Dave Rattigan

Watched 42nd Street (1933) tonight (a snip for £3 at Tesco the other week!) and was astonished at the similarity between the final scene and the ballet in The Red Shoes (1948). I wonder whether Powell and Pressburger were influenced directly by this? I had assumed that P&P's idea of having the stage ballet metamorphose away from the stage and into a kind of fantasy was original to them, but 42nd Street is strikingly similar.

Steve Crook

I don't know that I've ever seen the 1933 film version. I'll ask around (or nip into Tesco's)

Steve

julian_craster

There are also striking similarities between the US film HERE COMES MR JORDAN and A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.....though the concept is developed in a more sophisticated, literate way in the latter.....the concept of after life in 1940s cinema would make a good research topic....

orpheum

since busby berkeley was so innovative it would not be surprising if his ideas rubbed off on other film makers

Welcome To Highbury The Home Of Football

Pricey

The same device is used in "London Town" (1948) and "Limelight" (1952) and much later in "The Boyfriend" (1971) although the latter was a deliberate parody of musical conventions. I think you'll find it is a widely used effect and it will be difficult to find a definite original although 42 Street obviously has as good a claim as any.

julian_craster

"London Town" (1946).....

Pricey

Thanks Julian, quite right. Hope you're not stressed 'cos I got the date wrong!

Mark O

Just to inform that 'The Red Shoes' is on BBC2 tomorrow the 19th at 1.30pm......

According the Radio Times it's the 'Film of the day', and goes on to say "Moira Shearer said making the film was an ordeal.
Dancing for hours on Concrete floors made her legs swell up"........so now you know!

Mark

Steve Crook

Aww diddums, poor Moira. I've spoken to members of the corps de ballet in The Red Shoes who were also in the Royal Ballet who said that if she'd done as many tours as they did of village halls and factory canteens then she would have been used to it.

She also moaned about the way that the technique of film-making with its constant stopping and starting. She said it didn't let her get into the flow of the ballet.
But that's what dancers do in front of the mirror for hours at a time. Helpmann and Massine both really appreciated the way it let them concentrate on and perfect one small movement.

Moira also moaned that the back-stage scenes weren't a real representation of what happened back-stage in a ballet company.
I've got news for you Moira, it was a drama, not a documentary

Moira also moaned about her partners, Helpmann and Massine saying that Massine was past it and Helpmann was only ever good as a mime.
Well that's just bitchy. They both had careers that far outlasted yours dear.

All of these moans can be heard on the Criterion commentary track.

Personally I think that her main moan was that she felt that the film, and the international fame, detracted from her career at the Royal Ballet. Others there thought that she was getting too much publicity and was getting too big for her boots. But the reason she never got the top job at the Royal Ballet wasn't anything to do with the film, it was because Margot Fonteyn didn't retire. Moira was due to take the lead spot when Margot retired but then Margot's husband got shot and she had to keep working to pay for his care.

Oh, and she complained a lot about Powell and the way he treated her. But she did come back to him for The Tales of Hoffmann and then again for Peeping Tom

But despite all her moaning and bitchiness she does give an adequate performance

Steve

Mark O

Oh dear!.......and she seemed such a sweet young Girl in the Movie, didn't realise she was such a Moaner!

Seems Moira and Ludovic Kennedy complemented each other!

Mark

GRAEME

I though prima ballerinas were supposed to be moaners!

Stunningly beautiful though.

All men leak.

Steve Crook

In that case Moira should have been prima ballerina assoluta from way back

Dame Margot never moaned, Darcey Bussell never moaned. Or nowhere near as much as Moira. But those other ladies just worked hard at their art and made the top grade. Moira never quite made the top grade.

Steve

TimR

Yes - there were many films with the same basic theme made during those years: Down to Earth and Between Two Worlds, which was itself an Americanized remake of the old British play and film Outward Bound, with Leslie Howard.

The most successful of them all was A Guy Named Joe, with Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne, which is somewhat similar to A Matter of Life and Death in some aspects of its plot.

I thought A Guy Named Joe was a stinker of a movie. I'm not much for sentimental rubbish about faith and religious belief.

I take those issues very seriously, and I don't appreciate attempts by Hollywood to manipulate audiences with it. Real faith does not make light of suffering and death. Most of these films turn it into pablum. Spencer Tracy even struts into "heaven" in a spotless uniform. Shameless.

Considering what was actually happening in the world in 1944, I think A Guy Named Joe was in the worst possible taste. (But The White Cliffs of Dover was even worse - but that is not about life or death - or anything real)

It was a great success in both the US and Britain. I can understand why, but I still despise it.

I was prejudiced against A Matter of Life and Death for that reason before I even saw it. I didn't want another dry-ice heaven with twinkling nermals pretending to be angelic visitors and fantasies that turn death into a frolic.

I was very surprised, though - because that film stands on its own as a romantic fantasy and treats the subject matter with intelligence and imagination and wit. It is the difference between film makers of great talent and a studio system that turns out product. The opening with David Niven about to crash in flames starts the story with a jolt.

It isn't only the Hollywood films on the subject that generally annoy me. The 1933 Outward Bound was cloying stuff. It has a fascination because it is so dated, but it really is a museum piece that belongs on a shelf.

Steve Crook

The White Cliffs of Dover is pure overly patriotic schlock. But so much so, and its so honest about it, that in some ways I do like it

The film didn't put it across as well as the poem itself. Mind you, it's a very long poem so if you do choose to read it, give yourself a day or two

Steve

TimR

It's a poem, too.

I thought it was cooked up by assembly line chefs at MGM and left on the stove too long...

You won't find an American who is more in favor of strong Anglo-American relations than I am, but this ten-ton piece of force-fed propaganda was too much for me.

There was one very good scene between Gladys Cooper and Irene Dunne, where Gladys tells her, in patronizing tones, essentially, that she really is acceptable - surprisingly civilized - for an American, that is.

And Dunne lets her have it - wham.

But that is two minutes out of a hellishly long movie.