137. Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)

Directed By Dorothy Arzner

Synopsis

Girl dreams of being a ballerina, but can only get jobs doing crap dances. Bubbles, her colleague gets her a place supporting her in a burlesque show, love hexagon! Girl gets discovered and fulfils her dream.

Review

If you look up there, under the picture, there is something particular about this film... it is directed by a woman! It is only the second film on the list directed by a woman, and the other one was in the 20's! This has nothing to do with faults by the part of the list makers, its just that there weren't that many female directors in the world.

Usually I have a problem with adding female directors or writers to lists just to make their presence known. I think it does a disservice to women because it glosses over the differences in work opportunities of a certain era and because there are so few women doing those jobs there is a certain "scraping the barrel" feel to it, ending up with sub-par works for the sake of keeping some people happy, giving a bad image both of women's work and ignoring social problems.

That being said, this film is an exception, it is not only a good film but also a significant film. It is significant because I have never seen anything like it on the list until now, it has a very strong female sensibility, in a good way. It shows relationships between women for example in a much more realistic light, there's all the bitchyness and competition that you rarely see in romanticised views of womanly friendship. It is hard to believe that a film starring Lucille Ball would have such intellectual content, but the scene where Ball's stooge stands up to the crowd in the burlesque show is the closest to feminism that the cinema had come to in that day.

Beyond that, it is funny and smart, it must be the first film I've seen with a love hexagon, 6 people are part of the love story giving it a level of complexity not very common in the films of the 40's. So get it today at Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Arzner faced significant hurdles to fully capitalize on her skills and talents. In addition to being a woman, she was a lesbian who was unwilling to disguise her sexuality (she often dressed in men's suits and ties). Joan Crawford once said, "I think all my directors fell in love with me; I know Dorothy Arzner did!" Nonetheless, her innovative ideas and approach put her in high demand as a director.

Arzner directed Paramount's first talkie in 1929, The Wild Party, which starred Clara Bow. To allow Bow to move freely on the set, Arzner had technicians rig a microphone onto a fishing rod, essentially creating the first boom mike.[2] The Wild Party was a success with critics and performed well at the box office. The film, set in a women's college, introduced some of the apparent lesbian undertones and themes often cited in Arzner's work. Her films of the following three years were strong examples of Hollywood before the Production Code. These films featured aggressive, free-spirited and independent women.

She left Paramount in 1932 to begin work as an independent director for several of the studios. The projects she helmed during this period are her best known, with the films launching the careers of many actresses, most notably Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, and Lucille Ball. In 1936, Arzner became the first woman to join the newly formed Directors' Guild of America.

For unclear reasons, Arzner stopped directing feature-length films in 1943. She continued to work in the following years, directing television commercials and Army training films. She also produced plays and, in the 1960s and '70s, worked as a professor at the UCLA film school, teaching screenwriting and directing until her death in 1979.

Dorothy Arzner, who never married or had children, died at the age of 82 in La Quinta, California. She was linked romantically with a number of actresses, but lived much of her life with choreographer Marion Morgan. For her achievements in the field of motion pictures, Arzner was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 Vine Street.

In a lovely dispaly of geographical knowledge I present Lucille Ball in her most famous role in I Love Lucy, doing an impression of Portuguese (Europe, speaks Portuguese) born, Brazilian (South america , speaks Portuguese) singer Carmen Miranda, while saying Ole (Spanish) and sharing the stage with a Mexican (Central America and Spanish language), oh well it's foreign. At least Desi Arnaz should know better: