Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Broadway Serenade (1939)
I've wanted to see BROADWAY SERENADE for many years for two reasons: 1) the final sequence was directed by Busby Berkeley; and 2) I'm still a fan of Jeanette MacDonald.
I agree with those who say that MacDonald's comic abilities seem to have evaporated when she was hired by MGM who saw her as a popular operatic diva-to-be (from what I've heard of her personal life, she was always behaving like a diva). This film allowed her a number of moments where she could act more naturally, more playful. But MGM still has her playing an operatic type diva - she seemed tremendously uncomfortable with any kind of popularization of the music.
Now that I understand her voice better, the discrepancies are obvious. MacDonald had a very small voice. The only way they could record her with a full sound was up close and heavily amplified. Whether there's a quiet musical passage or a dense one with many instruments, it's clear that she was hugging close to the microphone. So to see her set in medium and far shots while hearing her sing closely into the recording devices makes for an incongruous experience (but not much worse than when one hears studio reverberation in the dialogue of old films). She was shown singing as high as an E flat and I wonder whether that was really her or a sub. In early films she can not reach B flat. Was she working hard on vocal training during the 1930s? (We know she undertook serious training in the 1940s in order to make her operatic debut.)
MacDonald's character does not change during the course of the film so much as become refined. The acting star of the film is Lew Ayres, whose star has fallen so very much from his single great film, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT nine years earlier. His scenes of drunkenness give him a chance to eat the scenery and he does so to the point of over acting. It's very much like the story of A STAR IS BORN, except the ending (where the Lew Ayres character, having sunk almost to the point of suicide, changes direction and becomes a leading composer) seems unrealistic. Shouldn't it have been the MacDonald character who nursed him back? Instead, it's the household maid, while the audience is led to believe that MacDonald is about to marry another man instead.
Clearly the Berkeley sequence was an effort to save the film, since it's fairly bad and overproduced (even without the final sequence). He should have done one or two other musical sequences because they are amazingly static and bad, filmed as if staged for a stage - silly movement if any at all, very localized (arms waving), and mostly uncinematic. On the few occasions where they do try to aim further - for example, MacDonald and co-star "skiing" down the slopes - after a few seconds, it's obvious they're on flat ground with the camera tilted, and someone throwing fake snow over them. Bleh.
One unusual aspect of the final sequence is that unlike nearly all his other films, Berkeley does not show a row of beautiful women. In fact, the only beautiful thing is MacDonald in her angel-like costumes (unfortunately, the print that I saw - downloaded off the net - was in black and white). Here Berkeley is objectifying musical instruments, endowing them with human emotions and classes, some indicating traditional ideas with classical music, others (namely brass) with modern and unconvential ideas. There was also a very strong racial aspect, as popular music was clearly seen as the product of black people. What was the idea of everyone wearing masks? Perhaps that was the diminish the human element so that the viewer would focus on the instruments (which must nevertheless be played by people - the masks seemed to represent famous composers through the years).
Up to this point in his career, most of Berkeley's camera work is slow, gradual, a kind of gradual crescendo leading to some unusually long crane shots (think of some of the windings views in "I Only Have Eyes For You"). Very smooth movement that is never jarring to the eye or senses. But here he worked differently. It seemed as if he laid out all his objects on a massive stage, in various groups and had the camera select a group, move into them, then on to another, and another, moving in and out of them, all at different angles. It was if the camera was endowed with this massive giraffe-like neck. I can't think of too many obvious uses before this film, but of course it presaged the work in THE GANG'S ALL HERE (1943), and ultimately the water shots in EASY TO LOVE. His camera eye is not bound by the simple formula of "viewer seeing the stage." Instead, the camera is going in all sorts of directions which would be impossible for a human neck to pursue. That makes it particularly intriguing to watch.
Through these groups of instruments, Berkeley is able to achieve the feeling of a space unbound by walls and borders. The chorus line of players with masks suggests a line extending way beyond the camera. This is perhaps an innovation. In previous films, we would have seen the chorus line as if from a stage, the impact occuring from seeing the mass of people. Only on limited occassion does Berkeley show just a portion to suggest bigger (although I'm thinking of the marching processing in "All's Fair In Love and War"). But here Berkeley relies on it almost entirely - and it works. Clearly that also prepares for "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat" - where the fruit dominants instead of the pretty girls, which are just adornments (whereas one would think it should be the other way around).
Unfortunately the final sequence's musical arrangement of BROADWAY SERENADEis awful, at once overwrought, but then very discursive, with the supposed melodic threads being taken by various groups of the instruments. It's hard to hear the connection, and instead, what hits the ear is an overstimulation of contrasting juxtopositions. This can work in well-constructed circumstances (like Stokowski's arrangement of Bach's G minor fugue), but it's hard for my ear to make sense of it here. It's more like a fight and battle between the various sections of the orchestra and band. A real composer always is able to have a thread to withstand the tension brought on by extreme contrasts. I don't hear any of that here.
The "resolution" of all this tension is the final reverse zoom shot, apparently using the same set and technique as "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" from THE GREAT ZIEGFELD. MacDonald is on a column on the right side of the frame, with a full orchestra and chorus on the left side. Now for the first time we see the orchestra in it's proper place and all the instruments playing with each other (instead of against each other). But what happened to all the pop/swing music? Somehow it seems too square and artifical to resolve the crazy battles among the instruments in the middle of the sequence.
I agree with those who say that MacDonald's comic abilities seem to have evaporated when she was hired by MGM who saw her as a popular operatic diva-to-be (from what I've heard of her personal life, she was always behaving like a diva). This film allowed her a number of moments where she could act more naturally, more playful. But MGM still has her playing an operatic type diva - she seemed tremendously uncomfortable with any kind of popularization of the music.
Now that I understand her voice better, the discrepancies are obvious. MacDonald had a very small voice. The only way they could record her with a full sound was up close and heavily amplified. Whether there's a quiet musical passage or a dense one with many instruments, it's clear that she was hugging close to the microphone. So to see her set in medium and far shots while hearing her sing closely into the recording devices makes for an incongruous experience (but not much worse than when one hears studio reverberation in the dialogue of old films). She was shown singing as high as an E flat and I wonder whether that was really her or a sub. In early films she can not reach B flat. Was she working hard on vocal training during the 1930s? (We know she undertook serious training in the 1940s in order to make her operatic debut.)
MacDonald's character does not change during the course of the film so much as become refined. The acting star of the film is Lew Ayres, whose star has fallen so very much from his single great film, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT nine years earlier. His scenes of drunkenness give him a chance to eat the scenery and he does so to the point of over acting. It's very much like the story of A STAR IS BORN, except the ending (where the Lew Ayres character, having sunk almost to the point of suicide, changes direction and becomes a leading composer) seems unrealistic. Shouldn't it have been the MacDonald character who nursed him back? Instead, it's the household maid, while the audience is led to believe that MacDonald is about to marry another man instead.
Clearly the Berkeley sequence was an effort to save the film, since it's fairly bad and overproduced (even without the final sequence). He should have done one or two other musical sequences because they are amazingly static and bad, filmed as if staged for a stage - silly movement if any at all, very localized (arms waving), and mostly uncinematic. On the few occasions where they do try to aim further - for example, MacDonald and co-star "skiing" down the slopes - after a few seconds, it's obvious they're on flat ground with the camera tilted, and someone throwing fake snow over them. Bleh.
One unusual aspect of the final sequence is that unlike nearly all his other films, Berkeley does not show a row of beautiful women. In fact, the only beautiful thing is MacDonald in her angel-like costumes (unfortunately, the print that I saw - downloaded off the net - was in black and white). Here Berkeley is objectifying musical instruments, endowing them with human emotions and classes, some indicating traditional ideas with classical music, others (namely brass) with modern and unconvential ideas. There was also a very strong racial aspect, as popular music was clearly seen as the product of black people. What was the idea of everyone wearing masks? Perhaps that was the diminish the human element so that the viewer would focus on the instruments (which must nevertheless be played by people - the masks seemed to represent famous composers through the years).
Up to this point in his career, most of Berkeley's camera work is slow, gradual, a kind of gradual crescendo leading to some unusually long crane shots (think of some of the windings views in "I Only Have Eyes For You"). Very smooth movement that is never jarring to the eye or senses. But here he worked differently. It seemed as if he laid out all his objects on a massive stage, in various groups and had the camera select a group, move into them, then on to another, and another, moving in and out of them, all at different angles. It was if the camera was endowed with this massive giraffe-like neck. I can't think of too many obvious uses before this film, but of course it presaged the work in THE GANG'S ALL HERE (1943), and ultimately the water shots in EASY TO LOVE. His camera eye is not bound by the simple formula of "viewer seeing the stage." Instead, the camera is going in all sorts of directions which would be impossible for a human neck to pursue. That makes it particularly intriguing to watch.
Through these groups of instruments, Berkeley is able to achieve the feeling of a space unbound by walls and borders. The chorus line of players with masks suggests a line extending way beyond the camera. This is perhaps an innovation. In previous films, we would have seen the chorus line as if from a stage, the impact occuring from seeing the mass of people. Only on limited occassion does Berkeley show just a portion to suggest bigger (although I'm thinking of the marching processing in "All's Fair In Love and War"). But here Berkeley relies on it almost entirely - and it works. Clearly that also prepares for "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat" - where the fruit dominants instead of the pretty girls, which are just adornments (whereas one would think it should be the other way around).
Unfortunately the final sequence's musical arrangement of BROADWAY SERENADEis awful, at once overwrought, but then very discursive, with the supposed melodic threads being taken by various groups of the instruments. It's hard to hear the connection, and instead, what hits the ear is an overstimulation of contrasting juxtopositions. This can work in well-constructed circumstances (like Stokowski's arrangement of Bach's G minor fugue), but it's hard for my ear to make sense of it here. It's more like a fight and battle between the various sections of the orchestra and band. A real composer always is able to have a thread to withstand the tension brought on by extreme contrasts. I don't hear any of that here.
The "resolution" of all this tension is the final reverse zoom shot, apparently using the same set and technique as "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" from THE GREAT ZIEGFELD. MacDonald is on a column on the right side of the frame, with a full orchestra and chorus on the left side. Now for the first time we see the orchestra in it's proper place and all the instruments playing with each other (instead of against each other). But what happened to all the pop/swing music? Somehow it seems too square and artifical to resolve the crazy battles among the instruments in the middle of the sequence.
