Swing (Feb-Dec 1951)

THE CREAM OF CROSBY fore it took wing, I investigated a movie, the first I've seen since the days when movies were worse than ever, "An American in Paris. " The selection of "American in Paris" was not entirely arbitrary. I wanted to see it, partly because I'd just been to Paris and wanted to observe just what improvements Hollywood could make on it, partly to hear again George Gershwin's music and partly because I was drugged in a saloon and then dragged to the pic ture by a rapscallion of a press agent, one of whose aliases is Mitchell Rawson. For a man who has spent the last five years chained in front of a fourteen-inch screen, it was quite an experience. Movies are not only better than ever but bigger than ever, more technicolored than ever and more — I can think of no other word for it — populous than ever. To us TV addicts, three is a crowd and six is a mob. In the movies — you'd never believe this, Mabel — they toss two or three hundred people at you at once, all extravagant' ly caparisoned. (Caparisons are odious, except in Hollywood where they are beautiful beyond description.) Where Milton Berle is eight inches high. Gene Kelly is roughly fourteen feet straight up and terribly, terribly distinct — perhaps more visible than seems strictly necessary. I was more impressed by his size and his clarity than by his dancing which is technically superb but occasionally limited in range. No doubt about it, though, "An Ameri' can in Paris" is a perfectly gorgeous pic' ture — full of magnificent shots of Paris (all, except a few process shots, filmed in Hollywood), of some fine Gershwin music and of eye-filling pageantry. It's also as good an example as any of the things Hollywood can do that television couldn't conceivably attempt and also, I'm afraid, of the weaknesses Hollywood can't seem to avoid. After getting off to a fine heady start with a magnificently comic song and dance number in a Paris sidewalk cafe, Mr. Kelly, who plays the part of an American artist starving gallantly in a Montmartre garret, gets bogged down in love which Hollywood takes more seriously than it should, especially in a picture of this nature. I have nothing against love, you understand, but I'd rather have seen a good deal more of Oscar Levant, who was being funnier than he has ever been before, than of Leslie Caron, the cute little French dish Mr. Kelly was mooning over. The picture ends with a ballet which may be the longest in picture history — a full twenty minutes — which must contain all the dancers in Hollywood, all the costumes they hadn't dragged into the rest of the picture, all the process shots left over from Paris and about twelve changes of costume for Mr. Kelly who leaps into the fountains in the Place de la Concorde roughly twenty-two times and emerges dry but, I expect, tired. It was a stupefying experience and also rather an interminable one. Sometimes I harbor the suspicion that Mr. Kelly should let someone else help out with his choreography. He has only so many ideas and when he runs through the collection, he's inclined to repeat them in different dress against different scenery. Having got these carping comments off my mind, I'm forced to admit I had a wonderful time at the picture. Pictures are not only better than ever but bigger, costlier, more opulent, more colorful and more vivid than ever. Also milder, mellower and more satisfying. All right, Rawson, cut out the business with the rubber hose and get off my chest. I may even go back and see a picture of my own accord some time, clutching my own money in my damp little hand. And now — back to Ed Sullivan, all nine inches of solid muscle. Nothing but black and white, verging around the chin into suitable shades of gray. Perhaps it's better that way. I don't think I'm emo