Royal Wedding (1951)

Oh, what a wonderful movie...

Tom and Ellen Bowen (Fred Astaire and Jane Powell) are a famous brother and sister dancing act in New York. Their agent's brother happens to be an agent in London (a very odd running joke in which Keenan Wynn plays the agent twin brothers and has them have odd phone conversations with their vastly different accents and slang). The British agent invites Tom and Ellen to perform in London for the month leading up to Princess Elizabeth's wedding. Before Ellen can leave she has to bid farewell to at least three guys she's dating. Apparently she's quite the player. As her brother says about the newest guy, "This'll probably be one of those long affairs that drags on a whole weekend." While sequentially saying goodbye to each hopeful young man before she boards her ship to England, Ellen overhears a dashing stranger doing the same thing with a string of women.

It turns out they are destined for each other. What begins with, "I surveyed the whole boat...you're the most attractive woman on board...I thought, too bad she's married... this is going to be awkward," turns into a relationship that continues in London and causes them both to drop their player ways (but not without some hesitation)...

"I'm in love with you?"

"Well aren't you?"

While Ellen tries out her relationship, Tom falls for an engaged dancer in their show. She makes him so happy he can do this:

Turns out Tom's beloved's fiance has been in Chicago for two years, and she hasn't heard from him the past two months... Hmmm...Could things be looking up for Tom?

Anyways, I truly believe that Fred Astaire could dance on a ceiling if he wanted to. This movie had great dialogue, fun dance numbers, and one of my new favorite actresses.

Four stars! I would watch this again.

The Sound of Music (1965)

When I was three we owned this record and I remember not understanding that I was not Maria. There was no clear separation between me and the movie. I was The Sound of Music and The Sound of Music was me.

We had this record:

And I don't remember a time when I didn't know every word to every song. I'm quite sure that I learned the words "dapper" "naive" and "ken" from 'Sixteen Going on Seventeen' and I'm sure that those three words alone could have been responsible for my reputation as a precocious three-year-old.

I've been to the sing-along Sound of Music but until two years ago I didn't own the movie. I never had. In a weird way it felt redundant. I own this movie in my head. If I'm knocked unconscious and start to ascend a tunnel of light I'll probably wake up singing "Climb ev'ry mountain" - it's that kind of thing for me.


Did I mention that the Mother Abbess is played by Peggy Wood? That's my grandmother's name.

I am going to put a limit on the ways I can love this movie, I am limiting it to ten.
These are a few of my favorite things:

1. The Sound of Music - the music. This movie is full of happy songs. There are a lot of dark, sad moments to this movie - the girl doesn't fit in at the Abbey, where she lives, she doesn't fit in at the place where she's sent to be a governess, but she's always so exuberant! The opening score is played over shots of the Swiss Alps and it's just this feeling of awe you can't help, which is exactly what Maria wants to sing about all the time.

"My heart wants to skip like a brook that trips over stones on its way, to sing through the night, like a lark that is learning to pray!" Put simply, it's a show-tune hymn, and a great one. People should sing it in church.

Because this is essentially a movie about music bringing people together and saving them from Nazis, there are too many other great songs to name and yes a few slow ones that I didn't care for as a child but now appreciate. And then there's Edelweiss - if your heart doesn't break when they sing that song at the end of the movie, I'm revoking it!

2. How do you solve a problem like - Nuns. How can you not love nuns? They are like the opposite of a pin-up poster - they are everything womanly that is not sexual. They're motherly and wise, girlish and innocent, demanding and patient, they nag, they gossip, they whine, and in the end of the movie they are heroic and clever and sneaky and you realize they are made of steel. Nuns! (someone is going to say, clearly I have never gone to Catholic school - clearly I have not).


3. Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes. The kids in uniform! They are great - kids marching in a line and in matching costumes were so appealing when I was a kid. It was like watching a kid review or a kid army. And I still love the matching curtain-clothes - don't put it past me to have my own version for my kids.


Apparently Christopher Plummer was quite the player...
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/12/21/091221ta_talk_parker

But back to the list:

4. Uncle Max
He's a smooth cat, Uncle Max - the talent agent and perennial mooch. I bet the real Uncle Max moved to Hollywood to escape the Nazis and became someone like Sam Goldwyn. True, he's only out for himself but that makes him somewhat impartial. He cracks mean little jokes with the baroness but ultimately his fondness for a good musical act trumps his friendship with her and her lovely money. And if not for him, how would they ever have escaped at the end? Gotta love Uncle Max.

5. There's a ball. They throw a ball. They're just like - you know what would be fun? A big party in that big ballroom. And then they throw a ball. Complete with formal dinner and wonderful outfits and entertainment and Austrian folk dances.

6. There's a wedding. Any movie with a ball and a wedding is a winner in my book. The wedding is awesome, too - just her train alone is enough to bring a tear to my eye, but the organ playing "how do you solve a problem like maria" - all I can say is - why on earth didn't I think of having that as my processional? Jessica, take note, you still have a chance!

7. Free the children manifesto. Children hanging from trees and overturning rowboats. This is how life was meant to be lived. Up until the turn of the century, children were to be "seen and not heard" - kept apart from their parents in upper-class homes and trained to act like miniature adults. Fraulein Maria is a renegade, she's a local girl who ran around in the woods singing out loud to the mountains like a crazy person and she believes firmly that all children should be allowed to run around acting like crazy people. Children appreciate and respond to this message. They like to be crazy.

8. Love story #1 - star-crossed lovers Franz and Liesl. They meet in secret and fall in love - they have their first kiss during a thunderstorm, for pete's sake! Then he becomes a stupid Nazi - in part because the Austrians see him as a boy but the Nazi's will give him authority to rat people out. So instead of growing into a principled man, he'll become a soldier for the first army that will take him. Liesl can't believe he'd betray her family and her father and almost costs her family their lives because of it. Poor Liesl and, for that matter, poor Franz. He's just a boy being manipulated by a deeply evil regime.

9. Love story #2 - The Captain and Maria - he's her boss, he's handsome and wealthy and authoritative and precise. She's a free-spirited would-be nun who can't stop herself from contradicting anyone, even authority figures. But when they sing, they can't help but see each other as kindred spirits. Most of all, she truly loves his children, even to the point of risking her own job to argue with him on their behalf. She makes him realize that he loves his kids, too, and needs to be a better father to them. And she's just a simple country girl but you realize, he's really not fond of the city anyway - he likes nature and folk songs and traditional Austrian things - including traditional Austrian girls like Maria.

10. Sad/Happy Ending. So the Nazis invade Austria, but the family escapes. The real-life family survived, came to America, made their living performing, were happy and successful. But the Nazis are real, and they go on to do terrible things, and not everyone escaped. Austrians who had to give up their nation and leave their homes were the first victims of Hitler, and their hardships seem minor compared to others - but just the glimpse of the totalitarianism of the Nazi occupation - the flags everywhere, the spies, the insistence on a public show of loyalty and deference...sends a chill down your spine. Europe should have taken notice sooner. The Nazis started out by breaking spirits and banishing families and ended by bringing more evil into the world than many people had ever imagined existed in the human heart. When they sing Edelweiss, a folksong, they get to the "bless my homeland forever" part and you realize it's a secret protest. The voices in the crowd join in and sing and you sense the Nazis are not going to be able to keep these people down. Probably Victor Laszlo was in the crowd. Surreptitious subversion of cultural imperialism, rule-breaking nuns, hiking over the Alps to freedom...it's inspirational on top of everything else.

How can you not love this movie? I think I watched it once a year when I was little, and I'm sure I could sing you all of the songs if asked.

Four stars. Clearly another movie to watch over and over.

Father of the Bride (1950)

Poor Stanley (Spencer Tracy) has to deal not only with the fact that his daughter is getting married...and he doesn't even know the financial stability or sense of the groom... but also with the fact that the wedding is going to be a humongous, expensive affair.

The conflicts the characters had were just so silly. The wedding was almost called off when the groom had an idea that the bride didn't like for a honeymoon destination. Also, if the family couldn't afford it and the bride, Kay (Elizabeth Taylor), really wanted a small wedding as she claimed, why did the family pay movers to have all of the furniture removed from their home so that they could host almost 500 people at the reception? And why was Kay wearing this dress?

Weddings don't always have to make people crazy, right?
Two stars. I'm not sorry I watched it, but I probably won't watch it again.

The Pirate (1948)

Where to begin?
Judy Garland is Manuela -- a romantic young girl in a strange hat. She has imbibed the legends of a pirate named Macoco and has decided that she would do anything for him if he abducted her, as she dreams he will someday do. Meanwhile she is engaged to fat, boring mayor Don Pedro.

Gene Kelly is Serafin -- a strolling player - a.k.a. actor - who wanders into town and falls in love with Manuela. Not surprisingly, he decides to pretend to be Macoco to seduce her.

Come to think of it - this has a plot not unlike an opera. It's unlikely, silly, and melodramatic and allows for a lot of big dramatic dance scenes and songs.

Cole Porter wrote the music so it's a little surprising that none of the numbers are very memorable, even with Judy Garland singing and Gene Kelly dancing. Well I take that back - the obtuse dance number with J.G. as a donkey and G.K. as a pirate in tight black shorts is memorable - if not in a good way. He cuts her ears off with a sword. It is no less bizarre than the dance in the middle of Singing in the Rain or Oklahoma. And therefore, just as memorable.

Overheard passing between us as we watched:

Jess:“Oh, do you think there will be a long, boring dance sequence?”

Amy: (about JG's plaid basket hat) “I nominate this for worst costume ever. If she put fruit on her head it would match better.”

Jess: “Sorry, I just can’t help laughing whenever I see their clothes.”
Amy: “I was hoping she would have changed.”

Jess: (about Gene Kelly's first outfit) “Amy Amy! Look at Gene Kelly! Look at Gene Kelly! Look at Gene Kelly! Look at Gene Kelly!”

Jess: “Wait, can you go back… I think he just sang, ‘When I arrive in any town, I look the ladies up and down,’ but I’m not sure.”
Amy: "That's what he said."

Jess: “Again with the wrapping paper hats."
Amy: "I’m liking this one, though.”

Jess: “Look at the poles, do you think there will be a stripper dance?
Amy: "I think Gene Kelly is going to dance with the poles. Yep, there he goes, Gene Kelly’s version of a stripper dance.”

Jess: “I do NOT like his hat.”
Amy: “I’m anticipating that his costume will become better when he becomes a pirate.”

Amy: (After commenting that JG's character has a lot in common with Kiera Knightly's haracter in "Pirates of the Caribbean.") “I wonder if they watched this before they wrote that script. I mean, not that that’s a hard plot to come up with.”

Amy: “Why has she got her hair in a sock?”

Amy: “I really like this outfit. It makes up for all the other outfits.”
Amy: “I want her skirt.”
Amy: “Ok, you have to admit, though, the outfit is awesome.”

About the wedding dress:
Jess: “Oh, oh.” (with extreme displeasure)
Amy: “I love it.”

Jess: “How long is this movie?”

Jess: “Here it is! Here’s the obtuse dance sequence… and he’s wearing the best shorts ever.”
Amy: “He has nice legs, though. We never see his legs.”

Jess: "How do you make it show how much time we have left?"
Jess:"Ok, it's almost over."


Jessica gives it one star because she can't give it zero and she "really thought it was a dreadful dreadful movie, anything that was entertaining about it was not intended."

I give it two stars - one half each for Gene Kelly and Judy Garland's charm, without the benefit of a really good part to play. One star for the costumes. There were many charmingly silly costumes that I think were meant to be charmingly silly.

I think it's a movie that must be watched by fans of either big colorful musicals, Judy Garland or Gene Kelly - if only because it is classically bad big Hollywood musical. However, we agree that we will not watch it again.

Forsaking All Others (1934)

I have a confession to make: I mostly watch classic movies because I am so often disappointed by the lack of new movies that suit my taste. I seem to like a kind of movie that's no longer being made: witty, clever, fashionable, romantic, funny and with a good, believable happy ending. I faithfully trudge to the video store to pick up the latest releases (I'm too cheap to see them in the theater) and I'm constantly disappointed by the "Along Came Polly" and the "Failure to Launch" of this world. I find some small comfort in a movie like "Two Weeks' Notice" or "50 First Dates" which have a passable combination of humor and romance. But where is the wit? The costumes? The happy ending that doesn't seem glued on but results from the intrinsic natures of the characters themselves? I basically live for Jane Austen novels to be made and re-made as movies...and therefore I must go backward, into the archives, for my "new" movies.



That's why, when I discover a movie like "Forsaking All Others" I feel a sense of triumph equal to an archaeologist stumbling on a Mayan temple - I didn't create it - I didn't exactly "discover" it - I mean, it was there all along - but I have unearthed it again - brought it to light - and now I can share it. These are the moments I live for!

In Forsaking all others you have a classic, perfect love triangle. Mary, Jeff and Dill grew up together and for as long as they can remember, Mary has loved Dill and Jeff has loved Mary - only of course Mary doesn't know that Jeff loves her - and Dill seems to love Mary. Of course, Jeff has gone off to Spain to make his fortune so he can propose to Mary (he doesn't seem to be born to the purple like Mary and Dill seem to have been) - and he comes home, unfortunately for him, on Mary and Dill's wedding night.

Poor Jeffy - they all have nicknames - he takes the news of his beloved's impending marriage well and stands by while all kinds of OTHER hijinks mess it up. He patiently rescues Mary from one scrape after another, cheers her up, puts her back together, chides her - you begin to see how he got the nickname "Uncle Jeff" or why people are constantly referring to him as "like her big brother".

But an interesting thing happens - Jeff continually reveals himself to be competent and resourceful, while Dill just seems more and more childish. Eventually I was yelling at the screen "he's an IDIOT" - and then Kim agreed "yeah, you're right, she IS an idiot." I didn't quibble. You just can't see by the end how Mary ever missed the fact that Jeff has all the same cute punchy playfulness that she loves in Dill but without the helplessness and foolishness.

Okay, I can find no photos to represent this to you, but I MUST say a word about the costumes: there are no words to describe the costumes. I was on the phone with my friend Renea when I got home and I started playing the movie on mute while we were talking. "Oh I wish you could see this outfit," I said, "it's like she's wearing a wedding veil around her neck upside down..." and then I gave up...there just are no words for the wackiness that fashion would tolerate in the 1930s. It was like - hey, prohibition is over and the stock market crashed so we have no actual runway fashion - let's see if we can pull THIS off!

I found a photo, though it hardly does it justice:

It's wild and woolly and in some cases gorgeous - this this is this one weird dress that has all kinds of ropey loops on it that Joan Crawford wears under a sparkly Elvira-like wrap while carrying a similarly ropey evening bag - it's so strange but it's totally flattering - I couldn't take my eyes off it - I sort of missed the importance of the scene she played in it, really, until later.

Apart from the fashion, the entire script is just full of exchanges that boggle the mind, like this one:

(a word of explanation - Paula is some kind of slightly older friend who acts as a sort of mother to Mary - I wonder whether she is a step-mother and the father has passed away, but it's not clear)

Mary: All I know about Spain is that they have bull fights and eat red pepper. What else is there to know?
Jeff: Well that's about all.
[Paula rushes in]
Paula: What have you done with him? Let me look at him! That's what happens the minute you get out of my sight, eating all that native food! Did you wear your rubbers? I understand it rains for months at a time in Spain. And all those poisonous insects.
Jeff: Why darling, I lived in Madrid - it's like Paris.
Paula: Really? I understand it's quite savage. Jungles and things.
Mary: Paula's never read Ernest Hemingway.
Jeff: Evidently not.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Mary: Say where IS dinner?
Paula: You'll make it yourself tonight, the only nail I've got left on either hand is on my right thumb and I need that to start with when I get back to town.
Mary: Isn't she difficult? You know, cooks get like that when you're too familiar with them.
Jeff: Yes, well, I have something to confess.
Mary: What?
Jeff: I, um, I'm a very fine cook.
Paula: What?
Mary: Wonderful!
Jeff: All I need's a frying pan, a piece of string and some tinfoil.
Shemp: I'd like to be excused from dinner, I don't feel very well tonight.
Mary: Imagine knowing a man who can cook!
Shemp: You should see some of his hem-stitching!

It doesn't all make a whole lot of sense, but it's awesome.

Also, I am really beginning to be sold on Clark Gable, who I never liked. He's so suave, and he just exudes a kind of easiness that's totally charming - plus he does great things with his eyes whenever Joan Crawford is in the room. You really feel he's pining for her, even though all he's doing is joking and chiding her.

This really is almost a humorous, short version of Gone with the Wind, only Mary does the right thing in the end, unlike Scarlett.

Brigadoon (1954)

This is an interesting entry for me. Regrettably, probably boring for you, dear reader. Let me apologize in advance.

I came home this evening and settled down to relax for a while. I flipped on the TV and my Tivo was recording Brigadoon (or trying to, it's having problems communicating with the digital cable box). In it, two hunters stumble on a quaint Scottish village seemingly undisturbed by modernity.

About 40 minutes into the movie we come to this scene:
Gene Kelly (reading from a large book, apparently the family bible of the lass he's smitten with):
"listen to this! Married - Elizabeth Lange to Andrew Campbell July 2nd, 1719"

He goes on to read that the birth date of his new girlfriend is October 10th, 1732 (a libra!). This was odd for Gene Kelly, but, since I've seen this movie once or twice before, this didn't get me wondering what was up in Brigadoon, it got me thinking about my genealogy project.

For the past month I've been looking up family genealogy online and bothering my relatives and Kimberly's with questions about their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

So, as Gene Kelly and his buddy went racing around the countryside tap-dancing with men in argyle tights and shirts with gigantic balloon sleeves, I went and found a little pamphlet that I received in the mail from my grandmother earlier this week.

The pamphlet was printed in 1901, updated in 1907 (my neighbor didn't think that was possible because it has staples but who knew staples had been invented in the 17th century? God bless Wikipedia). It contains information relating to the genealogy of the Cunningham Family, my maternal grandmother's family.

As Gene Kelly comtemplated life without his beloved Fiona and his buddy got drunker and drunker off a flask of what is presumably some vintage 1764 scotch, I settled down to try to decipher the tiny lines of print full of dates and abbreviations in that hundred-year-old pamphlet that read, in part "Edward, b. 1823; d. 1889; one of the most eminent of the American merchants in China; m. 1858, Fanny Helen, dau. of George B. Cary of Boston" - that, without a doubt, is my great-great-great grandfather and great-great-great grandmother - Ned and Fanny!

Now this little book just goes back from there - so as Gene Kelly, torn between the bucolic life in the Scotch highlands and the life he knows in New York City, decides to make his sacrifice for his wee lass Fiona (played by Cyd Charisse) I started to plot my family tree backwards...to John Adams Cunningham, Andrew C, James C, William C - back to the original Andrew who, it turns out, is Scottish. Back to kilts and Brigadoon!

In fact, evidence suggests that Andrew must have been born in Scotland sometime around 1654, well before Brigadoon was enchanted by the prayers of a lunatic priest to only appear (spoiler alert) once every hundred years.

What does this mean? It means:
a. I am not descended from Gene Kelly
b. Cyd Charisse could be some kind of distant relative
c. I can wear a "kiss me, I'm Scottish" shirt now, if I want to.
d. all of the above.

Now if only my ancestors had handed down Cyd Charisse's dresses to me...that would be really awesome!



Four stars. Will watch again right now.

Correct answer is D.

Here Comes the Groom (1951)

I almost missed out on blogging this one!

After the war, a war correspondent exasperates his fiance by staying in France, trying to convince families back home in America to adopt war orphans. She sends him a sort of a Dear John letter bemoaning all the children she should have if they had been married when they should have.

This gives him an idea to surprise her with an orphan.

In the first half hour of the film, the most memorable moment comes when a young orphan girl sings Caro Nome. They just let her sing the whole thing without interruption, and it's beautiful. It doesn't necessarily make some greater point in the movie, but it's moving, and it's something that would never happen in a modern movie, I'm sure. It doesn't feel like a moment too long.

The comedy picks up when you get back to America with Bing, orphans in tow, and learn that our girl back home has left him and it is the eve of her marriage to a blue-blooded millionaire.



Of course that doesn't discourage Bing - the hijinks that follow are partly about the clash of cultures when the humble daughter of a fisherman marries into a family of high breeding. It's more of a send-up of the wealthy than of the working class, but it does play both ways.

In the middle of it all is Bing, using wrestling to loosen up the upper class and bring them down to his level.

This movie is darling and wonderful. Four stars, will definitely watch again!