t one of Shirley Temple’s best movies. She had already made most of her classic films, and she’s beginning to grow out of her preternatural kawaii cuteness. Those earlier films are full of invention and energy, and she seems uncannily natural no matter what she’s required to do. The story of LittleContinue reading “Little Miss Broadway (1938)”
Fifth Avenue Girl (1939)
Director Gregory LaCava’s enshrinement in the Hollywood comedy pantheon is mainly due to My Man Godfrey (1936), which is still considered one of the peak achievements of the period. I’m not as taken with that film as most folks, but it’s clear that LaCava was an original director with a strong personal sense of howContinue reading “Fifth Avenue Girl (1939)”
Footlight Parade (1933)
It’s standard practice among film historians to set up an opposition between the musicals of Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers. Until recently the preference was for the more intimate and individually graceful style of Astaire and Rogers. Their art was more personal than the monumental spectacles of Berkeley, and — so theContinue reading “Footlight Parade (1933)”
Syncopation (1942)
William Dieterle’s Syncopation is a comic bio-pic about the evolution of New Orleans jazz. Basically a love letter to the New Orleans origins of jazz, and some say based on the Bix Beiderbecke-Bunny Berrigan-Louis Armstrong friendship, it’s a sincere white lefty plea to take jazz seriously as not only an African-American art, but as theContinue reading “Syncopation (1942)”