Live HistoricSee what matters.

Film · Warner Bros. · 1933

Pass it on

42nd Street

46Watch it awake.

The rehearsal is real work, and Berkeley still turns the girls into a pattern.

The review

Start with the sick man, not the pattern. A Broadway director is ill, a chorus girl has to go on, and the show must not close. Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Warner Baxter. The rehearsal is the work. This is the picture that announced the Warner chorus line, a hit in the year King Kong led. I believed the rehearsal more than the fame.

Busby Berkeley turns the girls into a pattern. The bodies are the machine. A house can watch it, and you can say that without sneering at the dancers' job. The job is real. The pattern is the sell. Opening night is a grind. A person is not a shape you repeat until the song ends.

Journal

Keep 42nd Street in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 46. Yours can differ.

The glance

Household and Piety and Temperance and Stewardship are the thin ones.

Is a marriage, a parent, or a child a real life here, or just a prop?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

My Fair Lady

58 instead of 46

My Fair Lady is still a musical film, and it scores 58 instead of 46. What you gain is household: She wants a life, not a vase on his shelf, and the house he offers is late and proud.

The eight

8
Industry
The rehearsal is the work, and an ill director still has to open the show.
2
Household
No marriage or child is a life here; the company is only a company.
3
Piety
Nobody's conscience stops the night; the order is that the show must not close.
7
Courage
A chorus girl has to go on, and the ill director risks the show that remains.
5
Republic
The company owes the public a show that must not close, which is a crew's debt.
3
Temperance
The pattern trains you to want the next arrangement of the same bodies.
5
Truth
The illness and the girl who goes on are straight; the pattern makes bodies a machine.
4
Stewardship
A show stays open, and the dancers are left arranged as a pattern.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

Live Historic · 42nd Street · 46IMDb

Live HistoricSee what matters.

Film · United Artists · 1964

Pass it on

A Hard Day's Night

46Watch it awake.

Watch it awake, or put it on for the songs and the work. Nobody is asked to become worse.

The review

They have a television appearance to make, a train to catch, and an afternoon in which the city wants pieces of them. The jokes are at the expense of managers, advertisers, and anyone who needs the boys to stand still and be a product. The songs are the work, performed as work. Nobody is asked to betray a friend. Nobody is asked to be cruel to a girl. For a phenomenon as large as this one, that is a remarkable restraint, and I will credit it.

A family can put it on. The limit is that it is a day, not a life, and a day of fame is a thin diet if it becomes the only picture of adulthood in the house. Watch the studio session and ask who in the room was doing a job seriously. Include them. The screaming outside is the decade. The work inside is the part worth keeping. A very large cultural fact of 1964. The fact is not a reason. The songs and the decency are.

Journal

Keep A Hard Day's Night in the record.