71. 42nd Street (1933)

Directed By Lloyd Bacon

Synopsis

A girl wants to make it in show business! The main actress break her ankle! Girl needs to take main part! Oh Noes! She makes it in show business!

Review

It is a perfectly unremarkable film in everything except the last 10 minutes. Yes, there are jokes, and it can be quite funny. The directing is not bad, but nothing extrordinary, some of the acting is just passable and none of it is stellar.

That said, when you have Busby Berkeley directing the song and dance bits it can't just be run of the mill. So in the last 10 minutes the film definitely pays off with some brilliant musical numbers.

And that is all this film is, a simple musical comedy with a plot that has been rehashed again and again throughout film history with some truly great dance sequences and great music as well, with hits as 42nd Street or You Are Getting To Be A Habit With Me, and these two things are well worth the admission.

It is also worth seeing one of Ginger Rogers first parts, in what is probably the best character in the whole film. Bebe Daniels, the main actress is nothing special however, she is a good dancer, an okay singer and a crap actress. Buy it at UK or US.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

No Films for this :(


From Wikipedia:

In private life, Berkeley was as flamboyant as his work. He went through six wives, an alienation-of-affections suit involving a prominent movie queen, and a fatal car accident which resulted in his being tried (and acquitted) for second degree murder. In the late 1960s, the camp craze brought the Berkeley musicals back into the forefront. He hit the college and lecture circuit, and even directed a 1930s-style cold tablet commercial, complete with a top shot of a dancing clock. In his 75th year, Busby Berkeley returned to Broadway to direct a success revival of ‘No No Nanette’, starring his old Warner Brothers colleague and “42nd Street” star Ruby Keeler.

Berkeley died in Palm Springs, California at the age of 80 from natural causes