This week’s Rhapsody is the Mourner’s Rhapsody by Czeslaw Niemen.
It’s been a while since I’ve shared yet another variation of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. I’ve tried to be strong but it was no use this one was too good with a classical music, string quartet version courtesy of the Royal Academy of Music.
Enjoy
Well after two weeks of watching dark cynical films that while taking place in and around Christmas were not in any way shape or form about Christmas I decided to finish the season with some true blue, optimistic, fluffy, troll the cynics, idealistic all American Christmas films!
White Christmas is one of those films that whether you saw it or not you find yourself thinking that you did because of all of the little snippets of it and all of the songs of it being played around the holiday season. I have some memories of seeing it but in hindsight it was about the last ten minutes of it (the rest of my memories were from assorted Irving Berlin reviews on PBS)
Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye play two war buddies turned a team of popular song and dance men. When they meet a team of performing sisters played by Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen. They join them to go to their next gig in a resort in Vermont right before Christmas. When they get their they discover two things… First Vermont is having a warm spell so their are no customers at the resort and Two the resort is owned by Crosby and Kaye’s former commanding officer. The rest of the film consists of them trying to help save the resort by putting on a huge show with a little bit of time left over for our two couples to fall in love.
For the most part White Christmas is a 1950s Jukebox film with just enough plot to allow for the ensemble to perform as many Irving Berlin songs as possible… make no mistake there’s nothing wrong with this with the talent involved (though for the most part I found myself enjoying the choreography more than the singing. All in all it was an enjoyable bit of fluff.
(On a quick side none for some reason I keep thinking of Danny Kaye as short and keep being surprised when at 5’ll” he towers over all of his co stars in any movie I’ve ever seen him in.)
It Happened on Fifth Ave tells the story of Aloysius T. McKeever a hobo played by Victor Moore who spends the winter squatting in a fifth avenue mansion owned by “the second richest man in the world” Micheal J O’Connor, who spends his winters in Virginia.
McKeever runs into Jim, a young veteran down on his luck sleeping on a park bench, and invites him to move in. Then O’Connor’s daughter Trudy has run away from her finishing school and arrives home in disguise as well as the some of the veteran’s old friend are added to the mix and before you know it, it’s one huge happy family.
Meanwhile O’Connor finds out about this but rather than call the cops on the group, is convinced by Trudy to check things out disguised as a homeless man… Hilarity ensues.
This is a sweet little comedy. For the first half hour I found myself wondering if the script was written with W.C. Fields in mind but I quickly found myself loving Moore’s performance. It is never clear whether if he is a complete innocent to all of the things going on around him or if he is intentionally manipulating everybody for their own good but it is he who ultimately conducts everything else going on from the rather by the numbers romance of Jim and Trudy as well as the redemption of Micheal.
For this weeks Rhapsody we have the Romanian Rhapsody by Jean Absil.
Continuing the theme of films that are of the season but not seasonal, I watched some thrillers.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the only James Bond film starring George Lazenby as Bond it’s also the only one where the Bond Girl gets 007, albeit with tragic results in the end.
This Bond film has a slower pace than most focusing on the romance Bond and the Contessa Treresa di Vincenzo, Played by Diana Rigg (though that doesn’t stop him from going after every other character in a skirt (other than Bloeeld’s right hand woman Frau Irma Bunt)) After that I’t all about Bond trying to infiltrate Blofeld’s (this time played by Telly Savalis) lair disguised as a genealogist in order to prevent Bloefeld’s latest convoluted blackmail scheme to threaten the world, this time using a bioweapon transported by brainwashed fashion models.
All of this leads to some entertaining action scenes and high speed chases on skis and bobsleds but all in good fun. For the most part this was a nice piece of fluff. I’m not sure completely what I thought of Lazenby as Bond… to a certain extent not being familiar with him had his disguise work on me when he first appears as the genealogist… But otherwise I don’t think I had a problem with him.
I find it interesting the number of films I first heard of in a collection of Mad Magazine Parodies by Jack Davis growing up. So for years all I knew about The French Connection was an exaggerated portrayal of Gene Hackman’s performance of Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle playing up every bit of loudmouthed racism the character has. Mind you the character is no saint and it’s almost a tribute to Hackman’s art that he’s nearly impossible to like.
Loosely based on a true story about one of the greatest drug busts in American History, the plot starts with Doyle and “Cloudy” Russo played by Roy Schneider stumbling over a huge smuggling operation based in Marseilles France. From there we have them bulldozing their way through the case finally breaking it wide open (even though nearly everyone gets away or off in the end)
This was an incredible film to watch that I seriously doubt could be made today. The Hackman’s Doyle is one of the great antihero’s in American film, bombastic, slovenly,racist but perversely charming. I found myself frequently cringing over some of the things he does as a seventies “cowboy cop” even though he miraculously succeeding by the end of the film.
All in all I found myself fascinated all the way through with it’s wonderful portrayal of the underside of seventies New York contrasted with the old world charm of Marseilles.
This week’s Rhapsody is Eric Ewazen’s Rhapsody andante misterioso -For Bass Trombone and String Orchestra.