Romancefest 2011: The Band Wagon

The last movie of Romancefest 2011 is another Fred Astaire one, so it's good to go out on a happy note.

THE BAND WAGON stars Astaire as a washed up Hollywood song and dance man who is traveling to New York to hopefully revive his career on the Broadway stage. Along the way he butts heads with his co-star (Cyd Charisse) a no-nonsense classically trained ballerina and attempts to transform a flop of a show into a hit. Of course, eventually, Charisse and Astaire fall in love.

The supporting cast is great, if a little under-utilized, including Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray as the neurotic married writers of the show within a show and Jack Buchanan as an eccentric director/producer/actor who is obsessed with transforming an innocent romantic comedy into a modern day retelling of FAUST.

The memorable numbers range from the inspired to the bizarre. On the inspired side of things we have the song and dance near the beginning of the film between Astaire and a shoe shine man (Leroy Daniels) who improvises moves with the contents of his shine box. Things get a little weird when Astaire, Charisse and Buchanan team up to perform as a trio of infantile triplets who hate each others' guts.

There's an interesting moment in the middle of the film that I can only describe as "dance foreplay." Up until this point of the film, Astaire and Charisse haven't danced together, and the way they've been paired off in a scene involving a carriage ride through Central Park, the audience can sense a number is coming on. But, Astaire and Charisse ride in the carriage, walk through the crowds in the park, and stroll along alone for what seems like an eternity before finally making the first couple flirtatious moves to dance with each other, before erupting into a full routine. The suspense leading up to it makes the actual number even better.

That, along with one smaller scene and one bigger scene, was my favorite moment of the movie. The smaller scene is a sequence, after the depressing debut of the show within the show, in which Astaire parties with the cast and crew of the musical and sings a tribute to beer. The bigger one is the climactic finale, a song and dance sequence inspired by noirish detective stories, with Astaire as the hard boiled detective and Charisse as both the blonde damsel in distress and the brunette femme fatale, complete with a twist ending. This sequence made me wish Astaire had done a full length noir musical in this style. Charisse looked beautiful as the femme fatale, especially when she shed her trench coat to reveal a hot red dress.

So, as a result of Romancefest 2010 and 2011, I've now seen every single movie on the American Film Institutes "100 Years, 100 Passions" list, as well as a few more from another list. Quick wrap up:

MOVIES WHERE ONE OF THE MAIN COUPLE (OR TRIANGLE) DIES

9 out of 28

METHODS OF DEATH

3 shootings, 1 death by Spotted Typhus, 1 suicide by drowning, 2 probable Yellow Fever deaths, 1 bombing, 1 fall from a high place, 1 death by broken heart

HAPPY ENDINGS

15. . . couples got married, got engaged, ran off together, and stayed married.

MUSICALS

4

MOVIES WITH PARIS

3

MOVIES INVOLVING WAR

5. . . First World War, Bolshevik Revolution, Vietnam, Korean War, action between World Wars

MULTIPLE APPEARANCES BY A LEAD ACTOR OR ACTRESS

3 Katherine Hepburn movies, 2 Marlene Dietrich movies, 2 William Holden movies, 2 Jane Fonda movies and 2 Fred Astaire movies

REPEATED DIRECTORS

2 movies by William Wyler -- JEZEBEL and WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Honorable mention goes to Rouben Mamoulian, who directed LOVE ME TONIGHT and started to direct PORGY AND BESS before he was fired.

MOVIES WITH SWEET BACHELOR PADS

Both WAY DOWN EAST and PILLOW TALK, though separated by decades, involved sweet bachelor pads in which the bachelors in question could simply flip a switch and transform a seemingly normal room into a den of seduction.