Tag Archives: Cyd Charisse

Balmain in Minnelli’s The Reluctant Debutante (1958)

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A record of the wardrobe for Kay Kendall, Angela Lansbury and Diane Clare by Balmain for Minnelli’s The Reluctant Debutante. Sandra Dee is also very prettily dressed by Helen Rose but her outfits lack the excitement provided by Balmain. Each outfit is sometimes represented by several screen grabs so that the ensemble may be seen to better advantage. In chronological order . Balmain, with his philosophy of clothes as ‘architecture of movement,’ was ideally suited for cinema and  Minnelli would once again use him to dress Cyd Charisse in Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)

A note on ‘Two Weeks in Another Town’

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I’ve just seen Vincente Minnelli’s Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) in the lovely Warner Archive version. The film is an adaptation of Irwin Shaw’s novel, produced by John Houseman and filmed by Milton Krasner. There is much to enjoy: it’s knowing look at filmmakers and filmmaking; at the industry and the art; its connection of art to orgies; it’s melodramatic excesses; it’s self-referentiality , particularly in relation to Minnelli’s The Bad and The Beautiful (1952); its documentation of Cineccita and the Via Veneto in the Hollywood-on-the Tiber period. But all of this has been much written about already and I here just want to point out a few things that caught my eye:

To a cinephile, one of the most enticing aspects of the film is to see how films were made in the period: the cranes, the lights, the creation of rain, the script, the screening rooms, the editing rooms, the Steenbeks, the way cameras were hooded to protect them against the rain (see Gallery below).

 

Cyd Charisse, aside from wearing a diamond ring as big as the Ritz and a rivière of diamonds like nothing you’ve ever seen except on British royalty, wears Balenciaga throughout. Balenciaga also dressed Kay Kendall in The Reluctant Debutante for Minnelli in 1958 and it made me wonder if there was a special connection between the director and the couturier.

Cyd Charisse’s nightgown matches her bedding. How standard was this practice in Hollywood filmmaking of the period? Was there a house style and a period practice that made this a dominant or is this exceptional and Minnellian?

The orgy scene in the film is very understated, only suggested but absolutely clear. It would make for an interesting comparison between Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), which it is clearly referencing, and the opening sequence of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza (2013)

The film has very subtle use of Mirrors to enhance space but also to symbolise:

Minnelli creates beautiful compositions:

that break up the Cinemascope frame, often through a central focus, like the coffee pot in the dubbing studio here:

he attempts to create depth of field through staging in space as in here:

Milton Krasner, who had previously photographed Home from the Hill (1960), Bells Are Ringing(1960), The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (1962) for Minnelli, does a superbly varied job here bringing in a whole array of lighting strategies, including, as you can see below, noir:

The film contains archetypal Minnelli themes: the connection between fantasy and reality, internal turmoil and external expression, the value of art in release and communication, form leading to and creating human connection:

or the connection of the half-human/ half-mythological creature to the character played by Cyd Charisse, her destructive allure rendered mythological through the Griffin-type statue.

I was quite struck with the technology, as in this image, where in the background the waves, clearly back projected are in constant movement, where the fisherman, although they occasionally do move, are still for so long they seem a 19th century shadow play:

the film is marred by the constant referencing of Minnelli’s previous The Bad and the Beautiful, also produced by John Houseman and starring Kirk Douglas, as a work of art. It seems arrogant and self-congratulatory.

and it is cited not only directly as here, but also with a rhyming nervous breakdown in a car as you can see here:

 

this is the sequence with Lana Turner in The Bad and the Beautiful that it is clearly referencing:

Lastly,

I wonder if Lillian Burns, MGM acting teacher and wife of George Sidney, taught Cyd Charisse how to pull back her head and laugh. In other words is this a tick common in all the MGM female stars of this period or is Ava Gardner being referenced in Cyd’s performance. I wager on the latter. Though on second thought, isn’t this a signature gesture for Rita Hayworth in Gilda also?

José Arroyo

A Thought on Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen, USA, 1952)

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Fit as a fiddle
Fit as a fiddle

I recently saw Singin’ in the Rain with friends for the umpteenth time and had a great discussion on how, great as it is, there are things not quite up to the heights of the very greatest musicals much less to the very greatest of films, claims for the film repeated in practically every Sight and Sound list of top films since the 60s. As Peter Wollen writes in his BFI classic on the film, ‘In the 1962 Sight and Sound poll, only one critic named Singin’ in the Rain on his ‘Top Ten’ list. In 1972, there were five. In 1982, seventeen listed Singin’ in the Rain and it now came fourth overall, running immediately ahead of Fellini’s 8 1/2., Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Hitchcock’s Vertigo (p.52). It’s now a familiar resident of top ten lists, often the only musical to figure.

Someone once said comparing Singing in the Rain to Meet Me in St. Louis was like comparing Kurosawa to Ozu ,suggesting that it was like comparing apples and oranges and yet people do keep insisting on how Ozu is a superior type of…well, director. I do wonder, if the film wasn’t so obviously a loving mythologizing of cinema whether film fans would hold it in such high esteem. The film’s movie love is a driver for their own; one which they eagerly take to.

Singing’ in the Rain has its obvious delights; the opening sequence right up to the ‘dignity, always dignity’ montage is wonderful. Jean Hagen’s Lina Lamont is a treasure above rubies and endlessly quotable ( I am the most brilliant star in the fih-mah-mehnt; I ca-iiint stahhnd it’); Donald O’Connor in general but his ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’ number in particular is a joy; the play on sound and image; the jokes about the mike; the dazzling ending camera movement in the ‘Broadway Ballet’ with Kelly riding the crane and the camera then moving in to his close-up; and of course, the ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ number, now become an iconic metaphor for Hollywood Cinema itself; all are wonderful.

The film is undoubtedly great. But is it as great as all that? When I scare my friends by insisting on showing them the very greatest of musical numbers, I never include any from this film. Moreover, isn’t Kelly just a teensy weensy bit hammy; aren’t the songs a bit derivative and unexceptional?; should the theft of Cole Porter’s ‘Be A Clown’ for ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’ be forgiven?; isn’t Debbie Reynolds a bit too bland to be the new ‘most brilliant star in the fih-mah-mehnt’? isn’t it a problem that the only bits one remembers of that endless ‘Broadway Ballet’ aside from its ending are the few minutes Cyd Charisse is in it? Doesn’t the film’s relentless kidding of  Lina Lamont finally turn into outright and unpleasant meanness in the final revelation? I think so.

José Arroyo