The Band Wagon (1953)

Second viewing.

An aging dancer, going through a down phase in his career, is invited to do a new musical show under the direction of a prestigious director of classic dramas. A renowned ballerina is invited to be the leading lady.

Almost ininterruptedly enjoyable until the opening night of the flop show. After the performance there is a get-together of the artists, which is kind of a perplexing sequence because, being so well done in mise-en-scene terms, is so poorly provided musically (the slightly ridiculous and thematically unrelated to the rest of the film I Love Louisa). Shortly after that point there are two numbers (Triplets and Louisiana Hay Ride) which contrast even more with the refinement of everything that went before and are among the most grotesque I have ever seen; furthermore, they do not seem to connect between themselves at all. I wonder what they really mean, if anything. Was that break in style on purpose? Was it meant to convey the vulgarity of the new show, in opposition to the stiff elitism of the original one? The third number of the reworked show, the splendid parody of hard-boiled novels/films, seems to be a more explicit commentary on low culture; this time around, however, the artistry which is displayed puts a distance between what we see and that low culture, thus leveling the film and the show within it. To wrap everything around, we have an ending which seems to establish a connection with the original Oedipus Rex thematic thread, approaching the question which must come to the mind of every reader/watcher of that classic play: doesn't it bother Oedipus in the least that Jocasta is so much older than him? The genders are reversed in the film (in relation to the myth), which is probably significative. In truth, this subtheme of age difference is not unrelated to the "main" one, of high-brow/low-brow opposition, with a mean twist: here the older person is associated with the lower end of the cultural spectrum, and the younger one, with its higher end.

Rating: 67

P.S.: after picking up some information on the web about this film, some of its problems were explained to me. The songs were all taken from a 1931 Broadway musical, but the screenplay has, apparently, nothing to do with that show. From which we see that the film is actually, in a way, about itself: it shows how when you join too many incompatible elements in the same work, problems arise.