Ziegfeld Follies

I like to watch films with very little or no foreknowledge of what is in store.  I like to be surprised.  So, when I stumbled across a listing for Ziegfeld Follies on TCM, I immediately programmed my DVR to record it.  My cable provider gave the film four stars and it had William Powell in a non-Nick Charles role?  I was intrigued.  And only minutes after I began watching, I was utterly confused.

Ziegfeld Follies opens with Florenz Ziegfeld (William Powell) lounging around what appears to be a luxury suite in Heaven.  While Ziegfeld appears to enjoy being dead, he also wistfully wonders aloud what a great show he could put on with the current crop of famous talent.  In case you didn't know --- and if you are under the age of 70, that's not terribly surprising --- Ziegfeld was a real person who masterminded a string of high-profile, star-studded musical/comedy/dance revues on Broadway, in the 1910s and 20s.  Ziegfeld's reminisces are brought to life by some sort of puppetry/stop-motion animation, which  features (among many things) holy-shit-that's-racist portrayals of Native Americans and blacks.  How racist is it?  You know those Tom & Jerry scenes that have been edited out of television broadcasts for the last twenty-odd years?  Worse than that.

If only because the "joke" wasn't caused by an explosion

You may rightly wonder why the hell there are puppets onscreen at this point, and that's a valid concern.  It won't be answered in this film, but I can guarantee that it won't be referenced again, either, so...there's that.  You see, Fred Astaire shows up, as himself, on a stage and explains that Ziegfeld had a magic touch for entertainment and racism.  This segues into a song (naturally), which transitions into Lucille Ball giving some S&M treatment to a crowd of Batman villain cosplayers.

She's gonna have some 'splainin' to do

Oddly, Ball --- arguably the most famous comedienne ever --- doesn't have a line of dialogue or any physical comedy bits.  She just looks bitchy and cracks a whip at Catwomen.  That's not even close to the only bizarre choice made in Ziegfeld Follies, but it won't bother you for long; after a few minutes, it is time for a new bit, with only a title card serving as a transition from one act to the next.  After all, that is what is going on here; this is a collection of unrelated musical and comedic bits thrown together to wow the audience with glitz, glamor, and star power.  How much star power, you ask?  Fred Astaire stars in several bits, but you also get to see Judy Garland, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, Lena Horne, Red Skelton --- and those are just the ones I recognized without doing any research!

To be perfectly frank, I had no idea when I watched Ziegfeld Follies who Ziegfeld was or what his Follies were.  I was also unaware that William Powell played Ziegfeld once before, in the 1936 Best Picture winner, The Great Ziegfeld.  Even armed with that knowledge, I don't think I would have been prepared for the sheer ridiculousness of this movie.  Oh, you think The Hunger Games had some odd costumes?  Consider this check and mate.

That's a hat, not a pink luckdragon in heat

I'm not even going to bother explaining the scene where dozens of pretty girls may or may not have been suffocated by soap bubbles.  But that's okay, there are a ton of ill-advised scenes in this revue.  Do you love comedy sketches that are about ***snicker*** how annoying telephone operators are?  Hmm...okay, maybe that doesn't translate very well into the modern age.  How about lawyer jokes?  Maybe some 1940s fake drunken acting?  No?  Okay, you're a viewer with discriminating tastes --- here's a gift for you:

Yes, that is Fred Astaire, wearing heavy makeup and playing a stereotypical Chinaman.  The racist puppets were kind of surprising, but this...damn, Fred!  I could excuse you somewhat if this was a really cool song or dance number --- it's not like they had a lot of Asians in Hollywood at the time, much less singing and dancing ones --- but it's really slow and boring, plus offensive to modern tastes.

I don't want to give the impression that Ziegfeld Follies is just a collection of what-were-they-thinking sketches.  To be fair, there are a number of charming acts. For instance, I had never seen Esther Williams (outside of a few MGM montages) before, and her underwater scenes were interesting.  I don't quite understand how her swimming choreography became popular in movies, but I have to admit that some of it looked pretty.

...and some of it looked like Minority Report murders

Fred Astaire, when he wasn't busy offending Asians, was pretty entertaining in a few dance numbers.  Notably, this was the first and only time he and Gene Kelly danced together on film in their prime.  While I didn't care for any of the songs in Ziegfeld Follies --- which I was surprised at, given the star power in the film --- the dancing sequences were pretty impressive.

Perhaps not the best screenshot to capture that sentiment

I also liked Judy Garland's spoof of serious actresses.  It wasn't a great song, but the sentiment was kind of funny; it was more of a style over substance bit, but I was surprised to see such sharp barbs aimed at the same people who bring prestige to their projects.

"Drama!" - a more or less direct quote

Almost every scene had a different director, with only Vincente Minnelli and George Sydney handling multiple scenes.  Robert Lewis, Lemuel Ayers, Roy Del Ruth, Charles Walters, and Merrill Pye round out the rest of the directors in this film.  Not surprisingly, the different directors only emphasized the disjointed nature of this film; even if there had not been title cards separating each scene, the difference is style was very noticeable.  I wasn't very impressed with any of the directors, but I will admit that (as a whole) the group used some pretty high-end sets.  Not every set, mind you --- they ranged from opulent to minimalist --- but there were enough "wow" moments to stick with you.

Ziegfeld Follies was probably never meant to stand the test of time, but that is the issue modern viewers are faced with.  On the one hand, this is a movie that feels like the sort of thing you would have seen in Manhattan in the 1920s.  The dance sequences are pretty well done and the songs (while not memorable) are inoffensive.  On the other hand, every single attempt at humor fails miserably, the dance sequences never blow your mind, and the songs are mediocre and not very famous.  When you add that amount of underwhelming to something that is hodgepodge, without the semblance of story, and add a generous heaping of WTF, the result is less than magical.  There are only a few shining lights in this movie to justify anything approaching a respectable rating, but the randomness, the racism, and the absolutely wretched comedy in Ziegfeld Follies makes for a soul-sucking experience.

Oh, and William Powell is only in the opening scene?  What the hell?!?  He is the only reason I watched this damn thing!

The Towering Inferno

I've never been a huge fan of disaster movies.  Sure, I get a kick out of big things going boom, but these movies are usually pretty dumb (2012, I'm looking at you) and cliche-ridden (that's you, Independence Day).  Thanks to those tendencies, I tend to only watch the newest disaster flicks; if I'm going to watch a special effects extravaganza with no story, I might as well see the cutting edge technology, right?  Well, I recently realized that I have completely omitted seeing any disaster movies from their prime in the 1970s, the "Decade of Disaster."  For the record, that's not an official nickname for the 70s, that's just what I like to call it for so very many reasons.  Anyway, I thought I'd give a classic disaster film a shot, and I opted for the Academy Award-winning one, The Towering Inferno.

The world's tallest building, the Glass Tower, is having its public dedication in scenic San Francisco.  The ribbon will be cut, and a few hundred people will head up to the 138th floor penthouse for a fancy party with tuxedos, slinky dresses, and (probably) cocktail shrimp.  During a routine systems check before the dedication, one of the electrical boxes on the 81st floor starts a small fire.  The sprinklers don't go off and the fire alarm doesn't sound, though.  For the dedication, they turn on every light in the building to show off just how tall and bright it can be; that turns out to be a bad idea with an electrical system that is already having problems, and things get worse from here on in.  Power malfunctions and skimping on building materials lead to the warning systems going off far too late, and pretty soon there is an inferno working its way up to the party on the 138th floor.

Aren't they a little too happy for a disaster flick?

In a movie like this, the spectacle and special effects are bigger stars than the cast.  And that is really saying something, because this cast is star-studded.  Paul Newman and Steve McQueen co-headline as the world's bravest architect and fireman, respectively.  While this isn't either actor's finest moment, they're both very likable and charismatic, so it's easy to ignore that their characters lack depth.  You can argue that McQueen's character is too preachy and bland, but he does make a pretty good hero.  On the flip side of things, William Holden is solid as the accidentally villainous cost- and appearance-conscious owner of the building; Richard Chamberlain was far less impressive as the corner-cutting businessman whose shoddy materials caused the fire --- I won't say that he's MWA-HA-HA evil, but the man should have had a mustache he could twirl.

The rest of the cast has much smaller and less important roles, but many of the actors are instantly recognizable.  Faye Dunaway is Newman's love interest, and the pair are pretty together.  O.J. Simpson is a security guard who saves a cat.  Fred Astaire plays an ineffective con man, earning a "you've been overlooked for your whole career, so here's acknowledgment for a far lesser role" Academy Award nomination.  Jennifer Jones made her last film appearance here, and it is fairly memorable, if only for her final scene.  Robert Wagner has a small role as the idiot who turned on all the lights, because the city of San Francisco is going to ooh and ahh over a building with electric lights like it's a 138-story Christmas tree.  Stupid.  Robert Vaughn, who I always seem to catch in roles where he plays a jerk, was surprisingly likable as a US Senator (the political kind, not the sports kind).  Mike "Bobby Brady" Lookinland has a small part as a Bobby Brady-age kid.  No, he doesn't die.  Oh, and you might recognize Susan Flannery as a soap opera actress.  Or not.

But, like I said earlier, the cast is largely inconsequential next to the spectacle of this fire.  Without CGI to enhance it, I was a little skeptical as to how good this disaster would look, but I needn't have worried.  They did this the old-fashioned way, through misdirection and real fire.  I thought the movie looked great, especially for one made forty years ago.  There is a lot of smoke, a lot of debris, and (of course) a lot of fire.  What I liked about this fire is that it was obviously dangerous from a very early point.  While the fire started at the thirteen-minute mark, it didn't kill anyone for another forty-five minutes; the characters that died were, surprisingly, not just some random scrubs, but a recognizable actor with a subplot in full swing.  So, the fire is apparent early in the film --- which is important in a movie that clocks in at over 160 minutes --- and deadly to characters that you expect to hang around a while.  That's awesome!  Fire is so rarely shown as dangerous in films (it's more of a cool backdrop most of the time) that this approach feels almost novel.  Pair the dangerousness of the fire with the old-school special effects that actually used fire (and lots and lots of smoke), and this is a pretty believable disaster.  And that's the whole point.

Check, please!

Does that mean that this is a marvel of modern filmmaking?  Not exactly.  I thought John Guillermin did a decent job directing the dramatic parts of the story; there are far too many characters for any of them to be compelling, but he keeps things interesting.  In an interesting move, Irwin Allen is given credit for directing the many action scenes in the film, and I thought these scenes were largely enjoyable...I'm not sure why he gets a directing credit, though.  Maybe they didn't have action choreographers in 1974.  Despite the pretty solid directing, the story is a little shallow and underdeveloped.  That's not shocking for a movie with such a large cast and a plot device that seems to kill cast members at random, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a problem.  With such shallow characters, some moments that are meant to add levity or warmth to the story fall short.  Why, for instance, is Jennifer Jones apparently happy to learn that Fred Astaire is a con man?  Accepting, or even mischievously knowing, I can buy...but she's pretty ecstatic.  And there's a pre-coitus moment between Faye Dunaway and Paul Newman where she tells him that he's "all protein."  Eww.  I understand that these are just snippets used to add the illusion of depth to these characters, but they're pretty odd moments for two of the deepest subplots in the film.

On a quick side note, am I the only person who finds it hard to believe that Maureen McGovern's song, "We May Never Love Like This Again" A) is the theme to a disaster movie B) was performed by her, in a scene, and yet we never see her character's ultimate fate and/or C) won an Academy Award?  Man, the seventies were a strange time.

On the other hand, I like when big things go boom.  While this isn't a flawless movie, it is pretty entertaining, despite a long run-time.  For the most part, I think the movie is surprisingly plausible (except for that stupid helicopter explosion), which is a nice change of pace for a disaster flick.  Newman was good, McQueen was above average, and the largely recognizable cast made for some unexpected fodder for the flames.  I would have liked it better if Newman and McQueen weren't such know-it-alls, but it is kind of nice to have a disaster with obviously culpable parties.