Monkey Business (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #44)

My fifth season focus on "Hollywood Classics" continues after last month's Swing Time with another, quite different Ginger Rogers vehicle. This time she shares the screen not with Fred Astaire but with Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, and a mischievous chimpanzee. Grant plays a bumbling scientist who concocts a formula for renewed youth which both he and his wife end up consuming. Howard Hawks directed this zany comedy in the early fifties, at a time when the film could recall the antic energy of thirties screwballs (which Grant himself had starred in) while also passing the torch to a new generation of movie stars, represented by Monroe. It's interesting to consider that, thanks to the industrial disruptions of the shift to sound in the late twenties (which sent many actors to pasture long before they could have expected), these Golden Age icons were among the first to truly age onscreen. How appropriate that, in this case at least, they do so in a story about characters aging down as well as up.

This is the rare episode of Lost in the Movies to be delayed several days (usually I publish a new podcast on the first Wednesday of each month); I was catching up with several different deadlines simultaneously and this got bogged down in the process. These projects were the last of a long line, however, and now I'm on the clear for a mid-August breather. With these words, I finally end three and a half months of endlessly imminent deadlines. What a relief!

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LINKS

My podcast Class violence in 4 films: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Joker, Parasite

MY RECENT WORK

New on other podcasts

Twin Peaks Cinema - On Dangerous Ground (Ray's Haunted Fifties) / Illustrated companions (w/ individual podcast links) for Lost in Twin Peaks #38 on Season 3 Part 9 & #39 on Part 10 / Guest appearances on Uncut Gems for Fire Walk With Me, Obnoxious and Anonymous & as part of a podcast panel on Windom's Cabin: A Virtual Twin Peaks Experience

New on YouTube

Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Counter Esperanto hosts Jubel Brosseau & Karl Eckler, part 1

New on Patreon

(for $5/month)

Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Counter Esperanto hosts Jubel Brosseau & Karl Eckler, part 2

(for $1/month)

Episode 93 podcast: Coffee and Cigarettes (+ feedback/media/work updates including Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Russian Revolution, failures of the decadent right, history of malls, archive reading: making my movie Lady and the Tramp & more)

EXCLUSIVE advances: TWIN PEAKS Character Series #86, #85 & 84 & #80 - 78 (#83 - 81 already published)

New on the site

Status update: Announcement: Considering the "Generations" video (& series) for the end of 2022 / Status update: Pausing Lost in Twin Peaks again (+ my plans going forward)

Swing Time (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #43)

The fifth season of my main public podcast kicks off with a new theme: "Hollywood Classics". Some of these episodes will bundle several capsules together, others will focus on a single film (all will be re-edited versions of material released initially for patrons, as with earlier seasons). Our first movie, Swing Time, touches on a subject that - like Twin Peaks - I discovered and celebrated while launching my site back in 2008. I'd seen one or two Astaire/Rogers musicals before then but I watched them with a new eye that autumn, thrilled by their elegant choreography and performances in a way that I'd previously been only by Gene Kelly, and charmed by the stars' chemistry, the cheerfully stylized sets, and the lighter-than-air narrative concoctions. Inside their oeuvre, Swing Time is a bit unusual for reasons I'll discuss, primarily related to the direction of George Stevens and the characters' slight distance from the more elite bubble of some (but not all) of their other films.

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You can also listen on Pinecast and Spotify

(and most places podcasts are found)

LINKS

My line-up of every Astaire/Rogers dance sequence

The Great Movies: Swing Time

by Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times)

MY RECENT WORK

New on other podcasts

Twin Peaks Cinema - Mysterious Skin (Traumatic Transformations #3) / Illustrated companions (w/ individual podcast links) for Lost in Twin Peaks #33 on Season 3 Parts 3 & 4 + #34 on Part 5, #35 on Part 6, #36 on Part 7 & #37 on Part 8

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Remembering the Class of 2002 (fictional documentary) / Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Queen of Hearts director Cameron Cloutier, part 1

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Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Queen of Hearts director Cameron Cloutier, part 2 (+ cross-post/intro)

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Episode 91: The Morning Show (+ feedback/media/work updates: Everything Everywhere All At Once, Belfast, Benjamin Franklin, Latin American history, The Office finale, Joan Chen's career, the Oscars slap, generational shifts, archive reading: making my movie Class of 2002 & more) + (cross-post/intro) / Episode 92: The Power of Nightmares (+ feedback/media/work updates: King Kong vs. Godzilla, In the Line of Fire, political shifts, the Iraq War, archive reading: An American in Paris & more)

New on the site

Status update: The House is Black on Wonders in the Dark, barely keeping up w/ public podcasts, Patreon delay / Status update: "Remembering the Class of 2002" & getting ahead on Lost in Twin Peaks

Patreon update #22: Twin Peaks season 3 rewatch - Parts 3 & 4 / film in focus: Swing Time (& more) and preview of New Mexico Townspeople character study

What a cheerful bunch! This was a fun image to compile. After a series of somber and/or surreal films in focus, a Hollywood musical comedy swoops in to lighten the mood. Likewise, this week's Twin Peaks pair (the last time two episodes will be conjoined until the finale) has a fairly comedic flair - alongside some genuinely trippy material, of course. The Return Rewatch continues with Parts 3 and 4, followed by my reflections on Swing Time, some more podcast recommendations, and a tour through a Neon Genesis Evangelion-heavy archive period. By the way, if you're wondering why I haven't yet shared your comments on the last episode (or previous ones), worry not; I wasn't able to incorporate them into listener feedback this week, but they'll definitely be read next time around. Also, apologies for the rough quality of the "podcast recommendations" section once again. See you again next week for more Twin Peaks, and a bit of Mickey Rourke.

The New Mexico Townspeople (May "See the Future" Preview #3 - 2nd tier reward)

Episode 22: Twin Peaks season 3 rewatch - Parts 3 & 4 / film in focus: Swing Time (& more)

Line-up for Episode 22

INTRO

WEEKLY UPDATE/recent posts: Veronica Mars series

WEEKLY UPDATE/Patreon: 2nd tier biweekly preview - New Mexico townspeople

 TWIN PEAKS REFLECTIONS Return Rewatch Pt. 3 & 4
The feel & structure of the episode
New York
Twin Peaks -Cooper investigation/Jacoby/Roadhouse/Drugs/standalone scenes
FBI in South Dakota - Philadelphia/Yankton/Buckhorn
Mr. C
Las Vegas - assassination plot/meeting Dougie/Dougie at home/Mitchums
Spirit World - Red Room/Purple World Tower
Character introductions & re-introductions/screentime rankings/timeline of events
Coffee, pie, and donuts 
Lodge lore 
Laura Palmer

FILM IN FOCUS: Swing Time

OTHER TOPICS: Political podcast recommendations

OPENING THE ARCHIVE: "A World Without Uncertainty" (August - December 2015), this week's highlight: Side by Side video essay on Neon Genesis Evangelion & Twin Peaks

OUTRO

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Musical Countdown - The Gay Divorcee

This is an entry in the Wonders in the Dark musical countdown - an epic enterprise; make sure you check out the whole thing!

If writing about movies is like dancing about architecture, then writing about musicals is like trying to draw a blueprint for a tap dance. Here I try to make both ends meet.

The words below the fold are from Arlene Croce’s seminal “Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book.”

The images (some fragments, some fully framed) are from a single number, “Night and Day,” the only sequence in the film where Fred & Ginger dance by themselves, three minutes out of nearly two hours but the very essence of the picture and their partnership.

Finally, there is a video clip of the number in its entirety. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter, choreography by Fred Astaire, dancing by you-know-who.

The hope is that, senses sharpened by the indirect evocations of Croce’s prose, and the lingering snapshots of motion, you will view the piece with renewed appreciation, much as one might press one’s nose up against a pointillist painting, viewing all those little dots as isolated phenomena before stepping back to take in the big picture, all without losing sight of the magical details which give it its essence.

As Arlene Croce writes, opening her study of the sequence, “This incomparable dance of seduction is a movie in itself.” Enjoy.

Fred and Ginger

Several months ago, I scoured the web for every Astaire-Rogers dance I could find. Sure enough, I tracked them all down but within days of posting the videos were disappearing one by one. I resolved to restore these myself, by selecting the scenes I wanted, paring them down to the essentials, and posting them in the place of those deleted You Tube clips. Now the job is done, so I invite you all to revisit (or just plain visit) the Astaire-Rogers ouevre. If you don't feel you have enough time to watch very many, at least treat yourself to "Night and Day" - it's the third clip down, and is one of the sublime moments in musicals - indeed, in movies.

In other news, someone beat me to the punch and posted the 1987 Rankin-Bass Wind in the Willows on You Tube. For those curious enough to see the movie I discussed in February, you can watch the whole thing here. I will probably be putting up my own version eventually - the VHS tape which is missing a few scenes but contains all kinds of goodies in addition to the film itself, from claymation commercials to Donahue and Ralph Nader jamming with Muppets to TV cameos by Keenan Wynn and James Earl Jones.

Gold Diggers of 1933

Like rules and perhaps promises, general assumptions were made to be broken. I'd never seen a Busby Berkeley movie, except in excerpts, until recently and had always held a certain conception of them. The choreography was flashy, to be sure, with those infamous overhead patterns but it all seemed more an abstract, almost intellectual concept than something flesh-and-blood. Accordingly, I was absolutely knocked out by the end of 42nd Street. I must have seen glimpses before, but taken in its totality, the final sequence of the movie - ostensibly the climax of a stage revue but quickly turning in directions more attuned to a movie camera than a theatrical proscenium - served as a complete revelation. This is visceral filmmaking, as much as Kong swatting airplanes or Cagney falling down in the rain; more so because the kinetic energy of the roving camera and cascading figures gooses the already naturalistic flow of the medium, spilling over the boundaries of narrative to create a glorious overflow of pure cinema (to a tune, of course, which - tellingly - I can't recall). And today I saw my second Berkeley, Gold Diggers of 1933.

Astaire and Rogers

Many months in the making, this post is actually relatively simple: it chronicles every Astaire-Rogers dance in every Astaire-Rogers movie. If you had asked me as recently as this summer, "Whom do you prefer - Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire?" I would have positively responded, "Kelly." Though I still admire him, my new reaction to Astaire, whose appeal I didn't really "get" (connecting more with Kelly's athletic hoofing than Astaire's more genteel, seemingly effortless tapping), has shifted completely. Actually, it was Ginger Rogers who gave me my entry into the world of Astaire-Rogers, or Fred and Ginger, as we think of their characters. Taken with her in Stage Door, and then in Carefree, I was soon making my way through all ten of the duo's musicals, many of which were aired on TCM this fall, the others of which I caught up with on Netflix. So much has been written about them, and I have so little to offer in the technical department, that my own thoughts are kept to a minimum, a few observations followed by the videos. None of Fred's solos are included; often they are wonderful, even highlights of the films in question, but I decided just to focus on the pairings (with a few exceptions, all of which feature both of them acting if not dancing). The clips (a few of which contain multiple dances) appear after the jump. [update 5/1: originally this post featured You Tube clips, but they were deleted so quickly that, frustrated repeatedly, I gave up trying to be comprehensive...for the time being. Now I have replaced the original clips with selections ripped, cut, and posted by me. Enjoy.]

Carefree

At its finest, Carefree walks on air, and this is due in no small part to Ginger Rogers. Her collaboration with Fred Astaire is of course legendary, and they have some outstanding numbers on display here. But the film is a musical comedy with a surprising emphasis on the latter. In addition to being a captivating dancer and the perfect partner for Fred, Ginger was what they like to call "a deft comedienne" and she carries most of the film's comedic elements on her own. She's hypnotized, anesthetized, arrested, swept off her feet, and punched in the face. She is a master of the wheeling, leering, google-eyed grin, in a form that reminded me of her Stage Door co-star Lucille Ball. Watching this movie tonight confirmed what Stage Door had led me to suspect: I really, really like Ginger Rogers.

Stage Door

Not only are Ginger Rogers and Katherine Hepburn cast side-by-side in Stage Door, the two superstars play competing actresses. However, the thespians onscreen are not movie goddesses but hard-working, long-suffering actors sharing a room in a noisy boarding house, stocked heavily with sniping and struggling female performers - both the actors themselves and the characters they play (among the ensemble are Lucille Ball and Ann Miller). Rogers is Jean Maitland, a sassy working-class gal who struggles with whether or not to sleep her way to the top (though even then there are no guarantees). Hepburn is the rich girl who's decided she'd like to try acting; she's self-confident and no-nonsense, at least until the first-night jitters arrive.