#50
Post
by Via_Chicago » Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:15 pm
I caught It's Always Fair Weather recently on TCM and I came away pretty impressed. While Comden and Green originally construed the film as a kind of sequel to their On the Town, one of the weaknesses of Fair Weather is our (the audience's) relative lack of familiarity with these characters and their situations. There is no built-in sympathy and thus, when the characters do meet again in 1955, our allegiances shift with every critical faux-pas, and as a consequence, we're ultimately left with no allegiances to speak of through the first half of the picture. Even Kelly's star power isn't enough to diminish the impression that he's just a loutish gambler (which isn't a far-off estimation, even at film's end). As narrative construction goes, this appears to be a critical mistake - there is no audience identification through the entire first forty-five minutes of the film! As a result, it's not difficult to see why audiences largely rejected the film in 1955; it's not because the film is melancholy (though it is), but because the characters are completely unsympathetic (they don't even like each other!) through the entire first half of the movie.
In a different film, the restaurant scene ("Why Are We Here") would be the culmination of the film's tragic narrative arc, but here it serves as the impetus for a complete one hundred eighty turn around in tone. In other words, this is where the Hollywood magic begins to kick in and reality (thankfully) flies out the window. I would argue that this shift occurs even before Charisse's wonderful "Baby, You Knock Me out" number. We become completely aware of this tonal shift when Dolores Gray begins her diva fit in the television studio and the television execs essentially plot the course of the rest of the picture. But there is something clever to this device since it definitely approximates the Hollywood schematic to a "T".
This shift in tone couldn't come at a better time, and it results in some of the most wonderful musical/dance numbers of the film - "Baby, You Knock Me Out," "Saturation-Wise," and "I Like Myself" coming all in succession. The first of these features some absolutely sublime dancing from the incomparable Charisse - and unfortunately, it's all too brief. Dailey's "Saturation-Wise" is great - in part because of Dailey's wonderfully acerbic drunk and absolutely manic energy - but also in how it masterfully plays with the music of the song as previously sung by the company executives (and that song itself transitions wonderfully into "March, March"). Finally, Kelly's "I Like Myself" has to be the least fun of the three songs, but the most amazing as a work of dance art. What's most impressive about the whole sequence is that he and Donen never fudge the shots - we see Kelly move effortlessly from skating into tapping, all in one shot. The whole sequence, which compares favorably with Kelly's more famous title number from Singin' In the Rain, absolutely elevates Fair Weather into the pantheon of great Kelly musicals.
Dave Kehr has noted that Donen's direction in this is "formally perfect,"and there is some truth to this. Like Minelli, Donen had an almost instinctive gift for filming music and dance numbers, and Fair Weather is no exception in his oeuvre. He (and I suppose also, Kelly) fills each and every CinemaScope frame and allows characters to use and occupy the spaces that are open. The result is a triumph of economy; a minimal amount of cuts allow the dancing to breathe and Kelly's choreography consequently takes on a narrative form of its own. Particularly succesful are the tableau-like street shots (characters pivot to face the camera [and the street]) which heighten the energy of the film's early scenes and open up the frame horizontally, allowing the dancers to move laterally. In other words, it allows them to use the entirety of the frame, and Kelly and Donen make sure that they do. This is to say nothing of the editing, which is, in all of the dance sequences, simply sublime - the action crisp and intelligible throughout.
Special mention to Dolores Gray and the fabulous "Thanks a Lot, but No Thanks." What a crazy and totally bizarre dance number!