The Band Wagon
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Year Released: 1953
Rating: 2.0
Well-known behind-the-scenes musical that has a strange anti-elitist bent - intellectualism in the form of "serious" theater is considered less important than fun, frivolous numbers ("I'm a song and dance man," Fred Astaire tells everyone). The arguments in this are fairly transparent - Astaire's tiff with Cyd Charisse is not believable - as are the 'problems' that face the production, like the stage that malfunctions in every which way possible. If the audiences that thought the Faustian flop (directed by a 'genius' that prefers the artsy to the light and disposable - the film views him as a 'phony' 'egomaniac') was depressing they should have waited a few years and turned Bergman's Wild Strawberries into a play.
