Song and Dance

It is a pleasure to write about a film that delivers unalloyed pleasure – a little bitter-sweet and a bit feel-good – a good combo like a dark chocolate and orange pudding. I will be surprised if you don’t warm to La La Land and shed a tear too.

The film stands up on its own but it’s rich in allusions to all the Hollywood musicals that I’ve ever/never seen. The much written about opening sequence pays homage to Fame and Tyler Brûlé’s Day Off (surely Ferris Bueller, ed?). Of course those films were nodding at their Hollywood predecessors. If you like jazz and schmaltz you’ll be in cinematic heaven.

There’s that lamp-post from Singin’ in the Rain and there’s that super-special Les Parapluies de Cherbourg – music by Michel Legrand, sex by Catherine Deneuve – which gets more than one reference in LLL. Modern opera can be a bit testing but those umbrellas in Brittany give Britten a good run for his money.

https://youtu.be/tgd46QiHz4I

7 comments

    1. Oh yes, very good, but FB’s Day Off always makes me laugh. There’s a shot in the latter where the singers appear to float along – again a tribute to the Gamps of Cherbourg.

  1. Typically, and excellently (IMHO), you caught the Umbrellas of Cherbourg notes in LLL. I haven’t seen any reference to these references before yrs. Are they quite references? More, the threading through of the sung material; the whispering lyricism of the songs; the adult richness of the ending – these are strongly reminiscent of U of C. I think LLL fell-over at various points – but what a wonder it is. A bit like the Revenant, a masterpiece whose flaws don’t dent one’s excitement that such things are being imagined and made.

    1. There was a stage adaptation of the Umbrellas that I saw in the West End some years ago. It didn’t last long because the audiences didn’t know the film.
      Well, so many films are released every week that it’s a wonder that more don’t hit the spot. I was fortunate to be invited to the charity premiere of a film that transpired to be have the lowest ticket sales of any film on general release in the UK – £73, I think. Only the projectionist and usherette, maybe, saw it in Croydon but that’s another story and a poem.

  2. I suspect you may have been lured unconsciously into the alliterative trap sprung by the name ‘Britten’ later in the sentence.

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