Happy Thanksgiving!  We’re finally doing it; Over a year after my friend requested it, we’re finally digging into The Wiz.  Directed by Sidney Lumet with a screenplay by Joel Schumacher (yes, that Joel Schumacher), this reimagining of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” has been reimagined, again, to take place in a post-apocalyptic New York City where we’re meant to believe that sentient trash cans will attack you, monkeys can ride Harleys and Diana Ross is 24-years-old.

I originally was going to post this on Halloween because of the costumes, but postponed it until today because this movie has wedged itself firmly in the Thanksgiving holiday canon.  And why not?  The beginning of The Wiz does a terrific job making us feel that cozy togetherness of a family gathering – arriving in a warm townhouse when it’s uncomfortably cold outside, placing your coat in a pile on the bed, playing pass the newborn baby, watching the game on TV, and tightly cramming yourself around a table in a dining room that isn’t designed to hold that many people.  It instantly brought me back to family Christmases of the past and filled me with that wistful nostalgia for that place and people you can never return to.  Although I almost had a coronary when I watched someone cut onions on the countertop without a cutting board LADY WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

Let’s start with the massive elephant in the room.  Why oh why was Dorothy aged up to 24 to only be played by a 33-year-old woman?  It’s… Well, it’s bizarre.  Dorothy is elementary school-aged in the novel, and teenaged in the stage production of The Wiz, which informs a lot of the decisions she makes.  Watching a “twenty-something” kindergarten teacher constantly complain about how scared she is reads more cowardly than the lion.  And not to mention wanting to go home to an Aunt Em who minutes before was trying to kick her out of the house… what is she returning to?  She’s a grown-ass woman; she can live on her own.  But I’m getting ahead of myself… Stephanie Mills, who was the original stage Dorothy, wasn’t given the role because Diana went over Berry Gordy’s head (Motown Records owned the rights to the movie) and convinced the producer Robert Cohen to cast her.  Universal agreed to the proposal because she’s a big star, so, y’know, butts in seats and all that.  The director that had signed on, John Badham, quit the project after her casting.

Diana Ross is a powerhouse; an absolutely unshakeable talent.  I feel the need to state this lest y’all think this is a condemnation of her abilities as a performer, because even though her singing makes me cry, I’m not going to shy away from the fact she was an incredibly odd choice for Dorothy.  She looks like she should have learned these lessons already.

Even surrounded by family, Dorothy is not feeling the love.  She places herself on the outside of this gathering for some reason, and then is chastised by her Aunt for her arrested development.  Em suggests Dorothy, a kindergarten teacher, would be a great candidate for a position at the high school, but Dorothy is afraid to pursue it, perhaps because it requires a completely different skill set.  She only has a minute to process getting kicked out of the house before her dog Toto flees out an open apartment AND building door into an unprecedented snowstorm, and honestly if my dog did that I’d just let it die cause clearly we have different priorities.  Dorothy is kinder than me, however, runs after the pup and gets swept up in a snow cyclone and transported to OZ.

Look, I’ve lived in Michigan my entire life and not once have I encountered or even heard about a snow cyclone.  A snowclone, if you will.  This is one of the goofy things that had to be inserted into the script when the story was wholesale transplanted to New York City from Kansas.  This is a fantasy story, however, so I’ll let it slide, but I’m not going to overlook how clunky it feels.

Dorothy is launched like a missile into a kiddie pool filled with sawdust and surrounded by the creepiest sentient paper dolls I’ve ever seen.  The OZ sign she crashed through, cause, y’know, she couldn’t be in a flying brownstone, fell on the wicked witch of the east, Evermean, and killed her good and dead.  The good witch of the north, Miss One, congratulates Dorothy on her murder and gives Dorothy the wicked witch’s silver shoes (because the shoes in the book are silver, not red, which I’m sure you already know because that’s Oz 101, but I’d be remiss not to add it here).  Dorothy is like, oh no, I have to get home to the life I don’t like and Miss One is like, ok, cool, The Wiz can help with that and points her in the direction of the yellow brick road that will lead her and Toto to The Emerald City.

Dorothy begrudgingly accepts this quest, but not before she sings another sad song talking about how she’s sad and blah blah blahhhh.

Diana Ross suffers from what I call “Hopelessly Devoted Syndrome” in this movie.  For some reason they added like 3 songs for her to sing, but they’re all the kind of songs where, if you were watching at home, you’d take the moment to get up and use the bathroom or grab a snack.  “Soon As I Get Home” originates with the stage show, but compiled with “Can I Go On?” and “Is This What Feeling Gets?” makes Dorothy look like a Debbie Downer Sad Sack.  Legit, Dorothy sings 6 solos in this movie and they’re all slow and grind the plot to a halt.  Not that Diana Ross doesn’t sell it – her vocal performance really is the only saving grace for her character – but all this to say The Wiz has a massive pacing problem.

After wandering around a severely blighted NYC, Dorothy runs into a… scarecrow?  These crows give me Dumbo vibes and immediately I’m on edge.  But oh my god, Michael Jackson as The Scarecrow is easily my favorite performance of this film.

The tiled pillars breaking free from their concrete prison to surround the travelers is inspired, but I cannot stop laughing at these actors pretending the trash cans with teeth hot glued to them are eating their arms. 

Thankfully with all their limbs intact and hot off his first victory against sentient garbage, the Lion leads Dorothy through a sea of strippers/drug dealers only to get knocked out by their potent “perfume”.

~tickle~

The poppies in the book are a danger to The Lion, Dorothy and Toto because they are living beings that are susceptible to the effects of opium, not because The Lion was dumb and led them into a trap.  When the Scarecrow and Tin Man come to their rescue in The Wiz, the Lion is ashamed his hubris lead Dorothy and Toto into danger, but Dorothy comforts him with yet another slow song to motivate him to nut the fuck up and keep on going while he licks her like he’s been cast in 2019’s Cats.

This song made more sense in context if The Lion didn’t already show he could be brave by fighting off enchanted demon puppets, ‘cause he’s capable of being a Lion in a very Lion-like way.  Regardless, “Be a Lion” is a very sweet song, and it shows how Dorothy is kind and nurturing to her friends, reminding the Lion that even though he may make mistakes, he can persevere.  It’s just weird they chose to place it after the ‘we got drugged by prostitutes’ scene.  Also, not to be ‘that guy’, but this is supposed to be a kids movie, right?

ANYWAY, Dorothy and her friends finally make it to Oz and holy shit, this is so vogue coded, I love it so much.

The Wiz, instead of forcing his citizens to wear green-tinted glasses, changes the color story of his city based on his own whims, clearly illustrating his curation of colors directly influencing the trends.  The Emerald City sequence, filmed in the shadow of the World Trade Center, is fucking massive, and unless you can find me another example otherwise, may be the most dancers used at once in an American-made movie.  The set designer had to accommodate 22 different playback speakers in order to avoid the dancers in the back from experiencing an audio delay.

This one musical number required 1200 different costumes, three for each of their 400 dancers, one in each color The Wiz transitioned to, and everyone looks so chic!  I can’t get over how the costume department could possibly operate at that level considering the scale.  The makeup and costuming in The Wiz in general has been a standout in the world of musical movies – I especially appreciate the Tin Man being compiled of old coffee cans and the Lion having beautiful hair styled to look like a mane – but man, it really makes you wish they took a second pass at the Lion’s dusty bath mat coat.

After the party has concluded, the Wiz requests to see witch-killer Dorothy sans her eclectic sidekicks.  This is a change from the original story that allows Dorothy the opportunity to show some agency by sticking up for her friends while painting The Wiz as someone who is accustomed to convince powerful people to do his bidding for him and discarding those who he considers useless.  The fearsome foursome make their requests to the all-powerful fire-breathing glitterball, and we’re deprived of this jaunty song because the Wiz indignantly hides in his big-ass head the whole time.  When Dorothy refuses to give him her shoes in exchange for their wishes, The Wiz sends her on a murder quest to whack the Wicked Witch of the West, which Dorothy is as pleased with as you’d think she’d be.  But realizing she has no choice she rallies the troops and they travel west to knock off some owner of a sweatshop.

Mabel King originated Evillene on Broadway and her vibes are perfect.  The gravelly way she addresses everyone around her, the confident way she looms over everyone despite being shorter, the ruthless way she harms Dorothy’s friends to get what she wants – she’s so delicious to hate.  The obvious and obnoxious display of wealth on her dress is the cherry on top of the exploitation sundae.  When the gang is ultimately captured, Evillene begins to torture everyone close to Dorothy to incentivize her to give up her silver shoes, but she holds strong until Evillene threatens to literally burn Toto alive.

I dunno why Evillene installed water-based safety measures when she clearly doesn’t care about saving her workers if something lit itself on fire, nevertheless one that will kill her instantly, but the Scarecrow immediately notices it and pantomimes to Dorothy to pull the fire alarm and diffuse the situation before she relinquishes her slippers.  Evillene doesn’t really melt as much as she’s slowly flushed down a rhinestoned toilet, but her death inspires her former workers to peel off their skin and celebrate.

Congrats on your second murder, Dorothy!  Now it’s a pattern!

Sincerely, props to these dancers, because “Brand New Day” looks like the most exhausting choreography I’ve ever seen.  I’d be lobbying to be one of the lucky ones who gets to stand inert in the rafters.

After liberating the workers, the flying… Hells Angels return Dorothy and company to Emerald City, only for them to immediately realize they were duped by The Wiz into committing a pretty heinous crime.  See, The Wiz isn’t all powerful, he’s an aspiring politician from Atlantic City that happened to float into Oz on a rogue hot air balloon.  His sniveling, pathetic butt comes clean to Dorothy as he pleads with Dorothy not to abandon him.  While Dorothy is furious, her friends’ disappointment at not obtaining their wishes diverts her attention.  She convinces them they don’t need brains, a heart, or courage from The Wiz because each of them had the power within them all along.  Awwww.

With Dorothy’s friends now self-actualized, an ethereal Lena Horne, the good witch of the south, magically appears.  “Me and these awkward floating babies need to remind you to treat yourself like you’d treat your friends.  If we know ourselves we’re always home, anywhere.” 

I went on a not-so-brief side quest this summer to read all about Kay Thompson, prolific nightclub singer and brief vocal coach for MGM back in the 40s.  We’ll learn all about her when I finally finish my post on Funny Face, but listening to Lena absolutely knock “If You Believe” out of the park reminded me of this passage from Sam Irvin’s biography on Kay:

“Home” being an abstract concept is a nice theory and all, except Dorothy does go back to New York, doesn’t she?  But not before telling Richard Pryor, who is deprived of yet another song, he can suck it.  Stripped of his title of The Wiz, Dorothy reminds Herman Smith he won’t find out his true self holed up in an attic somewhere – he needs to adventure out like she did.  And with that, Dorothy says goodbye to the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion and clicks her heels 3 times to return to her aunt’s house.

Look, I’ve had a really shitty year, and the last 15 minutes of this movie made me a weepy mess.

I approached The Wiz not really knowing what to expect, and I was both surprised and frustrated with myself that I couldn’t initially watch it without a critical eye, comparing it to the book and the stage show.  Sidney Lumet was attempting to make the largest musical movie ever, and when you have dozens upon dozens of dancers on the set, unless you’re the kind of hyper focused government who will rehearse this kind of thing to perfection for an Olympic ceremony in 2008, you’re going to have a hard time maintaining the polish and crispness of the choreography.  In framing the shots to show your fantastically grand set, you’re going to lose some of the connection with the characters.  The pacing of the movie is also going to suffer if you need to add more screen time for your leading lady, which will simultaneously give her friends less to do.  And maybe casting a child would have been a better way to get kids to connect to Dorothy?  But like… do any of my criticisms really matter?

Once I took a deep breath, got out of my head and let myself just experience The Wiz, I found it incredibly charming despite its flaws.  The creativity on display – from the music, the sets, the outfits, the performance of its cast – is truly dazzling.  However, the message of the story is what feels incredibly important to me.  The characters establish camaraderie and support each other’s goals, learning to not let their deficiencies define them while giving themselves the space to make mistakes and learn from them.  It’s incredibly important for children to not fear trying new things, and feeling supported regardless of the outcome is what will allow them to move forward and be brave.  It’s what made me so emotional at the end of the movie; picturing a kid hearing they should believe in the strength they already have inside.  The Wiz should be required watching for any 6-year-old – they’ll be too young to understand wtf is going on with the poppies, it’s fine.

Honestly, it’s pretty criminal this didn’t make the Rotten Tomatoes list.  Hold your chosen family close today and maybe take a detour and watch this silly movie.

After the complicated dance I did trying to balance out the strengths and weaknesses of La La Land (someone had to do it since nobody in that movie was), I really wanted to focus on something surprisingly wholesome and uncomplicated.  Going My Way is a Bing Crosby feature that received all the acclaim, changed the rules on Academy Award nominations and subsequently disappeared from public consciousness.  In contrast with the holiday juggernaut White Christmas that rises from the grave and is paraded around every holiday season, I didn’t even know this movie existed until I saw it nestled at #74 on this list.  I found a DVD copy at the library to watch, but not among other movie musicals, but hidden in the classic movies section with Frankenstein and Gone with the Wind as its neighbors.  For Christ’s sake, I had to create my own gifs this time because there’s only one gif set of this movie on Tumblr… It really fell off.

While age naturally buries even good motion pictures, I think Going My Way’s subject matter in general is what relegated it to Church Basement bargain sales.  Bing Crosby plays Charles Francis Patrick O’Malley, a Catholic priest sent to New York with aims to “assist” Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald) in turning his dwindling parish around.  He succeeds in this by getting involved in the community, forming alliances with those who are not free of sin, and providing activities for wayward youths heading down the wrong path.

If all the alarm bells are ringing in your head right now, you are not alone.  Movies today about Catholic priests touching boys focus less on the figurative feel-good sense and more on literal crimes like Spotlight, By the Grace of God, or Primal Fear.  This, of course, is not without merit considering the vast, disgusting history of the Catholic church preying on young children while praying for forgiveness.  But try (if you can) to put this grim reality out of your mind, along with Bing Crosby’s own pockmarked record of how well he raised his own children.  Chuck O’Malley is a progressive (for his time) cool priest, not a regular priest.  He is casual in dress, leaves the church frequently to mingle with its patrons, and doesn’t speak down to or laud himself higher than those he interacts with.  This is Catholic fan fiction of what kind of support the Catholic church wants to portray it provides to its members.

Father O’Malley’s introduction to the audience immediately sets the tone of his character, wandering the streets sporting a casual boater hat and lugging around a plain suitcase.  In attempting to locate his new church in NYC, Chuck instead gets harassed by a busybody, takes the blame for a kid breaking an atheist’s window with a baseball, and gets sprayed by a street cleaner.  Adorning his East St. Louis sweats, he meets Father Fitzgibbon for the first time, giving the Father the impression this new recruit is less than committed to the professionalism needed for the job.  Not only that, but Chuck takes a personal call from his old schoolmate Father Timmy (Frank McHugh) in the middle of their conversation, who is not only a jovial loudmouth, but loves golf (which everyone knows is just a pool hall moved outdoors).

It’s not just youth that makes Father Fitzgibbon hesitant to trust his new partner with his parish; It’s his grand attachment to St. Dominic’s, a church he raised the funds to build over forty years ago.  Father O’Malley tries to alleviate Fitzgibbon’s concerns by immediately making connections with its parishioners, with his first gracious act assuming ownership of a bunch of unwanted puppies and their mother.  He’s then sent on another side quest to prevent the eviction of the same mouthy lady who gave him lip the day before, Mrs. Quimp (Anita Sharp-Bolster), since she’s not paid her rent in over 6 months.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the real villain of this movie (and in rl) is capitalism.  Knickerbocker Savings and Loan are the mortgage holders of St. Dominic’s and after 5 months of missed payments warn Father Fitzgibbon they’ll need to take “necessary action” on the church if it doesn’t cough up some funds.  Mr. Ted Haines Sr. (Gene Lockhart) bemoans they’ve made a “bad loan” and want to get their money back, but like, they gave it to a church?  It’s not like we’re talking Mormon or Scientology money here – this is 1944 toward the end of a second World War.  If they were dumb enough to make this bad investment that’s their own issue.  Not to mention the optics of foreclosing on a church is really, really bad.

Mr. Ted Haines Jr. (James L. Brown) is more than aware of this.  Training to take over his father’s business, he’s a toothless dog in charge of distributing bad news.  When Father O’Malley finds him lingering outside of Mrs. Quimp’s apartment lobbing threats at a fixed income woman, Chuck assures Teddy Jr. she’ll pay back the money next month, and that’s a St. Dominic’s promise.  This does little to impress Sonny Boy since St. Dominic’s is also on the road to defaulting and his dad is already fantasizing paving paradise to put up a parking lot.  But he takes Chuck’s word for it and leaves the unpleasant woman alone.   Mrs. Quimp extends no grace to Father O’Malley for his kind deed, however, since she is the type to find fault with anyone, especially outsiders.

On the way home from saving the day again, Father O’Malley witnesses the same miscreant street baseball playing boys stealing turkeys from a truck.  When Father Fitzgibbon runs into them outside of the church, the kids, particularly their ring leader Tony, say they won the turkey in a theater raffle and like, holy shit, was it a common thing to raffle feathered poultry at your local movie theater during the 1940s?!  Figuring they needed to avoid the heat from the constable, they give the bird to Father Fitzgibbon, which bemuses Father O’Malley when he returns home to find their housekeeper, Mrs. Carmody, has cooked up donated hot turkey for dinner.  When the constable returns two turkey-free children to Father O’Malley later in the night, the Father doesn’t outright threaten to rat them out to the cops, but instead offers them tickets to a baseball game to earn their trust.

Again, must reiterate, nothing bad happens to these children during the runtime of this movie.  OK? OK.

With his youth rehabilitation plan now in motion, Father O’Malley is also asked to deal with the city’s rampant prostitution issue.  The ‘Ol Biddy Mrs. Quimp saw an unmarried, unaccompanied woman and immediately called the cops because clearly she’s an undesirable element.  The cop lets this young runaway stay in his house overnight and delivers her to the church in the morning since she clearly needs Jesus.  Shit, she’d probably be safer on the street.

Carol James may look older, but she’s an 18-year-old who decided to strike it off on her own since her parents don’t let her date and are not supportive of her dream of becoming a singer.  Instead of sending her on her way since she’s a fucking adult, Father O’Malley decides to conduct a mini audition in order to workshop her act, revealing that Chuck is a talented musician that gave up his career to instead work for the lord.  He believes Carol has potential to succeed, but her presentation may need some work.

After Father O’Malley suggests to Carol maybe flapping around like a bird is more distracting than illustrative, Father Fitzgibbon wanders in the room seemingly perplexed that this church instrument is actually being played.  His own advice to Carol is to go home to her parents and wait around until the right man comes to marry her off so she can pop out some children and fulfill her true purpose.  Oh, the 1940s… please change.  Sooner rather than later.  I find this attitude particularly perplexing during the war when millions of women were stepping up and performing non-traditional jobs while the men were overseas… but maybe less surprised that this instruction is coming from a priest.  Shit, NFL kickers are emboldened to share these regressive views today, so not a whole lot has evolved from the Faith and Family people.

Carol leaves on her own recognizance and Father O’Malley returns his focus back on the youth.  Tony is O’Malley’s biggest cheerleader and vouches for the father to the other lost boys.  He keeps secrets for us!  He took us to a baseball game!  He bought us hot dogs!  He said he’s gonna show us movies!  It’s a relieving notion that the only aim of Father O’Malley’s affection is to get the boys involved in a productive character building activity – a church choir.

Father Fitzgibbon, being a man who clearly doesn’t feel the same way about “Three Blind Mice” that Pat Finnerty does, decides to rat out Father O’Malley’s activities to the Bishop.  Unfortunately the interaction doesn’t go according to Father Fitzgibbon’s plan when it is insinuated that Father O’Malley isn’t there to help him out, but is actually in charge of running the church and was too polite and kind to kick Father Fitzgibbon to the curb.  Father Fitzgibbon reacts to this news in a totally reasonable and not at all dramatic way – by packing a suitcase and running off in the middle of a rainstorm without telling anybody where he was going.

When Mrs. Carmody discovers Fitzgibbon’s absence when she ventures upstairs to ask him to join Father O’Malley for dinner, the two alert the one constable who works in New York City and when they finally fish him out and return him, Mrs. Carmody and the Father wring him out and put him to bed.

Facing retirement, Father Fitzgibbon begins to reminisce to Father O’Malley of his time in the church, realizing he dedicated his life to a cause that would unceremoniously strip him of his parish and hand it over to some young whippersnapper with wild ideas.  He traveled to America 45 years ago from Ireland leaving his mother behind and has not once returned for a visit because of his commitment to his congregation.  Surprisingly his 90-year-old mother awaits his return, sending a bottle of whiskey every year around Christmas that the father uses as a calendar to mark yet another spin around the sun.

“I get a little behind during Lent, but it comes out even during Christmas.”

Barry Fitzgerald was nominated for both Best Actor AND Best Supporting Actor for his role as Father Fitzgibbon.  He ultimately won Best Supporting Actor (and later decapitated his plaster Oscar in a golf-related accident), but this confusing ballot led the Academy to change the rules to prevent the same role from being nominated in multiple categories. Mr. Fitzgerald does a great job at playing a curmudgeonly old man set in his ways, but flexible enough to acknowledge change isn’t necessarily bad.  Ultimately he cares about his parish, and if the Bishop believes Father O’Malley is the one to help strengthen the community and raise the funds to keep the church, Father Fitzgibbon will go along for the ride.  Chuck also assures Father Fitzgibbon he has no intentions of displacing him and convinces him to stay so they can work together to Damn the Man and Save the Empire.

In the ever growing list of Father O’Malley’s allies, the next day he literally runs into an old flame, Jenny, on the street.  Played by real life opera singer Risë Stevens (an opera singer who can actually sing in a movie musical, and one whose voice was once insured for 1 million dollars?!  Unheard of!), Jenny (now rebranded as Genevieve) is on her way to The Met to prepare for her performance in Carmen. Quite the non-traditional woman, Chuck and Jenny used to exchange letters while she was on her European tour, and when the letters stopped Jenny wondered what had happened to her childhood friend.  Turns out the message with important context was lost, leading to this touching reveal.

Risë Stevens just sparkles on screen – you really can’t help but smile along with her.

With all the cards all out on the table, Jenny regroups and gets ready for her performance by acknowledging the conductor’s own prayer.

“I want to ask you just a small favor.  Tonight, would you be so good as to glance occasionally at my baton?  Tonight, let’s not race.  Let’s try just for once to finish together?”

Jenny isn’t only just a friend, but now a valuable networking connection.  Father Timmy had the great idea to try and sell Chuck’s original song “Going My Way” to a publisher in order to raise funds for the church.  When Jenny drops by to hear O’Malley’s boys choir in action and overhears the unfortunate news that the music industry thinks the song is too schmaltzy, she decides to recruit the The Met orchestra to play the song for the musical bigwigs in order to convince them to reconsider.

With the backing of an entire orchestra, a boys choir, and a real life opera singer, the record industry executives decide to… give O’Malley the dignity of rejecting his song in person.  It’s not sexy enough, and everyone knows church songs need to be sexy.

Disappointed, the boys ask Father O’Malley if they can sing the mule song to cheer him up, and while the record industry wasn’t interested in run-of-the-mill ballads, kids songs apparently are all the rage.  They eavesdrop on their performance, decide it’s a home run, and offer Father O’Malley some coin for the silly song about how animals lack morality.

I would much rather be a pig than a human, confirmed.

Instead of accepting the money outright, Father Timmy convinces the executives to instead go to the church, hear Father Fitzgibbon’s sermon, and then donate as much as their heart inspires them to.  This not only restores Father Fitzgibbon’s faith that he is still a valuable asset of the church that can compel an exorbitant amount of money of his congregation, it assures the funds are donated directly to the church, y’know, tax free.

Father O’Malley’s other parish side quests serendipitously collide when he receives yet another call from fucking Mrs. Quimp who is unhappy that Carol is seemingly fucking Ted Haines Jr. for rent money, and presumeably Mrs. Quimp is annoyed that format of payment isn’t available for her.  Chuck shows up at Carol’s surprisingly well-furnished and piano-housed apartment and is sold the line that Teddy Jr. is funding Carol’s lifestyle out of the goodness of his own heart and conviction in her talent, and definitely for no other reason.  Chuck side-eyes the young couple, tells them a story about finding proper purpose in life, and leaves letting that thinly-veiled guilt trip permeate their pore-free skin.

Not long afterward, Teddy Sr. is surprised to discover that his son has not only been shacking up with a young woman, but he eventually put a ring on her finger a few weeks ago, yet again proving that the church’s solution to promiscuous women is to marry them off.  This news would have landed like a ton of bricks if Teddy Jr. didn’t follow it up by informing his father of his enlistment in the United States Air Force.  I definitely didn’t cry when this flighty dude put on his uniform and left his wife and father in the apartment to go off to war – You can’t get the granddaughter of an air force veteran with that one, no sir, made of steel, I am.

Anyway, with Carol married, Teddy gone, and the mortgage company now firmly off their backs, Father O’Malley and Father Timmy shift their focus on ushering Father Fitzgibbon into retirement by encouraging him to pick up a few hobbies, like golf, and potentially returning to the old country to visit his elderly mother.

Father O’Malley’s interest in golf, and sports in general, is just another way to make him more worldly and of-the-people.  It sticks out in Going My Way so significantly that it is cribbed on later in Dogma with Cardinal Glick, a man that is also desperately trying to get the youth back into the church by making Jesus more approachable.

“Keep your head down Father – Watch your language.”

While the plan is initially successful, it is immediately derailed when THE CHURCH LITERALLY BURNS DOWN WITH NO APPARENT CAUSE.  Shit, I wonder how much God actually loves Father Fitzgibbon or his mother cause it sure seems like he never wants them to be reunited.

The established support team is now fully focused on fundraising, again, to rebuild the church.  Father Timmy, Jenny, and the boys choir leave for the summer on a concert tour to raise money while Father Fitzgibbon is pounding the payment and essentially panhandling for a few coins.  This gives them enough money to start rebuilding, but not enough to finish.  Mr. Haines Sr., touched by Father O’Malley’s influence on his son (and seemingly relieved Teddy Jr. returned from Africa alive but wounded because one of his buddies ironically ran him over with a Jeep?!) decides to help the church with the mortgage so they can reestablish.  Hopefully this time he won’t eventually get frustrated with their slow payments and threaten eviction again.

With the church’s financials in order, Father Fitzgibbon revitalized, and the parish productively engaged in their community, the bishop decides to reassign Father O’Malley to a new struggling parish and appoint Father Timmy as Father Fitzgibbon’s new curate.  Like a Catholic Mary Poppins, Father O’Malley passes the baton to Tony to run the choir, flew Father Fitzgibbon’s mother in for a visit which definitely didn’t make me cry again, and floated off into the night.  The end.

A Catholic himself, Bing Crosby, having attended Jesuit schools during his education, was also invested in portraying the relaxed “Americanization” of Catholicism, depicting the church as open to new ideas.  Leo McCarey allowed and encouraged his actors to provide input and improvise, and while that annoyed performers like Cary Grant, it was a good fit for Bing.  Crosby and Bob Hope had just filmed several “road movies” and thrived on the push and pull of on-the-spot comedy.

The original Hot Priest (although in the beginning of his film career he was encouraged to tape his ears back because studio execs are dumb as fuck), Father O’Malley was a departure from Crosby’s typical romantic crooner “always gets the girl” type roles.  Bing’s rise to the public consciousness coincided with improvements in audio recording, allowing singers to eat the mic and give more subtle and intimate vocal performances.  Not every Catholic was incredibly happy with Mr. Crosby’s portrayal of a priest wearing street clothes and talking about baseball, but the general public wanted some feel-good optimism in a time of fear and uncertainty, leading them to be incredibly charitable to the performance of a well-loved swoony-voiced radio star.  It was refreshing to see a priest portrayed as a cheerleader for the working class, demystifying the stuffy, sometimes sinister image of an unmoving and uncaring religious organization.  There are no secrets here – the basement isn’t a dungeon, but a joyous place where children sing the praises of Jesus!

Bing Crosby himself was a bit like Father O’Malley with his willingness to buck tradition and embrace changes.  Understanding the importance of the technology that launched his career, he was an entrepreneur that funded innovation in audio and video recording as well as seeking out and promoting new generations of talent that used it like Frank Sinatra.  His last Christmas special even included a duet with rocker David Bowie.  He died the next year from a heart attack after playing 18 holes on the golf course.  Father O’Malley’s love of the sport wasn’t just a random character trait – it was a large part of Bing Crosby’s personality.  He truly did what he loved up until the very end.

Going My Way and its sequel, The Bells of St. Mary’s, won the Academy Award for Best Picture (also was the first sequel to win the award), and went on to inspire a 1960s TV series starring Gene Kelly as Father O’Malley and Leo G. Carroll as Father Fitzgibbon.  I could only find one episode of it online and I’m going to be honest, I was bored out of my mind and skimmed it after like 20 minutes.  If that sample is indicative of the tone of the rest of the show, it’s incredibly overdramatic and humorless.  I’m not sure how anybody watched the film Going My Way and thought it would be successful as an hour-long drama, so if anybody has any information about how this came about almost 20 years after the movie was made, let me know.

While the film inspired the revitalization of the cushy, approachable Catholic church, the lasting legacy of Going My Way is somewhat mixed due to its creator’s shenanigans.  This wholesome movie was written and directed by famed Preserver of American Ideals Leo McCarey.  Previously known for his role in the creation of slapstick comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, this epic king testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee that the communists who worked as his writers were trying to put secret messages in his films, but they were getting harder and harder to find because the writers were so crafty, NOT because he was inventing the entire conspiracy and had no evidence to back his claims.  My Son John (1952), McCarey’s own anti-communist propaganda movie, further cemented his ideals that Good Christians not only rejected godless communism, but ratted out those who espoused those beliefs, even if they came from their own child.  His last film, Satan Never Sleeps (1962), further demonizes Chinese communists as untrustworthy and violent heathens that are only redeemed by eventually converting to Christianity.

While Going My Way is clearly Catholic propaganda not incredibly dissimilar from an episode of 7th Heaven, I choose to view it at face value.  Its story and cast are both charming, and the acts of kindness featured in the film, while some of them being corny and maybe slightly regressive by today’s standards, did elicit an emotional reaction out of me.  Sometimes you just want to see a bunch of people being nice to each other and pretend that the Catholic church operates out of acts of love like Jesus intended instead of being a breeding ground for nightmarish conservative evangelicalism.  Let the few catchy songs lull you into a false sense of security, because reality is depressing enough.

I’ve been writing movie summaries/reviews here for 4 years now, and by far the most fun part of this project has been falling in love with films I never would have sought out if not for the list.  For example, The Court Jester, 42nd Street, and Yankee Doodle Dandy were movies I had no interest in at face value, but each one of them elicited unhinged giggling out of me.  I hadn’t even heard of The Young Girls of Rochefort, but every day since watching that movie I’ll get the melody of “Chanson des jumelles” randomly stuck in my head.  My favorite side effect, however, is being so bowled over by a scene in a film that I replay it in my head for years after I see it.  Balancing the bottles in Fiddler on the Roof, Ann Miller tap dancing in “Shakin’ the Blues Away”, Stubby Kaye confessing his vices in “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat”, watching Taron Egerton begin “Rocket Man” at the bottom of a pool and end it playing to a stadium full of people being literally shot off like a firework…  I haven’t written about it here, but the first time I saw “Naatu Naatu” I could feel myself light up from the inside out of excitement.  There’s a reason so many people were compelled to learn the choreography because Ram Charan and N. T. Rama Rao Jr. looked so flippin’ cool when they performed it.  I can’t sit still when I listen to it – Obsessed.  I’m obsessed.

The director of La La Land, Damien Chazelle, also loves musicals, which I’m sure was refreshing to see in 2016 after the world had been blessed with Into the Woods.  You can tell by the sheer amount of references to other, some would say better, musicals in La La Land.  This presumption was confirmed by listening to the director’s commentary where Mr. Chazelle name-dropped like 18 different movies without even touching on the ones I’ll reference later.  Watching La La Land was an exercise in “Hey, I remember that thing!” over, and over, and over… 

And starting with our first crib, this story is framed like Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Winter

It may be cold and snowy in other parts of the country, but it’s always sunny in LA!

This is a chaotic carpool karaoke fever dream.  It wants to be Fame so badly but in my opinion fails to garner the same amount of excitement experienced by high school kids holding up NYC traffic.  I hope they at least gave their performers hazard pay to dance on top of those cars.

Moviewise does a great job breaking down why this number feels so haphazard, from the strange focus pulling to the awkward scene framing.  One of their criticisms lobbed at “Another Day of Sun” is the skill of the choreography in general, and I’ll push back a little on this point.  You can have low-skill choreography in a musical movie and have it succeed in communicating the atmosphere of the scene.  I mean, look at Ella Hunt and Malcolm Cumming in Anna and the Apocalypse.  They’re “organically” dancing in a graveyard but it works because these kids have rizz and sell it perfectly.  You will never again see two teenagers so gleefully walking to school.  We also know these characters a good amount by the time this scene rolls around so the juxtaposition of Anna and Josh incorrectly thinking their problems are on the way to being solved and dancing in celebration while the world is literally ending around them is both sad and hilarious.  Nobody in “Another Day of Sun” matters, to be frank, so why are we watching them stumble around on a freeway?  According to the director there were several people on the crew taking bets on whether or not this number would make the cut because it felt like they were “settling” which… oof.  Trust your instincts.

What a time to be alive, what a time to BE a-live… Shit, now I just want to watch Anna and the Apocalypse.  That movie is also incredibly depressing at the end, but I’d watch it a million times more than La La Land.

Back in traffic on the freeway, Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) have their first meet cute – Sebastian, after compulsively destroying a cassette tape, honks at Mia’s car while she flips him off.  I’m fairly certain all of Ryan Gosling’s on-screen romances start slightly antagonistic.

Let me get this out of the way – I like Ryan and Emma as actors both separately and as romantic partners.  HBO used to play Murder By Numbers on repeat when I was in high school for what felt like a year and I had a sick fascination with Ryan and Michael Pitt’s relationship in that movie.  Easy A is a classic 2010s teen comedy and I reference Emma singing along to “Pocketful of Sunshine” more than I think is healthy for someone in their 30s.  Crazy, Stupid, Love. is messy and fantastic, and the strange and dorky way Ryan and Emma play off each other is so fucking funny and charming.  Their relationship in La La Land, though, um… well, it’s something.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We discover Mia is an aspiring actress that works at a coffee shop on the Warner Brothers lot that tries to give away free coffee to famous millionaires.  In her free time she heads to a series of truly heinous-looking auditions, but not before running into someone and getting coffee spilled down the front of her shirt in a moment that is inches away from being added to the Jaime French Female Protagonist Fall Compilation.  That night, Mia would like nothing more than to wallow in her latest failure, but her 3 friends (one of them might be her agent?) convince her to dress up in some JCPenny-esque dresses and go out to a party on the chance she might catch the eye of someone that’ll benefit her career.

From the cheapness of these dresses, to the elementary school box of crayons palette that was especially disgusting in the opening number, what is the costuming department even doing for these extras?  Mia’s roommates are selling this 100x more than she is.  I particularly love the face the girl in the green dress makes to mask Emma stumbling off course and bumping into her.  Absolute gold: 10/10.  Would have loved to see more of them in the rest of this film, but they’re unceremoniously shuffled out of the narrative after this.

Also, how dare this movie, with all the references to other musicals, omit one for Busby Berkeley in the pool scene.

Leaving the swanky party early and abandoning her friends, Mia discovers her car has been towed.  Walking back to her apartment she passes a restaurant with live piano music, and like a siren’s call she’s sucked inside to listen to the wistful theme in person.

We then time travel backward to get Mr. Road Rage’s perspective and an exposition dump from an impromptu visit from his sister we never hear speak again after this even though she eventually gets engaged, married, and has a child.  Seb loves jazz, he was going to open a club but he got swindled out of his money, and he’s single (to his sister’s chagrin).  When he’s not being outwardly hostile to everyone around him he plays the piano in a restaurant for money until the owner (J. K. Simmons!) fires him for playing off the book.  Mia witnesses this exchange, and when she goes up to tell Sebastian she likes his song, he completely blows her off.

Spring

Chester French, don’t implicate A-ha in this.

Seb is placed in another humiliating scenario when Mia encounters him at a house party while dressed like an extra from Back to the Future and playing covers of 80s synth hits.  Mia basically says, “Dance monkey, dance!” which causes Seb to approach her afterward and somehow smugly apologize for his behavior.  She continues to cut him down a notch while causally admitting to be a failed actress who spends most of her time making coffee for employed actors.  This, I guess, piques Seb’s interest enough that when she accosts him later to ask him to grab her car keys from the valet he goes out of his way to escort her to her Prius.

For as much as this backdrop looks like it’s filmed on a lot, this was actually a live action scene that the actors only had 30 minutes to shoot before the sun went down.  I’m not going to shit on the set – it’s stunning and deserving of its place on the movie poster.  I am going to shit on everything else, though, because it turns out I’m petty AF.

You may be wondering (you’re probably not) why it took me so long to watch this movie.  I like the actors, I like musicals, and this movie got serious Oscar buzz.  This, my friends, is the dumb reason why:

I just knew, I could just SMELL it all over this movie poster that the musical numbers were going to make my eye twitch.  Why are their arms held at different angles?  Which one of them screwed up the choreography?  There’s no way this is intentional, and it ended up on the poster of the movie.  If it was intentional, I have so many other questions because it just looks wrong.

They’re… fine.  Ryan can sing, but the number starts outside of his vocal range and he does this thing where he cuts his lines short instead of that Astaire-esque sort of crooning I think he was trying to do.  The dance itself is very Fred-and-Ginger as it starts with opposing and combative moves and ends with them in sync, but Mia first complains about her heels and changes into dancing shoes which sparked this thought:

The dance is sloppy and it takes me totally out of it.  At the end Emma’s a little too fast and Ryan’s a little too slow with pivoting their bodies and I can just HEAR the choreographer shouting the counts at them because it seems like their feet hitting the ground are the only things matching the music (until the beat cuts out) cause their bodies aren’t aligned at all.  Mandy Moore had 2 months to train two non-dancers to perform like Broadway vets (and had previously worked on Dancing with the Stars, which honestly sounds like the best credentials for a project like this), but I think they needed a bit more time for polish.  Or at least give them the flexibility to fuck up a bit sometimes by not making this a long shot.  For context, Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman were in dance rehearsals for 3 months before Moulin Rouge and they barely danced in that movie, but the director thought it was important to train his actors and it reflected on their performances.

I did enjoy the adorable little slide at the end that Ryan ad-libbed which the director contributed as a Gene Kelly-ism, but that is 100% a James Cagney thing.

OK, now that I’ve been sufficiently bitchy, let me confess I loved the scenes where Seb and Mia are learning more about each other’s passions and falling in love.  Walking through the Warner Brothers lot hearing Mia reminisce about her Aunt, Seb opining over jazz being a form of communication… it’s less like the Bro Explaining meme and more like two geeks geeking-out over geeky things.

When they go on their first date to watch Rebel Without a Cause and they’re about to hold hands for the first time in the movie theater I was internally cheering and felt butterflies in my own stomach when they finally connected.  When the movie ends abruptly they decide to silently migrate to the planetarium, the location of the most famous scene in Rebel (which is tonally strange considering what happens at the end of that movie).  The two of them dancing through the planetarium is a gorgeous fantasy montage that launches them literally into space twirling among the stars.  

The director said he was inspired by 2001, The Tree of Life, the fairies in Sleeping Beauty, and surprisingly, the fire extinguisher scene in Wall-E (I also appreciate a movie that features scenes from Hello Dolly).  I was instead reminded of Moulin Rouge because I’ll never forget the exact moment I fell in love with Ewan McGregor while he sang, “…and this one’s for you.”.  And once I connected those dots I was pretty underwhelmed at the back-in-reality kiss at the end.  If you’re gonna flirt with the Elephant Love Medley at least have fireworks go off when their lips touch, or have your actors centered in the frame, I dunno.

Summer

Mia and Seb are now dating.  Hooray.  You almost want to root for these kids until you’re immediately confronted with the fact Sebastian doesn’t give Mia the dignity of getting out of his car to pick her up and obnoxiously honks the horn outside of her apartment instead.  She finds this charming, though, so they’re well-suited, I guess.

Both Mia and Keith (John Legend), a musician friend of Seb’s, give Seb some shit for being a jazz purist and instead suggest he should compromise his vision and evolve to gain a wider audience.  Seb begrudgingly takes a gig in Keith’s new band to make some money while Mia works at writing a screenplay for a one-woman show she’s paying to put on at a small local theater with the hope someone important will see it.

See, this movie can be adorable when it’s catering to the actor’s actual range and making things casual.

While they’re separately working on their careers Mia and Seb’s relationship begins to suffer.  Sebastian’s band begins to gain some traction and when Mia attends one of their performances she seems to disregard how absolutely elated Seb is to be on stage and instead looks insecure and strangely threatened by his success.

Fall

Mia is prepping for her big performance while Seb is touring with The Messengers.

How dare she not BCC these people – this is a recipe for a reply-all disaster thread.

Seb comes home to surprise Mia and they get in a fight when Mia tries to play off her feelings of abandonment as concern that Seb is giving up on his dream of opening a jazz club to instead be a successful musician?  He bites back at her and tries to blame her for accepting the gig in the first place since she wanted him to have a steady job, and the fight ends when Seb starts acting like the whole movie was set up to be A Star is Born or Funny Girl.  The final nail in the coffin is Seb’s choice to stay for a photoshoot with his band instead of attending Mia’s show.  When nobody else except Mia’s former roommates and like 10 people show up, she tucks her tail between her legs and runs away to her parent’s house in Boulder City.

But surprise!  A casting director was there and loved it!  She calls Seb’s phone for some reason, and instead of calling Mia like a normal person to relay the message, he drives to Boulder City to berate her into attending a magical audition where they have no script but will film in Paris for 4 months.  If Mia gets the part Seb asserts they should break up so she can focus on her career in Paris, as if Mia is shipping off to war and they’re unable to facetime or fly in planes or something.

The reason I love musicals so much is because of the wonder it inspires in me; the awe of seeing someone at the top of their game belting out a song.  Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls, Judy Garland in A Star is Born, shit, even Eddie Redmayne in Les Misérables.  They’re stealing the air out of me while I fight back tears.  This is Emma Stone’s big moment and I found myself wanting to scroll on my phone because I was so bored.  The song is tedious, and it was particularly egregious how Emma screamed, “and that’s why they need us!” because she can’t belt it.  The more intimate moments in the movie were sung live (goddamn it Tom Hooper), and man… Emma didn’t need to be hung out to dry like that.  This performance wouldn’t make it past auditions in American Idol.

Eddie Redmayne was also not a professionally trained singer before he made Les Mis.  You stack him up against a talent like Michael Ball and he’s not going to measure up, but he made me feel something during “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables”.  Ella Hunt has more subtle moments of emotion in “I Will Believe” than Eddie does and it still kills me.  Just the simple act of closing her eyes to feel the snow on her face in a hopeless moment is enough to get me choked up.  Every time Emma makes her eyes wide and cries in this I think of Annie Edison in Community.

Damien Chazelle did not want to hire musical theater veterans because he feared the audience wouldn’t believe it when they randomly started singing, but like… We watched these two fly in an observatory for 4 minutes.  There’s a 30 second mannequin challenge during “Someone in the Crowd” while Mia slowly walks around the party.  Not to mention the extreme realism of everyone leaving their cars and wandering down what I can only assume is supposed to be the 405 during a traffic jam.  Why are you worried about a great vocal performance alienating the audience?!  But apparently this tactic has worked successfully on non-musical movie-goers and Emma Stone won an Oscar, so honestly and sincerely, what the fuck do I know?

Winter, 5 years later…

Mia is now a famous actress picking up coffee from the Warner Brothers lot.  If that wasn’t a surprise enough, she has a daughter and is MARRIED TO TOM EVERETT SCOTT.  Fuckin’ SHADES from That Thing You Do!  His cameo was the most exciting thing in the whole movie.

Mama Mia and Tom Everett Scott leave their baby at home to go on a date, and when they run into traffic they divert their plans to visit a random jazz club off the highway exit.  Turns out it’s Seb’s club and upon seeing Mia he takes the mood down several notches by playing their love melody on the piano.  This causes Mia to dream ballet à la An American in Paris an alternate scenario where Sebastian spent his time supporting Mia’s career instead of his own, and honestly kudos, more films need to end in abstract 20 minute dance pieces.

Seb doesn’t snub Mia at the restaurant, doesn’t take the job with Keith, and is physically there to cheer in a crowded audience as Mia’s play is a resounding success.  They go to Paris to film her movie, get married, and have a kid, concluding the fantasy by going on the same date to Seb’s jazz club, but it’s owned by someone else.  It’s kinda messed up to be fantasizing about your ex replacing your current husband, eh?  Especially Tom Everett Scott.  The absolute disrespect.

For all the comparisons of La La Land to Umbrellas of Cherbourg, I think the similarities are purely superficial.  The framing of the story, the use of color, the Rochefort stroll through the WB lot, the repeating love theme, Guy’s auto shop in the backdrop of the dream ballet, the fact Mia’s character in the play is named Geneviève…  There’s a lot of clues here that Damien Chazelle and the composer, Justin Hurwitz, love Jacques Demy, but I don’t believe the thesis of this film has anything to do with romantic love.  When Mia tells Seb she’ll always love him while they were breaking up I was sort of taken aback since I don’t think either of them said it before this moment, nevertheless declared it over and over like Geneviève and Guy did.  The only thing Mia loved about Seb was his constant cheerleading of her talent, and that fact was only confirmed later in the dream ballet.

Instead, La La Land’s main message is the self-satisfaction of pursuing true art at the cost of everything.  Mia becomes a famous actress but has to leave Seb behind because he has other ambitions.  Seb insists he has to open his jazz club in the same building as a famous previous jazz club with an inside-baseball sort of name.  He wants to play “pure” jazz like the greats before him.  He’s replicating previous musical styles by literally replaying them over and over, constantly references famous musicians, and lauds artifacts of the past while preventing people in the present from altering them.  He eventually compromises and opens his club in another location under his own name.  This is what La La Land does; it DJ re-re-re-REmixes references to movies and, in some cases, sloppily recreates them.  For Keith’s assertion that art needs to evolve otherwise the form will die… I’m not entirely convinced, but I’m also not blind to the fact I’m clearly in the minority.

I’m just tired of directors prioritizing the acting in a movie musical, as if acting is more important because of the medium.  Both Ryan and Emma are terrific actors in this, and the most captivating parts of La La Land were the scenes where they were playfully quipping, or fighting, or pushing each other to aim higher with their goals.  The director crafted these beautiful scenes for them to dance in and I was so distracted by the execution of the performers that I got completely divested in what was going on.

While I was researching the rehearsal process for this movie (specifically curious if a vocal coach was involved) I ran into a comment of someone frustrated with people bitching about how the movie should have cast big name musical stars like Gene Kelly or Judy Garland when that would have been impossible because this generation has no triple threats.  I found this argument incredibly short sighted because there’s a WHOLE FUCKING INDUSTRY filled with triples threats – these “mythical creatures” work in musical theater.  The Hollywood Industrial Complex doesn’t churn out 10 Fred and Ginger-esque movies a year because there is a talent drought – the thousands of qualified people that could rise to their level of fame aren’t given the chance because Hollywood isn’t convinced people want to see musicals.  …Sometimes I think Broadway doesn’t think people want to see musicals either because how else are you going to justify Hugh Jackman’s casting in The Music Man or the 7000 translations of popular movies into stage musicals (and then sometimes back to movie musicals).  But that’s a whole other tangent.

In the last few months look at how they marketed Mean Girls, Wonka, and The Color Purple.  Those movies are making money by tricking people into watching a musical because the general public thinks musical numbers are only appropriate for children’s cartoons or performed on stage in a biopic.  Hollywood’s previous solution to this problem was to cast big name actors and train the shit out of them to perform and since it worked for Moulin Rogue and Chicago we’ve been burdened with James Corden ever since.  (Actually, we might be able to blame Evita for this since Madonna won a Golden Globe, but I won’t let myself because she made her money singing first and that movie is a mess.)  When Star Power stopped working they started with the bait and switch, and they’re going to continue with it because it’s working.  I wish In the Heights performed better, but that one I think suffered because of Lin-Manuel Miranda overexposure.

You’re probably thinking if it gets people to see a musical, so what if the musical numbers aren’t great?  It may be their gateway drug into the genre!  And I hear and acknowledge that you’re right.  If La La Land can encourage fans to watch Umbrellas of Cherbourg or a Gene Kelly movie it’s a net positive.  I know it encouraged me to purchase Anna and the Apocalypse on Blu-ray.  But I also posit that the classic musical movies are really fucking good and I don’t know why we have to keep dumbing down the genre to make it more appealing when a good product should speak for itself.  I mean, I know why, it’s money, but harrumph to that.  We all grew up loving Julie Andrews!  WE COULD HAVE MORE PEOPLE LIKE JULIE ANDREWS IF WE STOPPED BEING EMBARRASSED BY THIS FUCKING GENRE.

This is the Kirkland Signature-brand musical.  It’s the musical movie we have at home catered to people who do not like musicals.  Clearly there is an audience for that, but man, watching La La Land made me feel like Seb listening to jazz get watered down until it becomes unrecognizable.  This, right here, is my “old man yells at cloud” moment.

If The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is the shot, Les demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort) is the lighthearted chaser.  After Umbrellas, Jacques Demy wanted to pivot to musical comedies uncommonly filmed in France and diametrically opposed to his previous film.  Umbrellas was sung from start to finish; there was only one song that could barely live free of its source material.  It also did not include choreographed dance numbers typical to the genre.  Most importantly, it focused on the pain inherent in love.  The Young Girls of Rochefort is chock full of joy and seemingly everyone is boogieing down.  Even the simple act of walking down the street is met with fanfare.  The plot is the fluffiest I’ve encountered, filled with silly misunderstandings and coincidences that are more enjoyable than they are tedious.  But as Jacques Demy said himself, the plot doesn’t really matter.  It’s all about the vibes.

The film focuses on twin sisters Solange (Françoise Dorléac) and Delphine (Catherine Deneuve).  Frustrated with their lack of romantic prospects they put into motion a plan to move to Paris to pursue their dreams to dance, write music, and fall in love.  Françoise and Catherine were real-life sisters (although not twins), and the chemistry between the two is off the charts.  Their beguiling demeanor has not gone unnoticed by two men they have little interest in – Guillaume (Jacques Riberolles), an art gallery owner that peppers Delphine with marriage proposals she continually rebuffs and Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli), a lonely music store owner that believes Solange will be a great composer. 

“We’re just two little girls from Little Rock…”

While Françoise had danced before, this film was Catherine’s first foray into it, diving head first into the deep end of the pool by portraying a ballet instructor.  Although Gene Kelly was asked to choreograph the film he turned down the offer in order to stay in the US and spend time with his children.  Norman Maen, an English choreographer was hired instead.  The sisters spent several weeks in London for rehearsals leading up to filming, with Catherine in 3 months of dance classes before that.  She found it difficult to lip sync and dance at the same time.  You would never know based on what showed on film in Rochefort, but you see echoes of this insecurity in 8 Femmes later.

A small excitement is added to the girls’ lives when a traveling boat show/faire arrives in Rochefort.  Their mother Yvonne (Danielle Darrieux) owns a café in the town square and quickly makes friends with Etienne (George Chakiris) and Bill (Grover Dale), two men who arrive with the troupe.  Yvonne trusts them immediately for whatever reason, enough to ask them to pick up her son Bouboo from school.  In pursuit of their task they run into Delphine who happened to also be there to pick up her little brother.  She quickly decides visiting her art gallery friend is more important than ensuring her little brother’s safety and similarly leaves Bouboo in the care of two strange men that do not stay in one place too long.

You may recognize George Chakiris as the ill-fated Bernardo from West Side Story, but he’s been in the background of a few other films on this list.  He steals every scene that he’s in – every other dancer could be spinning plates on sticks while their costumes are on fire and I’d still be fixated on George.

Etienne and Bill aren’t the only attractive young men hanging out in Yvonne’s café – Maxence (Jacques Perrin) is a young soldier and artist who longs to find a very specific woman he dreamed up and painted, as if it wasn’t hard enough to find someone to love without such stringent qualifications.  Guillaume hung this painting in his gallery, and when Delphine finally stumbles upon it and notices it looks exactly like her, she realizes that the man she’s been dreaming about actually exists and she needs to go to Paris to find him.  How convenient…  It’s also bonkers this guy is a regular at her mom’s café and they haven’t encountered each other once.

Solange is similarly hunting for a specific man, except she already knows his name – Andrew Miller, a famous American composer.  She convinces her music store owning-friend Simon to write to him on her behalf since they were old schoolmates, but little does she know that in a few minutes she would run straight into him while dragging Bouboo away from two strange carnies sent to school to pick up her brother again.

The way I screamed in surprise when I saw Gene Kelly, you guys.  Truly the American who never left Paris.  Except this one time, right now, because he’s in Rochefort.

One of my favorite things in this movie is all the actors badly pretending to play several instruments.  Solange has a great moment where she even gets the sound of a flute to come out of her recorder, which is only more hilarious later when you discover she is also hoarding a flute in this apartment.

It’s the next day and there’s been a murder!  A former showgirl was cut up and placed in a wicker basket outside of her house.  Everyone is curious about who committed this heinous act and have gathered by the crime scene to gawk at the people hosing the blood off the street.  But this hard left turn hasn’t halted fair preparations or Andy trying to track down Simon.

Similar to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, all the actors (except Danielle Darrieux) were dubbed over with another singer, several of them repeating talents from Umbrellas of Cherbourg.  Even Gene Kelly’s vocals were dubbed which surprised me since there’s a vast catalog of movies that definitively prove he can sing.  Apparently his singing range wasn’t “good enough” to carry this role so they did it anyway.  Some of his dialogue was similarly dubbed even though Gene spoke French fairly well, which was incredibly distracting since the person they hired (and apparently didn’t pay to record the English dub) sounds almost 20 years younger than Gene should.  In the cases where dubbing was necessary, George Chakiris and Grover Dale didn’t speak any French going into the film and had to learn their lines phonetically, which apparently amused Catherine when she would hear them practice.  Dale was also a last minute replacement for Nino Castelnuovo, who had a schedule conflict for Rochefort.  This is why Bill’s backstory is similar to Guy’s character in Umbrellas – it was intended to be an easter egg to Demy’s previous film but turned into a random nod instead.

There is a mythologized English version of this film where the actors lip-synced the songs in English while the dialogue remained in French.  Aside from these clips I found on YouTube and footage of the songs being filmed in the anniversary documentary there is very little information about this other than it theoretically didn’t do well in US theaters so they didn’t bother to release it on home video or consider it for restoration it when they restored the original French version in both 1998 and 2011.  I’m also curious how much the French dialogue deterred the movie’s success if the intention was to court the ‘I won’t read subtitles’ crowd.

When Andy finally discovers Simon he regales his encounter with a beautiful local composer.  Simon finds this entertaining until Andy starts to play Solange’s calling card and Simon vaguely recognizes it.  Simon’s wistful confession of his own love for Solange is also super creepy because he doesn’t know he’s kind of her stepdad?  Yeah, surprise!  Simon is Bouboo’s real father and he doesn’t know it because after telling Simon she was pregnant, Yvonne had a friend tell Simon she married a random rich dude and moved to Mexico because she couldn’t bear to be named Madame Dame.  This is why it’s better to date within your age range if you know there’s a kid of yours floating around out there.

Day of the fair arrives and the sister’s students are set to perform.  On another stage Delphine and Solange put on their own show to advertise motorcycles, I guess.  Their performance goes so well Etienne and Bill proposition them for sex afterward, which neither of them are amused with.

This is very Gentlemen Prefer Blondes coded, down to the costumes.

The next morning it is discovered that the old-man side character, Yvonne’s father’s old buddy Dutrouz, is the mysterious murderer, which is shocking since he doesn’t even know how to properly slice a cake.  This strange revelation is blown off pretty quickly because this movie likes to hint at a dark underbelly but doesn’t choose to immerse itself in it.  I believe it’s to showcase how love can completely envelope and blind one to the ills of the world around them, but it also might be an example of the kind of thing that happens when love goes wrong.  This dude held a grudge for 40 years and one painting of Delphine was enough to remind him of his jilted love and plunge a knife into her.

The girls are running late to meet their carnies to head into Paris.  Simon drops by to tell Solange that Andy is waiting for her in his shop, and in the long tradition of passing the responsibility of handling Bouboo on someone else, Solange asks Mr. Dame to go pick him up in return.  When Delphine mentions to her mother Solange’s weird older friend with the amusing name was headed to unknownlingy meet his son for the first time, Yvonne bolts from the cafe to meet him and rekindle their romance. 

Maxence, although he has not encountered his dream woman, is on cloud nine after his conscription has finally run its course.  He heads to the café to wish Yvonne well since he is also planning on leaving Rochefort that afternoon in pursuit of Paris and a career painting strange women that appear in his dreams.  After another frustrating miss of a chance encounter between Delphine and Maxence at the café, we begin to believe they’ll never be together.

Conversely, Solange and Andy are delighted to discover they are each other’s random love encounters.

Abandoned by Solange to pursue a life with Gene Kelly, which like, who fucking wouldn’t, Delphine leaves with the weirdly forward carnies.  Maxence, hitchhiking on the side of the road for some reason, jumps in one of the carnival cars giving us a little glimmer of hope that he and Delphine got their happy ending after all.

The city of Rochefort has really embraced this film, noting The Young Girls of Rochefort made the area a tourist destination in the subsequent years.  In The Young Girls Turn 25, a documentary about the city’s anniversary celebration for Rochefort, several citizens who participated in the film as extras talked about how the filming experience was akin to a 4-month party.  The city of Rochefort was chosen because of Colbert Square, giving a centralized location for the majority of the film to take place in.  Inspired by the paintings of Raoul Dufy, the buildings around the city that would show up on camera were painted white with their window shutters accented in bright, beautiful colors by the crew.  The shooting also brought in a lot of new business – Yvonne’s glass café is still open with a statue of the sisters in their “Chanson de Jumelles” costumes placed out front.  Jacques Demy passed away in 1990, and Françoise tragically died in a car accident a few months after this film was released.  The city dedicated street names in their memories – Jacques Demy Ave. leads to the famous Pont Transbordeur from the beginning of the film, and Pl. Françoise Dorléac runs outside of the city’s bus station.

The Young Girls of Rochefort continues to impact movie aesthetics today.  Just in the past few years Jacques Demy’s films have been name-dropped as direct influences for Past Lives, Barbie and La La Land, which I will unfortunately be watching next on the list while Mr. Demy is still fresh in my mind… God help me.  I’m sure it can’t compare to Umbrellas of Cherbourg or Young Girls of Rochefort – these films are escapism at its finest.  Jacques Demy himself said he used movies as a way to escape the trauma he experienced as a boy during World War II – a fantasy land to visit after discovering your own is imperfect and full of pain.  While Umbrellas operated like time travel, transporting me to a past when I was young and haven’t experienced heartbreak, Rochefort is a world I would like to live in the present.  It’s a place where problems are superficial and solvable through song and dance numbers.  Where people are one street corner away from meeting their one true love.

Happy Halloween! I ran out of creepy musicals, so we’re going to instead recap one where Danny Kaye wears a ridiculous looking costume.

Hawkins tries to determine which person is an ally by spitting in everyone’s faces and unfortunately determines Ravenhurst is his man cause Hubert is dumb as rocks and Ravenhurst keeps giving him the “you’re gonna murder the King’s council for me” eyebrows.

Those quickly shuffling men that resemble a marching band on steroids are The American Legion Zouaves Post no. 29 from Jackson, Michigan. Formed in 1898 as an exercise group, the drill team were famous for moving at 300 steps per minute and being able to launch all 18 of them over a 12 foot wall in 22 seconds. When Hollywood came calling, they initially thought it was a joke until they heard they were scouted based on one of their 5 performances on the Ed Sullivan Show. A group of 200 people saw them off on their flight to film in California while carrying a key to the city to be delivered to Danny Kaye. Their favorite person to talk to on set was Angela Lansbury, which is the most believable thing in the world to hear. Basil Rathbone attempted to learn the steps but apparently was not very successful since it’s just as hard as it looks.

Hawkins eventually is able to scream and flail around long enough for the acrobats to launch a Ravenhurst-dressed rag doll into the sea, only to then be confronted by Griswold who wants to take down the traitors. The holy infant is then lowered from the ceiling so Hawkins can once again show off its ass revealing the baby as the true heir. The king is overthrown, Hawkins ends up with Jean, Gwendolyn magically likes Griswold for absolutely no reason, and a literal infant with no capabilities of ruling takes the throne. All hail the holy bloodline.