Dance, girl, dance

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Movie
Original title Dance, girl, dance
Country of production USA
original language English
Publishing year 1940
length 90 minutes
Rod
Director Dorothy Arzner
script Vicki Baum ,
Frank Davis ,
Tess Slesinger
production Erich Pommer for
RKO Radio Pictures
music Edward Ward
camera Russell Metty ,
Joseph H. August
cut Robert Wise
occupation

Dance, Girl, Dance is an American fiction film directed by Dorothy Arzner from 1940. The film, which is based on an original story by the author Vicki Baum , is considered one of Arzner's best-known films and has been particularly popular since the 1970s rediscovered in feminist film studies.

plot

Judy and Bubbles perform with their dance troupe at a nightclub in Akron , Ohio . Bubbles is a charismatic singer who knows a thing or two about it, Judy, on the other hand, is a hardworking but not very experienced ballerina . Both women find Jimmy Harris, a young man they meet at the nightclub, interesting. Jimmy has a drinking problem and is still in love with his wife, Elinor, who is about to divorce him. He decides to spend the evening with the more offensive Bubbles, but later abandons her when he happens to be reminded of Elinor.

After the dancers return to their mentor Madame Basilova in New York, Bubbles receives a well-paid engagement as a burlesque artist in a nightclub. Madame Basivola, a former famous ballet dancer, arranges a meeting for Judy with the ballet impresario Steve Adams so that she can take the next steps in her career with him. On the way to the meeting, Madame Basilova is run over by a car and dies. Judy is so intimidated by the abilities of the other dancers at Adams that, despite the kind words from the secretary Miss Olmstead, she doesn't dare to audition at the impresario at all. As she leaves the building, she runs into Steve Adams in the elevator, who offers her a taxi ride because of the rainy weather. Little did she know that the man was Adam, and she declined the offer.

Bubbles has now made the big breakthrough and is known as the burlesque queen "Tiger Lily". She offers the financially struggling Judy a job as a sidekick on her burlesque show. The shy ballerina Judy appears on the show as a contrast to Bubbles. She is booed by the audience until Bubbles enters the stage again, beaming. One evening, Jimmy and Steve Adams both go to a performance. Judy then goes out with Jimmy while tearing up a card Adams left for her. Jimmy and Judy get along well and think they are in love with each other. But the next evening, while they are sitting in a nightclub, a scandal breaks out: Jimmy knocks down “Puss in Boots”, the lawyer and new husband of his ex-wife. The newspapers exploited it the next day. Swarmed by reporters, the drunk Jimmy is now sitting in front of Judy's apartment, but she won't let him in. Bubbles appears - she's angry anyway that Judy "took" Jimmy away, especially after she found out about his fortune. She takes the drunk, deeply sad Jimmy under her wing and drags him to the nearest registry office.

Just before the evening performance, Judy learns that Bubbles and Jimmy have married. Before that, Judy had patiently endured all the humiliations, but during the performance it breaks out of her: She breaks off her act and explains to the roaring, predominantly male audience that they would only put it down and objectify it in order to suppress boredom, own problems and inferiority complexes . Then there is a solid fight for Jimmy on stage between her and Bubbles. Judy will be brought to justice for having started the fight. The judge sympathizes with Judy, she receives ten days in jail or a $ 50 fine, the latter is later paid by Steve. Judy makes sure that Jimmy gets back together with his ex-wife Elinor, because she is the woman he has always loved. Bubbles accepts this, especially since she can look forward to a large severance payment from Jimmy. The next day, Judy meets Steve, who announces that he wants to make her a great dancer.

Production background

Dance, Girl, Dance was one of the few films that Erich Pommer - once one of the most important film producers in the German film industry - was able to make in his exile in Hollywood. Van Nest Polglase and Darrell Silvera worked as art directors on the film. The costume designer was Edward Stevenson .

Roy Del Ruth was originally supposed to direct the film, but he was fired shortly after filming began. Thereupon Dorothy Arzner was appointed to the director's chair, who at that time was the only female director in the Hollywood business. She made some changes to the script, especially the relationships between the two very different women Bubbles and Judy. The character of the dance teacher was originally designed as a male in the script and was rewritten as a female role for Maria Ouspenskaya . For Arzner's biographer Judith Mayne, Arzner is reflected in the figure of Madame Basilova, who, like Arzner, maintains a rather masculine style of clothing and acts as a mentor for the young women. But there may also be more pragmatic reasons for changing the gender of the role, as the actually cast Maurice Moscovitch died shortly after filming began. Maria Ouspenskaya, as a celebrated character actress with a similar age and an Eastern European accent to Moscovitch, was an obvious choice anyway.

Award

In 2007 the film was included in the National Film Registry as an American film worth preserving. In the justification, the film was described as the “most fascinating” film by Arzner, which asks questions about the disparity between art and commerce.

Reviews

After its premiere in August 1940, the film was a commercial flop. While the contemporary reviews were rather mixed, Dance, Girls, Dance has been rediscovered in film criticism since the 1970s. Today the film is considered to be one of the best known and best films by Arzner, who is considered to be the most important film director in classic Hollywood cinema. This is one of the reasons why the film is well discussed, especially in feminist film theory. The American National Society of Film Critics included the film in its 2002 list of "100 Most Essential Films".

Bosley Crowther speculated in the New York Times of October 11, 1940 that producer Pommer had wanted to make a saga about glamorous choir girls that would surpass all previous sagas about glamorous choir girls. He was "almost successful" - apart from Maureen O'Hara (according to Crowther, "capable, but heavily miscast"), the roles were competently cast and the production was "pompous". Lucille Ball brings "occasional momentum" to the film and especially with her burlesque numbers "she pulls the Hays Code blank," says Crowther. But the story of the film is only a "clichéd, twisted repetition" of well-known stories about the difficulties and pains of an artist on her way to fame. The film is "not art".

In a 21st century review, Richard Brody wrote about the film in The New Yorker . He's got his title right, because "his subject is really dancing". Arzner is directing with “fascination and enthusiasm”, the choreography is characterized by the fact that it partially adopts the viewer's perspective and the dancers are always aware that they are being watched. The director Arzner shows "dancers who can withstand the drooling looks of men". At this point the “two vectors of history intersect - art versus commerce and love versus lust”. Arzner's film is an "idealistic eulogy for the higher areas of creative and romantic fulfillment", at the same time "harshly realistic about the degradation women endure in the entertainment industry (...)".

Dave Kehr of Chicago Reader said, "The themes are friendships among women and the realization of women, and it's one of Arzner's most coherent and successful films."

For Michael Kienzl from critic.de , the film lives from the contrast between “popular and high culture, but without having to play one against the other.” The two main characters would “not stand for the good and the bad side of the same thing, but for different life models and needs ”. Arzner makes it clear, however, that you won't find your happiness if you just want to please everyone - which becomes clear in the scene in which Judy addresses the audience. This scene was classified as important by feminist film criticism, "because in it a woman withdraws from the (predominantly) male, objectifying gaze in order to simply look back." work hard on stage, the latter would quickly become arrogant and become part of a staging themselves through their behavior.

publication

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Jump up ↑ Sheila O'Malley: Dance, Girl, Dance: Gotta Dance. Accessed December 8, 2020 .
  2. ^ Judith Mayne: Directed by Dorothy Arzner . Indiana University Press, 1994. pp. 144-146.
  3. ↑ Ursula Hardt: From Caligari to California: Eric Pommer's Life in the International Film Wars . Berghahn Books, 1996, ISBN 978-1-78533-010-0 ( google.de [accessed December 8, 2020]).
  4. ^ Librarian of Congress Announces National Film Registry Selections for 2007. Retrieved December 8, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Blu-ray / DVD: Dance, Girl, Dance. July 29, 2020, accessed December 8, 2020 .
  6. ^ Judith Mayne: Directed by Dorothy Arzner . Indiana University Press, 1994. p. 131.
  7. ↑ Internet Archive: The A list: the National Society of Film Critics' 100 essential films . Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-306-81096-1 ( archive.org [accessed December 9, 2020]).
  8. ↑ Bosley Crowther: THE SCREEN IN REVIEW: Laughton in 'They Knew What They Wanted' at Music Hall - Dance, Girl, Dance 'at Palace - New Films at Loew's State, Rialto and Cinecitta (Published 1940) . In: The New York Times . October 11, 1940, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed December 8, 2020]).
  9. Jump up ↑ Dance Girl Dance. Accessed December 8, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Dave Kehr: Dance, Girl, Dance. Accessed December 8, 2020 .
  11. ↑ www.critic.de: Dance, Girl, Dance | Criticism. Retrieved December 8, 2020 .