I don't have anything original to add to the justified encomia others have lavished on this remarkable movie.
Watching it again tonight, I was, however, struck yet once again by the genius of Busby Berkeley in staging the last three numbers, the "prologues." Most remarkable of a very remarkable trio for me is "Beside a waterfall." It just keeps building and building and building. Yes, of course, some of the shots of the women in the water are very erotic. It was 1933, after all, and before the Hayes Code. Berkeley and Warner Brothers understood that pretty women posed erotically had a real appeal to men,
------------------------------------
I watched the end of this movie again this morning. Perhaps I paid closer attention to this number this time, perhaps I was just in the right "mood." Either way, I marveled at the suggestiveness of so much of it. Those jets of water spurting up - I use the verb advisedly - between the swimming women's legs. All those shots of women opening and closing their legs. It was remarkably erotic on my 46" tv screen. What must it have been like in 1933 on huge movie theater screens in the era before multiplexes????
==========================================
But these erotic poses are not JUST erotic poses. The number keeps building and building and building. What will he do next, you keep wondering? Oh, that. But "that" is even more incredible than what has come before. By the time you get to the end of this number, you're exhausted, not just physically and erotically, but imaginatively as well. How could anyone have maintained and built on that suspense for 10 whole minutes? I can't tell you, but Berkeley did.
Third of the three prologues, "Shanghai Lil," is definitely not something that could have been filmed the same way just a year or two later when the Production Code was put in force. We see an opium den, a lot of prostitutes, at least one interracial couple, etc.
Having watched it again tonight, I will add that this is a strange "musical." There is almost no music for the first hour and a half. It's all in the three closing numbers. But what numbers!
Watching it again tonight, I was, however, struck yet once again by the genius of Busby Berkeley in staging the last three numbers, the "prologues." Most remarkable of a very remarkable trio for me is "Beside a waterfall." It just keeps building and building and building. Yes, of course, some of the shots of the women in the water are very erotic. It was 1933, after all, and before the Hayes Code. Berkeley and Warner Brothers understood that pretty women posed erotically had a real appeal to men,
------------------------------------
I watched the end of this movie again this morning. Perhaps I paid closer attention to this number this time, perhaps I was just in the right "mood." Either way, I marveled at the suggestiveness of so much of it. Those jets of water spurting up - I use the verb advisedly - between the swimming women's legs. All those shots of women opening and closing their legs. It was remarkably erotic on my 46" tv screen. What must it have been like in 1933 on huge movie theater screens in the era before multiplexes????
==========================================
But these erotic poses are not JUST erotic poses. The number keeps building and building and building. What will he do next, you keep wondering? Oh, that. But "that" is even more incredible than what has come before. By the time you get to the end of this number, you're exhausted, not just physically and erotically, but imaginatively as well. How could anyone have maintained and built on that suspense for 10 whole minutes? I can't tell you, but Berkeley did.
Third of the three prologues, "Shanghai Lil," is definitely not something that could have been filmed the same way just a year or two later when the Production Code was put in force. We see an opium den, a lot of prostitutes, at least one interracial couple, etc.
Having watched it again tonight, I will add that this is a strange "musical." There is almost no music for the first hour and a half. It's all in the three closing numbers. But what numbers!