Movie Review: East Side, West Side (1949)

A marriage, infidelity and murder story, East Side, West Side is a star-laden drama with a decidedly weak script.

In New York City, couple Jessie and Brandon Bourne (Barbara Stanwyck and James Mason) have patched up their marriage a year after he had an affair. She is a calm and patient housewife, while he is a playboy businessman unable to control his lust. Now his mistress Isabel Lorrison (Ava Gardner) has returned to town, and Brandon is quickly back under her trance and succumbing to his philandering instincts.

As Jessie struggles to decide whether she can ever trust Brandon again, she befriends department store model Rosa Senta (Cyd Charisse), and through her meets former police officer and now international investigator Mark Dwyer (Van Heflin). He immediately senses Jessie's inherent loneliness. Their lives are thrown into turmoil when a murder is committed, with no shortage of suspects with motives.

A glossy MGM production designed to showcase the sordid secrets of the rich elites, East Side, West Side features current and future stars in every meaningful role. The talented cast cannot save a feeble by-the-numbers script by Isobel Lennart, based on the Marcia Davenport novel. The dialogue is stiff, most of the actors go about their business in a mechanical trance, and director Mervyn LeRoy adds little to the drama.

With Stanwyck in particularly subdued form and Mason struggling to convince as a playboy not in control of his libido, the will-she-or-won't-she-leave-him dilemma never gains traction. Only Gardner adds some heat as the other woman, but her smoldering mannerisms land flat opposite Mason's lethargy. Heflin and Stanwyck are supposed to create an undercurrent of potential romance in the final act, but the absence of chemistry means they come across as friends at best.

The murder sub-plot arrives really late, suddenly lurching the film into a police procedural. A couple of hitherto barely seen marginal characters in the form of hoodlum Dawning (Douglas Kennedy) and icy blonde Felice (Beverly Michaels) become involved. And just as quickly, the case is tidied up, having contributed little to the central drama.

The film's title refers to the two halves of New York, upper class and working class. A brief sojourn by Mark and Jessie to his neighbourhood roots is thrown in to justify the reference, but like the rest of the movie, it's a perfunctory gesture.

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Movie Review: Two Weeks In Another Town (1962)

A film industry drama, Two Weeks In Another Town idles in place, choking on an emotional void.

Former superstar film actor Jack Andrus (Kirk Douglas) has spent three years in a sanitarium after suffering a nervous breakdown. He caught his wife Carlotta (Cyd Charisse) cheating, resorted to alcoholism, and intentionally crashed his car into a wall. Now almost recovered, he accepts an invitation from director Kruger (Edward G. Robinson) to shoot a few scenes for good money in Rome.

Kruger and Andrus collaborated on seven previous features when they were both hugely successful. Now Kruger's career is also in decline, working for a cut-rate Italian producer and constantly nagged by his wife Clara (Claire Trevor). Jack steps in to help complete the film, including straightening out wayward star Davie Drew (George Hamilton), who is suffering from the sudden onset of stardom. Jack also starts a relationship with Veronica (Daliah Lavi), but Carlotta's presence in Rome complicates matters and re-triggers Jack's insecurities.

Ten years after the brilliant The Bad And The Beautiful, director Vincente Minnelli reteams with star Kirk Douglas for another inside-Hollywood story. They need not have bothered. This adaptation of the Irwin Shaw novel is a miserable screen experience, wasting a good cast and made worse by a CinemaScope format intended to showcase Rome but instead dwarfing what is intended as a character study.

As soon as Jack arrives in Rome the film stalls and drifts sideways with no apparent purpose and then starts to inch backwards into unintentional satirical territory. A romance with Veronica drops in from another movie, a miscast George Hamilton tries in vain to generate intensity, and Cyd Charisse as Carlotta appears to exist for the sole purpose of aggravating Jack.

In the meantime any sense of drama is supposed to be generated by Jack overseeing the dubbing process and then taking over directing duties: his techniques include kicking his star lady in the butt to get her to perform. Only Edward G. Robinson as once-celebrated director Kruger trying to reverse a precipitous career slide emerges with any credit.

By the time Jack emotionally regresses into a crazed driver mode both Douglas' wild-eyed over-the-top acting and Minnelli's equally bungled rear projection staging threaten to turn the film into bad comedy. Two Weeks In Another Town should have just stayed home.

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The Movies Of Cyd Charisse

All movies starring Cyd Charisse and reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

East Side, West Side (1949)

Singin' In The Rain (1952)

The Band Wagon (1953)

It's Always Fair Weather (1955)

Silk Stockings (1957)

Two Weeks In Another Town (1962)

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The Index of Movie Stars is here.

Movie Review: It's Always Fair Weather (1955)

A half-hearted attempt to recreate the vibe of On The Town, It's Always Fair Weather is only moderately successful. Weak musical numbers and generally lacklustre performances undermine an interesting story of post-war alienation.

It's 1945, and soldiers Ted (Gene Kelly), Doug (Dan Dailey) and Angie (Michael Kidd) survive World War Two and return to New York, promising to remain friends forever. Ted receives news that his pre-war girlfriend has dumped him and married someone else. Nevertheless, the three men commit to meeting at the same watering hole in ten years time to renew their friendship. In the intervening years, Doug, an aspiring artist, gets married, raises a family and settles for a corporate career in advertising. Angie, who has ambitions of becoming a respected chef, only manages to open a suburban burger joint.

But it is Ted who struggles the most, wasting the decade on floozies and gambling. When the men meet again in 1955, they all feel like failures, and they can barely stand each other. Ted is managing the career of a boxer he won at the gambling table and gradually getting embroiled in the corrupt world of boxing fixes. Through Doug's contacts he meets strong willed advertising producer Jackie (Cyd Charisse), and she helps him re-examine himself, but a reconciliation with Doug and Angie appears unlikely.

It's Always Fair Weather gives the impression of a drama contorted into a musical. Had the story been developed to its full potential, it could have easily stood on its own as a compelling peek into the difficult challenges of adjusting to mundane civilian life after surviving the chaos of war, a ten year echo of The Best Years Of Our Lives.

But rather than maintaining a focus on narrative strengths, song and dance numbers of widely varying quality are coarsely mounted onto the story, blunting most of the film's power. A few of the musical routines work well: Kelly, Dailey and Kidd dance up a storm with garbage bin lids on their feet; Charisse lights up a boxing gym; and Kelly gets to show his moves on roller skates.

But there are also some pretty unfortunate misfires, Dailey's Situation-Wise descending to the embarrassing farce of lampshade-on-head, and annoying radio show host Dolores Gray over-performing her two numbers into painful small market touring company territory.

A sense of disturbing unevenness runs through the film, stemming from a strained relationship between co-directors Stanley Donen and Kelly, and some poor editing decisions. Kelly co-starring with Charisse and yet not sharing a dance sequence with her is a phenomenally weird decision. Somehow, the finished product has much more of the crass Gray than the stunning Charisse, a truly horrific miscalculation, while Kidd's solo number was left on the cutting floor, resulting in a fundamental imbalance in the film's core triangle of friendship.

While the performances are competent, the leads lack spark. Charisse comes closest, but she is given so little to do that it does not matter. Kelly, Dailey and Kidd never convince as war-time buddies, the script by Betty Comden and Adolph Green lacking the necessary wit and warmth to delve into what makes a deep friendship.

It's Always Fair Weather does end on a high of sorts, a well-choreographed brawl on live television reminding the friends why they liked each other to begin with. After all, there is nothing like a mindless fight to bring back the good memories of war.

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Movie Review: Silk Stockings (1957)

Fred Astaire's final musical is a befitting exclamation mark to his film dancing career. A musical remake of Ninotchka (1939), Silk Stockings has humour, romance, colourful secondary characters, enough of a story to provide weight, and a luminous Cyd Charisse to help Astaire shine one last time.

In Paris, American film producer Steve Canfield (Astaire) has recruited Soviet music composer Peter Boroff (Wim Sonnefeld) to score his latest movie. This causes panic in the Soviet Union, where Boroff is perceived as a national treasure not to be associated with enemy Western influences. The authorities quickly dispatch three agents, Comrades Brankov (Peter Lorre), Bibinski and Ivanov to bring Boroff back home. But Canfield smoothly convinces the three agents to enjoy the Parisian life, corrupting them into a prolonged stay at a luxury hotel.

The horrified Soviets counter by sending their best operative, the incorruptible no-nonsense agent Nina Yoschenko (Charisse) to Paris, to retrieve Boroff and the three bungling Comrades. But Canfield is not to be easily dissuaded from his plans, and sets about the difficult task of seducing Nina, romancing her with his chivalry and the charming beauty of Paris.

Silk Stocking forgoes any of the special effects or camera tricks that had crept into popular musicals earlier in the 1950s, and just focuses on showcasing two magnificent dancers. Rouben Mamoulian gives both Astaire and Charisse plenty of opportunities to sparkle to the music of Cole Porter, and they reward him with performances of the highest calibre.

Charisse is at her prime in Silk Stockings, and once she enters the fray, she elevates the movie with a series of lusciously fluid performances. In her title tune ballet dance, Charisse no less than makes love to the camera, in a sensual awakening of what it means to be a woman rather than a comrade. In All Of You with Astaire, she demonstrates remarkably flowing movements in the plainest of communist dresses, and she matches him stride for stride (or is he matching her?) in the light hearted Fated To Be Mated. Back in Russia, Red Blues finds her leading a high energy number to bring life to grim housing compound.

At 58 years old, Astaire holds his own with dancing that is more smooth and supportive of Charisse than dynamic, but saves his best till last. The Ritz Roll and Rock simultaneously satirizes and acknowledges a seismic shift in the musical landscape with the emergence of something called Rock 'n Roll, Astaire recognizing that his type of music was coming to an end, and gracefully bowing out.

In support, Peter Lorre is the funniest of the three Soviet agents who quickly succumb to the elegant luxuries of Paris, and his other two cohorts (played by Jules Munshin and Joseph Buloff) bring robust and grizzled relief while contributing to the resolution of the romance across the Iron Curtain.

Silk Stockings marked the end of an era. The grand, light-hearted, gentlemanly and suave song and dance screen musical had run its course. If there had to be an end, Silk Stockings proved to be a fine denouement and final salute to one of Hollywood's golden genres.

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Movie Review: The Band Wagon (1953)

An old fashioned musical with plenty to celebrate but also some prolonged stretches of mediocre inspiration, The Band Wagon is worth jumping on but parts of the ride are bruising.

Tony Hunter (Fred Astaire) is an ageing Hollywood entertainer, written-off by the critics. With no new movie projects coming his way, he accepts an invitation by his east coast friends, married couple Lester and Lily Marton (Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray), to appear in a stage musical. The celebrated and egotistical Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan) is chosen to direct the show, and after convincing ballerina Gabrielle Gerard (Cyd Charisse) to play the female lead opposite Hunter, Cordova transforms the production from a light-hearted musical to a dark Faustian drama.

Hunter and Gerard get off on the wrong foot and stay there for a long time. She thinks he is too old; he believes her to be a stuck-up ballerina. They make up just in time for the new show to premiere, and the colossal failure of Cordova's vision forces Hunter to take charge in an attempt to rescue the production by re-capturing the original fun-oriented spectacle.

The Band Wagon has three magical moments. The introduction of the song That's Entertainment into movie folklore is the liveliest sequence in the film's rather trudging first hour. The second pulse elevator features Astaire and Charisse finally making peace with each other and dancing through Central Park in white after a harmonious horse carriage ride. The final highlight is part of the finale, the quite brilliant Girl Hunt Ballet, a slick film noir sequence one generation ahead of its time and which would go on to inspire the new school of dancers and choreographers, not least Michael Jackson and his series of slick 1980s videos.

These scenes give the movie a huge boost, but the rest of the experience is somewhat of a let-down. The other songs are distinctly unmemorable, the overrated Triplets sequence is a lot more creepy than pleasant, and overall, there is too little of Charisse, her charisma, dancing skills and knock-out legs muffled under a clumsy storyline that takes forever to shift out of first gear. Oscar Levant and the energetic Nanette Fabray come across as tired and underutilized respectively.

Regardless of the deficiencies, director Vincente Minnelli adds gloss and many arresting visual touches. The Band Wagon is always a colourful feast, whether in recreating New York's theatre district for Shine On Your Shoes, or in the grand Cordova mansion, where the many doors are used to good humorous effect as Jeffrey gives a hyper animated summary of the Faustian play to a group of enthralled financial backers.

As can be expected from the genre, The Band Wagon largely abandons swaths of plot and logic as it progresses towards an all-singing, all-dancing climax, and leaves unanswered questions related to Cordova's sudden loss of self-admiration and the never-fully-coloured-in relationship between Gerard and choreographer Paul Byrd (James Mitchell).

The road is sometimes rough, but star power and strong production values help to pull The Band Wagon through the muddy patches.

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Movie Review: Singin' In The Rain (1952)

A classic celebration of song, dance, and Hollywood history, Singin' In The Rain has an infectious positive energy, and a young, celebratory attitude. The film recalibrated musical genre expectations, respecting the old while creating the new with a burst of colour, energy and sheer bravado.

In the late 1920's, Hollywood is transitioning from silent to talking movies. Celebrated but studio-manufactured screen couple Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) are the biggest stars of the silent era, and they face contrasting fortunes. Lockwood has the talent to continue his career, but Lamont's screechy voice is a deathblow to her future as a movie star. In the meantime, Lamont believes the studio hype that she and Lockwood have a real-life relationship; in reality, he is falling in love with young struggling actress Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds).

With the latest Lockwood and Lamont film release facing financial disaster unless it can be quickly turned into a talkie, Lockwood's sidekick Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) comes up with the idea of having Selden provide the voice-over for Lamont. Lockwood builds on this and converts the film into an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza. But the jealousies between Lamont and Selden threaten to side-swipe all their careers.

The plot is funny, interesting and romantic, but it is just a side-show. Singin' In The Rain is a collection of terrific, innovative song and dance numbers, transitioning the Hollywood musical into a new era, and in many ways setting the stage for what would become the high-energy music video in decades to come.

Gene Kelly, who co-directed with Stanley Donen, injects larges doses of artistic creativity and innovative choreography. Kelly also projects a winning self-depreciating persona while infusing the dance numbers with unbridled joy and enthusiasm. He finds the perfect partners in the impossibly rubbery and quick-witted O'Connor, as well as the spunky and willing Reynolds.

Make 'Em Laugh, Singin' In The Rain, and Good Morning are just some of the classics re-imagined and revived in vivid colours and with creative props, Kelly, O'Connor and Reynolds attacking physically demanding numbers with conviction and a smile.

Late in the movie, Kelly inserts the long Broadway Melody Ballet scene, with Cyd Charisse putting her endless legs to excellent use, in a sequence which has nothing to do with the plot but that at the same summarizes everything about Singin' In The Rain: brash, modern, and vivacious.

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