A friend of mine has this blanket hatred of musicals, across the board, no exceptions. I used to try reasoning with him, but recently I've started coming around to his way of thinking. Our culture is under attack from the song-and-dance stormtroopers. It's a bandwagon (rather than The Band Wagon) and it's all getting out of hand. Everyone wants to wallow in second-hand showbiz glamour, hide their heads from the economic crisis, happily watch an entire X-Factor generation sing and dance their little hearts out for a chance in the fame spotlight. And sometimes I just get fed up with it, never want to hear a character break into song ever again, never want to see some second-rate celebrity hoofing for all their worth ever again. But then I come across this and I remember why I always argued against that friend of mine. Because this is the antidote to all of the above. It's mesmerising, Fred so graceful, so God-like, I genuinely believe he makes the cane rise into his hand on his own. What we see today isn't even related to this. There should be a different name for it. Art or something.
Wow, I, like many, know virtually nothing about Fred Astaire, apart from him being a bit rubbish in The Towering Inferno. This is shockingly brilliant.
ReplyDeleteI know, I get giddy every time I watch it, especially the massed ranks of Freds at the end. It's a high water mark of human endevour as far as I'm concerned, just sensational. I could watch it every day because unlike The Towering Inferno, he's really on fire here!
ReplyDeleteHa! Towering Inferno, forgot about that! Yeah he is awesome.
ReplyDeleteCertain musicals stand out in my mind (Wizard of Oz, Swing Time [speakign of Fred Astaire], the totally trippy Singing in the Rain) but, by and large, they exist best in a time and place where people wanted big sets and lots of dancers. Now, they've fallen off because people demand more reality in their films.
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