42nd Street (1933)
Directed by Lloyd Bacon
Written by Rian James, James Seymour
Starring Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, George Brent, Ginger Rogers
Synopsis
This one dude is kind of washed up but he gets a couple of producers to make a broadway musical starring the girlfriend of the financier. There's a love square which a couple of the other players to the mix. Mid-level hijinks and singing / dancing ensue. The numbers in the musical-within-the-movie are produced by Busby Berkeley
The Woman
i slept through three 15 minute chunks of this hour and a half movie. dreary days and black and white movies will do that to me. what i did see....well, meh. the chicks were treated terribly, and the one inexperienced "virginal" chick was being constantly reaffirmed by the men around her. there should have been more busby berkeley and less plot. and that's what i have to say about the half that i saw
MOster
This definitely fell short of my expectations. The plot was alright, and there were more characters and stories than there are in a lot of the things we've seen lately. The (main) characters were distinct and well-drawn. The story hit most of the marks, and some of them might not have been so expected 77 years ago.
Acting was alright for the period, I guess. The supporting characters did a better job than the leads, especially in the facial expression category. Most of them played drunk pretty well.
The biggest reason I was disappointed in this movie is that I expected much more musical. I hope Berkley didn't get full salary for this because there were really only a couple of true musical / dancing numbers. Those were pretty awesome; and the rest of the technical stuff was just fine. But I wish there were more clever routines with those overhead cameras and the super-awesome leg work. Those were extremely cool, but the last 20 minutes didn't really make up for the first 70.
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