Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 06/24/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, June 24, 2019

Dance, Fools, Dance (Harry Beaumont, 1931)

Cast: Joan Crawford, Lester Vail, Cliff Edwards, William Bakewell, William Holden*, Clark Gable. Screenplay: Aurania Rouverol, Richard Schayer. Cinematography: Charles Rosher. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: George Hively. Costume design: Adrian.

Although it was the first film in which Joan Crawford appeared with Clark Gable, it's mostly Crawford's movie -- Gable gets sixth billing, below the first William Holden*, who plays Crawford's father. Dance, Girl, Dance isn't quite the musical it sounds like, although Crawford does get to dance a little clunkily. It's a gangster movie in which Crawford's character, a rich girl turned poor by the Depression, goes into journalism and finds herself investigating mob boss Jake Luva (Gable), for whom she of course falls until she finds out that he's a killer. The chemistry between Crawford and Gable led to their teaming in seven more films.

*1861-1932