The Band Wagon (1953)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

Vincente Minnelli

Writers:

Betty Comden (story) and
Adolph Green (story) ...

Release Date:

7 August 1953 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Family | Musical | Romance

Tagline:

Get Aboard!

Plot:

A pretentiously artistic director is hired for a new Broadway musical and changes it beyond recognition.

Plot Keywords:

Choreographer | Movie Star | Director | Top Hat | Ballet

Awards:

Nominated for 3 Oscars. Another 2 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Fred Astaire	...	Tony Hunter
Cyd Charisse	...	Gabrielle Gerard
Oscar Levant	...	Lester Marton
Nanette Fabray	...	Lily Marton
Jack Buchanan	...	Jeffrey Cordova
James Mitchell	...	Paul Byrd
Robert Gist	...	Hal

Also Known As:

I Love Louisa (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

111 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono )Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | West Germany:12 | Canada:G (video rating) | USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | Australia:G | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | UK:U | USA:Approved (PCA #16342)

Filming Locations:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

The title is from an original 1931 Broadway musical, by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, which starred Fred Astaire and his sister, Adele Astaire. Only the title and some of the songs were borrowed for this film, and the stories are entirely different. The exact same thing occurred later with Fred Astaire in Funny Face (1957), in which Astaire and his sister Adele had originally appeared on Broadway in 1927. The only opportunity Astaire had to recreate a role on film that he had originated on Broadway was in The Gay Divorcee (1934), from Broadway's "Gay Divorce".

Goofs:

Continuity: After the Oedipus number, Cordova buttons his jacket crookedly. In the next scene it is correctly buttoned.

Quotes:

Tony Hunter: Oh, I'm afraid I've been very rude, I haven't told you how wonderful you were tonight.
Gabrielle Gerard: Oh, thank you, I'm a great admirer of your work.
Tony Hunter: I didn't think you'd even heard of me.
Gabrielle Gerard: Heard of you? I used to see all your pictures when I was a little girl. And I'm still a fan, I recently went to see a revival of them at the museum...
Tony Hunter: [offended] Museum? 'Step right this way, ladies and gentlemen, Egyptian mummies, extinct reptiles, and Tony Hunter, the grand old man of the dance!"
Gabrielle Gerard: I didn't mean...
Tony Hunter: Young lady, I'll have you know I can still thread a needle without my eyeglasses and still occasionally do a soft-shoe shuffle! Nothing balletic of course...
Gabrielle Gerard: You're not a ballet devotee, are you?
Tony Hunter: Oh, yes! I saw all the greats - Pavlova, Carsanova, you don't see dancing like that nowadays. Oh, I'm terribly sorry...
Gabrielle Gerard: Oh, that's all right! I wouldn't expect you to class me with Pavlova. In fact I doubt even she'd be good enough for you. You'd probably insist on an audition first!
[...]

Movie Connections:

Featured in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs (2004) (TV)

Soundtrack:

High and Low

The best of the lot (MGM lot, that is...)

Basically, the only competition for The Band Wagon (TBW) for the title of MGM's Uncontested Musical Champion is Singin' In The Rain (SITR). SITR is certainly the better-known of the two and features one of film's iconic dance sequences. That said, in an itemized comparison, TBW is the winner and by more than a nose.

Star: Astaire over Kelly. As usual. (Stop that. You know it's true. There's no point in contesting it.)

Co-star: Cyd Charisse slam-dunks the ever-annoying Debbie Reynolds (herself a major overall factor in SITR's loss to TBW), but herself gets trounced by Jean Hagen (best squeaky virago ever). A draw.

Supporting: Jack Buchanan, Oscar Levant, and Nanette Fabray triple-team Donald O'Connor (in his defining and best screen performance) and edge out a victory.

Choreography: Kelly and O'Connor (under Kelly's direction) hoof up a storm, just outdoing Astaire and Charisse. Kelly's title track number over Astaire/Charisse's Dancing In The Dark, although the latter is the best duet Astaire's done since Night and Day with Ginger Rogers, and is itself a textbook to economy, style, and subtlety in choreography.

Music: Dietz and Schwartz over Freed and Brown. Despite Louisiana Hayride being a kitsch feature almost unparalleled in MGM musical history.

Book: Comden and Green's TBW ties Comden and Green's SITR.

Finale: Girl Hunt Ballet over Broadway Rhythm Ballet. By a mile. The former is tongue-in-cheek, visually-engaging despite its smaller scale, and imaginatively-choreographed. The latter a bit obvious and, in typical Kelly style, a little heavy-handed in its inclusion of "serious", "dramatic" elements. Cyd Charisse too, too hot in both, of course.

Overall: SITR lights up in the Hagen-Kelly sparring and O'Connor's zinging bits, as well as in the "early days of talkies" bits and the proto-postmodernism of the Beautiful Girls sequence, but Debbie Reynolds and the love interest numbers cause the film to drag and buckle. TBW, by contrast, hums throughout, going from strength to strength: Buchanan's God of the The-ah-tuh role, Levant as Levant, Astaire's wistful By Myself, Triplets (why no Hoops?), the disaster that is the Damnation Scene, Astaire and Buchanan, signifiers for "class", soft-shoeing on I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plan. An uninterruptedly-enjoyable movie, from start to finish.

So, there you have it. See The Band Wagon. Become a TBW fanatic. It's that simple.