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The Band Wagon
Nov. 7th, 2020 05:54 pmThis week's offering in the film club series was The Band Wagon, a 1953 musical in which Fred Astaire's dancing comes very close to being overshadowed by Comden and Green's script.
Is such a thing possible? It has some classic Astaire dances - though I prefer the unexpected partnership with (real-life, apparently) shoeshine man Leroy Daniels in Shine on your shoes (fuller story here, but ad-heavy website or digested version, easier on the eyes) to the romantic stroll in Central Park with Cyd Charisse, or indeed the grand finale of the 'jazz ballet' Girl Hunt (because, and I'm sorry to repeat myself, but we have seen this in Singing in the Rain, and personally I find it a better fit for Gene Kelly's style). But when I think of The Band Wagon I think of it as an ensemble piece. It's about the pleasure of hanging out with Oscare Levant and Nanette Fabray as the husband and wife creative team into which Comden and Green (who were a purely creative pairing) transform themselves, and about the whole Hey, kids, why don't we do the show right here in the barn! spirit of the theatre.
It's a commonplace of the genre, of course, that if your musical is about the production of a musical, then any song or dance that can't be fitted into the narrative (I stop short of calling it a plot) of the outer musical can be palmed off as a number within the inner musical, which isn't obliged to make sense. The Band Wagon stretches this convention further than most. For one thing, it actually offers us a storyline for the show-within-a-show: in fact, it offers not one but two stories. There is the frothy comedy as pitched by the Martons, in which Tony (Astaire) plays a writer of children's books who moonlights as a crime writer, but feels guilty about it - and at a stretch you could link the 'triplets' and 'private eye' numbers to this framework, though perhaps not the 'Louisiana Hayride'. It goes further, and applies the same logic to the title: the movie we are watching is called The Band Wagon because the show the characters are putting on is called The Band Wagon. But why is that show called The Band Wagon? Ah, that's the mystery, especially as the title appears to be equally applicable to the light-hearted song-and-dance show and the melodramatic Faustian shocker.
Why, I wonder, did they not call the film after the big ensemble number, That's Entertainment? That title wasn't taken, and it picks up on the central argument of the story: what is entertainment? Can theatrical prodigy Jeffrey Cordova, currently starring in his own hit production of Oedipus Rex bring his magic touch to the Martons light-hearted musical comedy? Can the thinly disguised Fred Astaire dance with ballerina Gabrielle Gerard; and she wih him? Why yes, says Jack Buchanan's Cordova, there is no chasm between high and low culture, it's all entertainment. I love this assertion, and the big disappointment of the film is that it doesn't deliver on it: Gabrielle Gerard comes fown from her pointes, Cordova's production is a spectacular flop at the out-of-town try-outs, and the show can only be rescued by reverting to the original plan. It isn't clear whether the Faust versinn is bad in itself (though there are hints that this is the case) or whether leaving the audience traumatised is a mark that it has, on its own terms, succeeded. But either way, the assertion is unmistakable: this is not entertainment.
Om. well, you can't have everything.
Is such a thing possible? It has some classic Astaire dances - though I prefer the unexpected partnership with (real-life, apparently) shoeshine man Leroy Daniels in Shine on your shoes (fuller story here, but ad-heavy website or digested version, easier on the eyes) to the romantic stroll in Central Park with Cyd Charisse, or indeed the grand finale of the 'jazz ballet' Girl Hunt (because, and I'm sorry to repeat myself, but we have seen this in Singing in the Rain, and personally I find it a better fit for Gene Kelly's style). But when I think of The Band Wagon I think of it as an ensemble piece. It's about the pleasure of hanging out with Oscare Levant and Nanette Fabray as the husband and wife creative team into which Comden and Green (who were a purely creative pairing) transform themselves, and about the whole Hey, kids, why don't we do the show right here in the barn! spirit of the theatre.
It's a commonplace of the genre, of course, that if your musical is about the production of a musical, then any song or dance that can't be fitted into the narrative (I stop short of calling it a plot) of the outer musical can be palmed off as a number within the inner musical, which isn't obliged to make sense. The Band Wagon stretches this convention further than most. For one thing, it actually offers us a storyline for the show-within-a-show: in fact, it offers not one but two stories. There is the frothy comedy as pitched by the Martons, in which Tony (Astaire) plays a writer of children's books who moonlights as a crime writer, but feels guilty about it - and at a stretch you could link the 'triplets' and 'private eye' numbers to this framework, though perhaps not the 'Louisiana Hayride'. It goes further, and applies the same logic to the title: the movie we are watching is called The Band Wagon because the show the characters are putting on is called The Band Wagon. But why is that show called The Band Wagon? Ah, that's the mystery, especially as the title appears to be equally applicable to the light-hearted song-and-dance show and the melodramatic Faustian shocker.
Why, I wonder, did they not call the film after the big ensemble number, That's Entertainment? That title wasn't taken, and it picks up on the central argument of the story: what is entertainment? Can theatrical prodigy Jeffrey Cordova, currently starring in his own hit production of Oedipus Rex bring his magic touch to the Martons light-hearted musical comedy? Can the thinly disguised Fred Astaire dance with ballerina Gabrielle Gerard; and she wih him? Why yes, says Jack Buchanan's Cordova, there is no chasm between high and low culture, it's all entertainment. I love this assertion, and the big disappointment of the film is that it doesn't deliver on it: Gabrielle Gerard comes fown from her pointes, Cordova's production is a spectacular flop at the out-of-town try-outs, and the show can only be rescued by reverting to the original plan. It isn't clear whether the Faust versinn is bad in itself (though there are hints that this is the case) or whether leaving the audience traumatised is a mark that it has, on its own terms, succeeded. But either way, the assertion is unmistakable: this is not entertainment.
Om. well, you can't have everything.
