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St. Louis Blues (1958)
A Good Biopic That Could Easily Have Been a Great One
ST. LOUIS BLUES (1958) starts out fine but markedly tires. The direction is all on one level: restrained. Perhaps it was meant to show that blacks were religious, cultured, "civilized," as opposed to the raucous, carousing, loose-living floozies and crapshooters that Hollywood usually portrayed.
The movie cries out for color. But someone probably figured that with a cast that's all black anyway, why waste the more expensive film stock!
There are other contradictory elements as well. The film wants to be "progressive" and promote jazz. But it also does not want to alienate its religious audience. In that respect, the best thing it does is insert Mahalia Jackson periodically to pick up the spirit. But to have it both ways, when W.C. Handy goes blind and returns to the church, the filmmakers restore his sight (as if God approves of his giving up jazz) before turning him loose again to find fame and acceptance with a symphony orchestra playing the title tune (as if God, in the end, has come down on the side of jazz, as long as it's played as classical music). In real life, of course, W.C. Handy died blind.
Nat Cole is admirable, but I suspect that his too low-keyed performance is the fault of the director holding everyone in check. Toward the end of his life, W.C. Handy frequently made guest appearances on TV variety shows. He was polite and mild mannered, almost to the point that you wondered how he could have written such a wide range of songs. In contrast, Eubie Blake at age 100 displayed a far more open and lively personality.
Although the movie is 105 minutes long, a studio power must have misguidedly cut out some musical numbers. Why would Paramount hire Cab Calloway and give him featured billing but no song to sing? His character flimflams Handy out of the rights to "Yellow Dog Blues," so he must have done a lively musical performance of it in his club. And why invent the character of Aunt Hagar for Pearl Bailey if no one is going to play and sing "Aunt Hagar's Blues"?
Meanwhile, where was the greatest proponent of Handy's music (as well as its best interpreter), Louis Armstrong? He does have a role in THE FIVE PENNIES, the Technicolor biopic of "Red" Nichols (Danny Kaye) that Paramount released the following year.
In October 1954 Columbia Records released one of its biggest selling jazz LPs, "Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy."
According to George Avakian's jacket essay, in the Times Square editing studio "a handsome old gentleman (of 75 years) sat listening to the tapes of this record, tears streaming from his sightless eyes.
"'I never thought I'd hear my blues like this,' W. C. Handy said.... 'Nobody could have done it but my boy Louis!'"
At some point, it seems, Paramount decided to studiously avoid truly lively interpretations of the songs. At least they could not completely repress the vivaciousness of Pearl Bailey and Eartha Kitt. Besides Technicolor what this movie needs most is a rousing finale with costumed Katherine Dunham dancers.
Nowadays Hollywood should forget about remaking great movies. Instead it should concentrate on movies that could have been great.
Great Performances: Romeo and Juliet (2002)
Both opera buffs and newcomers who take the leap will be enchanted.
This is perhaps the most beautiful of all opera productions on film and video so far. Wherever it was shot on location (probably Prague's environs), its settings and décor are realistic and convincing -- welcome solidity for the ephemeral romantic music. I am not a fanatic admirer of either tenor Roberto Alagna or his wife, soprano Angela Gheorghiu. They are good -- relatively even very good, compared to other singers attempting the same repertory. At best their singing is accurate and distinguished, although often generalized and not distinctive. The times I have seen them perform, she has appeared to be not very dramatically committed, while his voice has flatted out and actually cracked (it can happen to anyone -- and did occur on TV two opening nights `Live from the Met' to both Luciano Pavarotti, at the climax of `La donna è mobile' from the last act of RIGOLETTO, and to Plácido Domingo, at the finale of SAMSON ET DALILA, on the night he was being honored by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who kept calling him Placído).
Whatever might have been done to enhance the sound, opera's hottest couple are here indeed on fire. They have never sounded more passionate or in better voice, and the lip-synchronization is excellent. The color and cinematography are as gorgeous as the singing. The playing by the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra and its principal violinist, Pavel Pranil, is lush and affecting. The conductor, Anton Guadagno, captures the score's lyricism and intensity, not letting the pace lag.
There are only a couple of drawbacks. The camera, unfortunately, never stops moving -- zooming in and out and circling the singers -- so we do not get a chance to study what hope or pain might be behind the eyes, what emotions might reside behind the pretty faces, even during their most impassioned duets and solo arias. The film's other weakness can't be helped. Charles Gounod, for all his tunefulness, was not a great composer. Even his exceedingly successful FAUST, with its popular arias and unforgettable, uplifting finale, contains only one moment of inspiration, during the Act III Garden Scene.
But if Gounod was his generation's Andrew Lloyd Webber, ironically we have here one of the best examples of opera on film. Unlike Zeffirelli's, Ponnelle's, or Karajan's productions, neither the director nor the conductor gets in the way, distorting the story or music to make it her or his own.
The opera has been severely shortened, which is fine. What's here is all you need or would want to sit through for a canned encounter. The major arias are in tact, the libretto has not been compromised. ***What follows may by a spoiler to Verdi's OTELLO and 1930's MOBY DICK*** Compare, for instance, Zeffirelli's movie of Verdi's OTELLO. In the last act he not only omits one of the soprano's two arias, he has the Moor kill Iago with a harpoon! Shades of Warner Bros.' 1930 MOBY DICK, in which John Barrymore as Ahab does acrobatic stunts atop the ship's mast to impress his girl friend, Joan Bennett, and all ends happily after he harpoons the Great White Whale and the crew sings while cooking and eating its blubber before Ahab returns to the girl and the cottage with the white picket fence he'll settle down in!
The current celebrated couple has an equally excellent 1998 performance of this opera on EMI CDs. Michel Plasson conducts the Toulouse Capitole Orchestre in that complete version, including the ballet music, which lasts exactly 3 hours. But my favorite is a live one on Feb 1, 1947, from the Met, with Jussi Björling and Bidu Sayao ravishing the airwaves to Emil Cooper's conducting. That I got on LPs via a donation to the Met and on Myto CDs via a trip to Europe (in the U.S. the Met currently prevents commercial reproduction of their broadcasts). I also like Alain Vanzo and Andrée Esposito in a 1976 performance at Nice, conducted by Antonio de Almeida, which was once available on stereo LPs on the private BJR label. In 1978 Plácido Domingo and Renato Scotto, at the height of their powers, recorded 15 1/2 minutes of Act 4 for their Columbia duets album (which also includes a terrific, refulgent 9 1/2 minutes from Act 4, scene 3 of Mascagni's I RANTZAU, which I don't believe has ever been transferred to CD). Most interesting is the historic 1912 premiere recording (the opera was written in 1867) that Pathé made on 53 sides with François Ruhlmann conducting an amazing cast: Yvonne Gall, Agustarello Affre, Marcel Journet, Alexis Boyer, Hypolite Belhomme. Ward Marston mastered the disc transfers for VAI CDs in 1994.
Femme Fatale (2002)
A movie so in love with itself that it is really only about itsown cleverness
Tedious, pretentious, self-conscious, self-indulgent, self-absorbed smart-aleck filmmaking. For an hour and 50 minutes it never ceases calling attention to itself. The actors are props for the camera slowly to move around, unconvincing when they have to move themselves or speak lines. The movie is filled with unacknowledged echoes of other films, constantly imitative of Hitchcock's, especially VERTIGO (1958). Its resolution device, however, might have come from a beginning writer in high school. In keeping with the film, the musical score by Sakamoto sounds like Ravel's Bolero played upside down, a never-ending crescendo without Ravel's inspired melody. As empty as David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) was, at least it had a sense of humor. This, like Norman Jewison's THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (1968), tries to pass off slickness as sophistication. Well, at least here we have Paris. We may come away with nothing else, but (as Rick says in CASABLANCA) we'll always have Paris.
Ah, but the French, will they love this film? More to the point, will they honor and adore De Palma?
The Merry Widow (1952)
The least interesting of MGM's 3 versions, but not as bad as you may think
The script is not terrible, but much of it is simplistic and some of it doesn't make sense. The star soprano's arias have been transposed to the baritone's. She no longer sings the `Vilja' song about the woods maiden and the huntsman; instead he does, to a gypsy girl of that name. The film's biggest drawback is the direction, which is dull and sluggish. But 45 minutes into the movie, when Lana Turner and Una Merkel exchange identities, the pace picks up. What raises the film from 4 (Of Mild Interest) to 5 (Of Some Interest) is Fernando Lamas, appearing in only his third film, his first starring role. He not only is a handsome, dashing, and confident actor, but also has a good sense of comic timing. His warm speaking voice is part of his strength and appeal, and he sings with a very pleasant vibrato and a sophisticated use of dynamics and nuance.
The movie lacks 1934's marvelous Ernst Lubitsch touch, not to mention the dark bizarreries of Erich von Stroheim's 1925 silent version. Lana is no match to Jeanette MacDonald as a charming, sophisticated comedienne. Happily in 1934 Jeanette had just arrived at MGM from Paramount and was being guided by the director who understood her best. Her new studio had not yet had a chance to stifle her personality by molding her into an icon. On the other hand, by 1952 MGM had transformed Lana from a sexpot into a lady, as they had done to Norma Shearer in the 1930s and to Greer Garson in the 1940s, squeezing almost all of the juice out of them. But Lana and Lamas were `an item' at the time (the reason he was cast over MGM's original choice, Ricardo Montalban), and their personal affair lends a modicum of interest, too.
For the real thing -- Lehár's music done in authentic operetta style -- get the 1953 monaural EMI recording conducted by Otto Ackermann. It features Elizabeth Schwarzkopf as Hanna, baritone Erich Kunz as Danilo, tenor Nicolai Gedda as Camille, and soprano Emmy Loose as Valencienne. Ten years later Schwarzkopf and Gedda repeated their roles in a stereo recording, but the earlier version is better.