The Band Wagon (1953)
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
A Broadway artiste turns a faded film star's comeback vehicle into an artsy flop.
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What critics compared The Band Wagon to
It isn’t the opening dance number on a jammed Los Angeles freeway interchange, or the surreal extended homage to “The Band Wagon” and “Singin’ in the Rain.”
But then "La La Land" isn't trying to be "The Band Wagon."
At the climax, Chazelle pulls it all together with a what-if musical fantasy evoking visual and conceptual aspects of the "American in Paris" ballet, the "Girl Hunt" sequence from another, even greater Minnelli film, "The Band Wagon," the "Broadway Ballet" from "Singin' in the Rain" and more.
One sequence, which is shot in an extended, one-shot take overlooking the city of Los Angeles, has a similar budding romantic vibe as Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse‘s Central Park dance in The Band Wagon .
He makes allusions to Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Funny Face (1957), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and more.
The climax is like one of those long ballet sequences in Minnelli's An American in Paris or The Band Wagon, beautiful, and imagining what life might have been like if the lovers had done everything correctly, but then it ends on a more Demy-like note, bittersweet.
The electric blue suit that Sandler wears throughout the film was, according to Anderson, inspired by a similar suit in Vincente Minnelli's great movie musical "The Band Wagon."
Intimately concerned with the embarrassment and difficulty of constant repositioning and mutual readjustments and with all the ethical issues that arise from this activity--the same sort of issues that abound in the films of Leo McCarey (such as My Son John and An Affair to Remember) and Vincente Minnelli (such as The Cobweb and The Band Wagon)--these interactions are the mother lode that all of Brooks's features have been searching for.
El impulso cómico para mantener la atención de los niños proviene de la diferencia de tamaño de los animales y cómo las cualidades físicas de éstos afectan su desempeño en el escenario; por otra parte, el público adulto encontrará sutiles guiños al musical de Broadway, A Chorus Line, y a las películas The Band Wagon (1953) y Sunsent Boulevard (1950), aunque sin la carga sombría y desesperanzadora que Vincente Minnelli y Billy Wilder le impregnaron a sus respectivos filmes.
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But it wouldn't be the '50s without Commies, in the chic person of Irina Spalko (played by Blanchett with the severe demeanor of Cyd Charisse's Ninotchka in the 1957 MGM musical Silk Stockings and the black bob Charisse sports in The Band Wagon).
Personally, I think "The Band Wagon," "West Side Story" and "Cabaret" are the best films of the problematic genre.