Busby Berkeley’s classic films of the 1930s were very popular and much imitated but they weren’t analyzed very much until recently. An online content search reveals that even reviewers’ discussions of the films tailed off gradually between the 1940s and the 1960s. The great classics were rarely seen until repertory movie houses, film festivals, andContinue reading “Busby Berkeley and the “Fascist Aesthetic””
Category Archives: Busby Berkeley
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
Gold Diggers of 1933 — directed by Mervyn LeRoy and spectacularized by Busby Berkeley — has been more thoroughly watched, interpreted, contextualized, explained, poked, prodded, and dissected over the years than any other comedy of the era. It has been glossed in terms the male gaze, the commodification of women, the reduction of female bodiesContinue reading “Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)”
42nd Street (1933)
42nd Street was the first of the four monumental musicals associated with Busby Berkeley in the miracle years of 1933 and 1934. (The others were Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, and Dames.) For a long time they were lumped together, as if they were parts of single artifact, the revolutionary Busby Berkeley spectacle-film. ContemporaryContinue reading “42nd Street (1933)”
Fred and Ginger Leave the Mandala
Film historians who are particular fans of the Astaire-Rogers films often write about them as important mediators for changing gender attitudes at the time of the Great Depression. The argument goes like this: Astaire’s characters always treated Rogers’s characters as equals. Astaire never posed as an aggressive male intending to dominate his partner. He appealedContinue reading “Fred and Ginger Leave the Mandala”
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)”
Dames (1934)
I adore the early Warner studio Busby Berkeley movies, all of them. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but for now I’ll go with Dames. The films now all go under Berkeley’s name, but until Gold Diggers of 1935, Berkeley (hence BB) directed only the production numbers. Spectacular as they were, the four great filmsContinue reading “Dames (1934)”
Hollywood Hotel (1937)
Hollywood Hotel is a relatively late Busby Berkeley movie. As far as I know, this was the first film that BB directed by himself. Scholars justly talk about 42nd Street, Golddiggers of 1933, and Dames as great films; Hollywood Hotel isn’t great like that, but it has its virtues. It’s a cute and rocking comedyContinue reading “Hollywood Hotel (1937)”