The Music Man

The Music Man

Warner Bros.

June 19, 1962

Musical, Historical Comedy, Romance

DVD

B-

I first saw this movie just a few years ago, although I had heard of it for ages of course.  This time around, while the musical numbers mostly hold up (except for Shirley's solos, because I hate that sort of singing), the movie does feel too long at two and a half hours.  Also, the acting is mostly not great.  And the mixed messages about sex (especially women's sexuality) are about what you'd expect for 1962, and 1912.  Still, there is a certain charm to the story and the setting and I was content to revisit it.  Morton DaCosta directed.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Columbia

October 19, 1939

Dramedy?

DVD
C-

Surprisingly flat, and it doesn't help that Jimmy S doesn't show up until a dozen minutes in.  (And I didn't even get to Jean Arthur this time.)  Capra's Mr. Deeds wasn't great but at least it had real momentum.

Nothing Sacred

Spoiler on the original poster!

Nothing Sacred
United Artists
November 25, 1937
Comedy, Romance
DVD
C+

I really don't know what I think of this movie and I was on the C/C+ fence in the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes.  Ultimately, I can marginally recommend it, for its cast and some of its script.  I like some of the offbeat humor, like the Calvin Coolidge joke (yes, I am the world's oldest 52-year-old), as well as its observations about the press.  Given the title, I guess I shouldn't be too shocked that a couple has a fistfight, while declaring their love, even though he keeps telling her to shut up and she's lied to him and the world, especially New York City, about having radium poisoning.  This is that odd movie that is a comedy and a romance without at all being a romcom, although, yeah, it's got a heck of a meet-cute.

William A. Wellman directed this eighteen years before Blood Alley.

42nd Street

42nd Street
Warner Bros
March 11, 1933
Musical
DVD
B-

Cast I recognize:

• Louise Beavers as Pansy, Dorothy's Maid
• Ruby Keeler as Peggy Sawyer
• The never-aging Charles Lane (seriously, this guy looked much the same in the '70s) as the Author of Pretty Lady
• Una Merkel as Lorraine Fleming
• Dick Powell as Billy Lawler
• The marvelous Ginger Rogers as Ann "Anytime" Lowell
• Lyle Talbot as Geoffrey Warning

Yes, finally we've got to a movie from the library that I could sit all the way through, and it figures it's definitely the oldest one yet.  It's not only '30s, it's pre-Code, which means lots of revealing costumes and racy dialogue and lyrics, including from the saucy pair of Rogers and Merkel.  There's even a song comparing love to drug addiction! It also mentions The Great Depression more than once, while some of its contemporaries are set in a fantasy world where money is never discussed.  In some ways, this feels like the most "modern" movie I've looked at so far for this blog, but it also has corny melodrama and cliches that it may've invented, or at least popularized, but are still cliches.  (It's based on a 1932 Bradford Ropes novel.)  I know this film is regarded as a classic, but I could've actually done with less backstage stuff and more of the show within a show.

Lloyd Bacon directed but choreographer Busby Berkeley is deservedly the household name.