Stay with it. It becomes increasingly surreal.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Because It's There
Labels:
Busby Berkeley,
Carmen Miranda,
Film,
Film Musicals,
Music
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improvisations on literature : music : film : the spiritual : the political : the ridiculous
Guillaume Apollinaire
Stay with it. It becomes increasingly surreal.
nothing is real
4 comments:
Good Lord, that's extraordinary... exhilarating... terrifying...
What movies is that from?
Hmmmm. Now I know what happens when you cross Luis Buñuel with Carmen Miranda and drop them in the land of Oz.
I'll never look at a Chiquita banana in quite the same way again.
The Gang's All Here (1943), directed by Busby Berkeley, starring Carmen Miranda, Benny Goodman, Edward Everett Horton, et al. We got to see this on a big screen last summer at Film Forum in NY, on a double bill with Maria Montez in Cobra Woman. It was a wonderful way to spend a lazy summer afternoon and evening. Amazingly, this scene may not be the most bizarre part of the film. For some reason, Busby was into floating heads around this time, and the finale was v-e-r-y interesting. Alas, it's not on YouTube, though a couple of other clips are. It's actually a highly enjoyable film, with pretty good music at times. (Benny Goodman.) Berkeley was certainly one of the most visually inventive American directors and choreographers. I would love to find a DVD that just had his most interesting musical numbers. 42 Street and Footlight Parade have a lot of great thing in them as well. This, though, may be his weirdest. And it's a WWII-era Hollywood production. As far as I know, LSD wasn't available yet.
It was the fungus growing on those bananas that made them see the world in such a novel way.
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