The Sweeping Symphonies of Till the Clouds Roll By

The first time I watched Till the Clouds Roll By, I was sitting in my grandparents’ kitchen with them, just enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon/evening. I can vividly recall the smells, sights, and sounds of that day, so this movie is a bit sentimental to me as a result. When I saw that it was available on Hulu, I knew I’d have to watch again. And what better time to sit down with a feel-good, nostalgic movie than when everyone else is out there going crazy for a good deal on Black Friday? I can’t think of any.

Till the Clouds Roll By is a 1946 biopic tribute to composer Jerome Kern, who had passed away the year before this movie was released in theaters. While the movie is purportedly telling the story of Kern’s life, it also serves as a vehicle for large musical numbers, showcasing the hit songs from throughout Kern’s career. The end result is a film light on details of Kern’s life and strong on staging, costumes, swelling orchestral numbers, and so forth. I knew basically nothing about Kern before viewing this movie the first time, so I certainly did learn something from the movie about him – but then also had to verify a lot afterwards and saw how much was left out. For instance, Kern was apparently well-known for his horn-rimmed glasses yet Robert Walker as Jerome Kern is never once seen wearing a pair of any kind of spectacles; presumably the Hollywood of the 1940s would never think a leading man in glasses would be dashing enough for the audience. Some details are simply out of chronological order or slightly altered to fit the story being told in this movie, such as Hammerstein contacting Kerns about making a musical based on the book Showboat rather than the other way around as it actually happened. In real life, Kern had a daughter, but in the movie, he and his wife Eva dote only on his “niece” Sally, the child of his friend and musical arranger, Jim Hessler. The Hesslers play a huge role in this movie -- despite the fact that they never existed, although the character of Jim Hessler is supposedly based on a real-life associate of Kern’s.

The facts that Hollywood eschewed are replaced with a compelling story though and one that pulls on the viewer's heartstrings. I loved the story of how Kern becomes like family to the Hesslers and the easy repartee between him and Jim, especially in their early days as bachelor workaholics. The love story between Kern and Eva was also sweet, albeit rushed. Furthermore, the actors play the story of Kern's life well and do a convincing job of growing old and subtly changing as a result. Walker is always compelling to watch, whether he’s being charming, funny, torn, heartbroken, or feeling old and resigned, as the situation calls. The other actors in the domestic drama – Van Heflin as Jim, Dorothy Patrick as Eva, Lucille Bremer as the adult Sally, and Joan Wells as the young Sally – all play their parts perfectly as well.

But the real star power of this movie was in the music and dance, with acts that could almost be described as over the top unless you’ve happened to watch a lot of musicals from this era. The cast of Till the Clouds Roll By reads like a who’s who of Golden Age Hollywood elite, including Judy Garland, Van Johnson, June Allyson, Lena Horne, and Frank Sinatra, just to name a few. With so many heavy hitters, the producers didn’t even bother with first billing and just listed all the stars’ names alphabetically in the opening credits. While a few of the numbers in this movie were forgettable in my opinion, most of them were lavish spectacles worth viewing more than once.

For starters, Judy Garland as Marilyn Miller was one of the highlights in my book. Special guest director Vincent Minnelli (then married to Garland) was brought in to direct her musical scenes. The story goes that Garland was pregnant with her daughter Liza Minnelli at the time so when it came to staging her rendition of “Look for the Silver Lining,” Minnelli chose to put Garland behind a stage kitchen sink the whole time. Garland’s stunning voice carries the scene, even if it isn’t as action-filled as the other numbers. But despite her pregnancy, Garland is seen more active in her later musical numbers – dancing about to “Who?” and jumping onto a bareback horse in “Sunny,” with a sequence that I really, really hope is done by a stunt double. The choreography throughout the movie is excellent, but a particular favorite scene of mine is when Lucille Bremer and Van Johnson dance to “I Won’t Dance” in the Club Elite. Another one worth noting is the titular “Till the Clouds Roll By,” performed by June Allyson and Ray McDonald.

The movie both opens and ends with extended sequences acting as a review of some of Kern’s more famous songs, particularly with an emphasis on Showboat. The final song – and scene - of the movie is a young Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “Old Man River.” This choice rankles some contemporary viewers who feel that the song should be sung by an African-American man, embodying the working black man the song is meant to portray, rather than by a Caucasian-American man in spotless white tuxedo on a white pedestal. While I understand their frustration, I’d like to point out that:

1) This movie was made in 1946.

and

2) This movie was made in 1946!

The 1940s were hardly a time of racial equality in any sense of the word. Nor was Hollywood at the time a bastion of cultural sensitivity – this was the same entertainment machine that just 10 years earlier gave us Fred Astaire in black face as a “tribute” to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. And that’s hardly an anomaly during that era. Furthermore, this movie was already filmed in such a way that Lena Horne’s solo performance could be removed when the movie was shipped out to Southern states who would refuse to air a sympathetic portrayal of an African-American woman singing on screen. It’s not pretty, but you can see why the film’s director and producers wouldn’t risk having their big finale stripped from the movie in a large number of states.

A few other points to make on this topic: 1) In the opening of the movie, “Old Man River” is also featured with African-American singer/actor Caleb Peterson singing the song, so the movie did give a small nod to the song’s origins there; 2) Italian-Americans like Sinatra were not exactly beloved at the time (another not pretty but true fact); and 3) Sinatra was a big enough name already to be a selling point, and at the end of the day, Hollywood is about making money. And, on the note about the ridiculousness of the dazzling white tuxedo and setting for this number, it's worth pointing out that this song comes at the end of a review of songs all featuring singers dressed in pure white settings. I don’t know why this is, perhaps to make some kind of point about the pure/innocent/ethereal/eternal/transcendent/pick-your-adjective quality of Kern’s works, but I do know that it would be odd if after all those numbers increasingly ascending in an “into-the-clouds” feel, the final song was done in a realistic style. One commentator makes the analysis that this whole grand finale was meant to be an ironic look at how Kern’s songs were going to be overblown and taken out of context by Hollywood and while this is an interesting theory, I just don’t think 1940s Hollywood was that was self-aware and tongue-in-cheek about itself. That’s my two cents.

All in all, my point is that you have to take a movie – or any other artistic work for that matter – as part and parcel of its time period and cultural milieu. If this movie came out today, I could understand that outrage more and would be right there with these commentators. Not just on the whitewashing of “Old Man River,” but also on the highly offensive “Cleopatterer” and some of the portrayals of women, such as Eva’s rules for what a lady can and cannot do or the fact that not a single woman in this movie ever wears pants (only skirts and dresses). These things are all a product of the times, and it is what it is. If you can take it with a grain of salt, this is a great movie from the Hollywood golden era of musicals. Fabulous performances in music, choreography, and acting will steal the show.

Just Singing in the Rain: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Just in time for a snow storm in October, I picked up a copy of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, another French film evoking rain in the title.

It’s 1957 in France, and 17-year-old Genevieve, who works in her mother’s boutique shop “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” falls in love with 20-year-old Guy, who works in a garage across the street. But Genevieve’s mother doesn’t want to see her married that young and Guy is drafted into his two years of military service. How will their love story end?

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is not a musical in the traditional sense where some is spoken with the occasional breaking out into song. Instead, every single word is sung. But it’s not an opera where everything is told in song because these aren’t really songs - they’re just regular dialogue that’s sung instead of spoken, which makes for some awkward lines like “a demain” or “merde” that is sung alone. I kept thinking while watching the movie how difficult it must have been for the actors to figure out how they would effectively sing one- or two-word lines without sounding ridiculous - or without sounding like they were simply speaking. But more so, I feel like something important is lost by having every single word sung like that. Typically, musicals, while yes being ridiculous and unrealistic (not a real criticism coming from me because I like them in part for this reason), use songs to convey that something that just happened and evokes some strong feelings - whether it’s excitement, anger, love, or what have you. But when you sing “see you tomorrow” in a scene of typical everyday events and then sing “I will wait for you” when tearfully departing from your lover, somehow the emotional impact of this second “song” is negated, or at least lessened. However, I will say that the instrumental music in the movie is absolutely beautiful, despite the lack of what I’d actually call song lyrics.

As for the story itself, it’s so predictable - not just the end outcome but every step along the way is easily and accurately guessed within the first half hour, if not sooner. The cinematography is beautiful, with some interesting shots, bright colors, and occasional scenic view, but that’s not enough to hold an entire movie. I’m missing how this movie received so much praise - “An instance classic” (New York Magazine); “An unmitigated triumph! A unique masterpiece! Inescapably addicting!” (New York Post); or “... A beam of movie heaven!” (Rolling Stone) - as I didn’t think it was that good. It was also listed in Steven Jay Schneider's book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, but I think I could have lived without seeing it.

“Peeling Off the Layers”: Venice in Art, Music, & Theater

As you could probably tell from my earlier gushing post, I really like the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick. After a summer-long hiatus, their popular Art After Hours program has returned, beginning this evening. Art After Hours is a monthly event where the museum stays open late one night and offers a wide variety of additional programming, including but not limited to film viewings, curator-led tours, classical concerts, opera scenes, and author and illustrator talks. There is sometimes (and appears to be increasingly more so) a theme that envelopes all the evening’s events.

This evening that theme was Venice. Yes, the romantic Italian city with its singing gondoliers. The impetus for this theme was undoubtedly a new exhibit featuring the works of two Venetian artists. The evening featured a curator-led tour, mandolin music accompanied by masked dancers, and a short version of Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice.

"The surface of Venice is constantly metamorphosing. Painting Venice is almost like being a restorer, peeling off the layers to find the picture after picture underneath. Venice is inexhaustible because the shifting light and the drifting fog keep changing her face. In the winter, Venice is like an abandoned theater. The play is finished, but the echoes remain. When you walk in the winter fog, there seems to be no division between water and embankment. You feel that you can walk through walls, through sky, through time." - Arbit Blatas, artist

The first event of the evening was the tour of the new exhibit. However, while we waited in the lobby for everyone to arrive for the evening, a few of the masked dancers came out and danced interpretively to some recorded music. I’m not a huge fan of interpretive dance, but I liked that there was something going in the lobby while we waited. Otherwise, my restless nature gets fidgety waiting around for the curator to begin the tour, and I’m sorely tempted to go wander off into nearby exhibits but am too nervous that I’ll end up missing the tour then.

The curator-led tour was fairly brief, but I always love these given the opportunity. Generally, the curators say roughly the same things they have printed in the information about the exhibit (website summary, brochures, etc.) and have on display throughout the exhibit. Nevertheless, sometimes they add in fresh tidbits and they will answer questions that arise as they lead the tour.

How anyone can simply be on the tour and then leave feeling they have seen the whole exhibit is beyond me though. While the mandolin players started strumming, I went back to the beginning of the exhibit and went through it on my own at a much slower pace. It is certainly a different experience than simply walking through quickly on a tour with numerous other people. For instance, in the quick passing through of the tour, I thought I preferred the works of Tiepolo, the second artist featured, to the works of Canaletto. But on a second go-through, I found that I enjoyed Canaletto’s works far better.

As alluded to now twice, the new exhibit featured the works of two artists - Giovanni Antonio Canal (known as Canaletto, which is Italian for “little canal”) and Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo. Besides having the same first name and being from Venice, the two shared other similarities. Both were the sons of artists and both began their own artistic careers as painters before moving onto printmaking, specifically through etching. However, the two had very different approaches when it came to their choice of subject matter.

Canaletto practiced “vedute” – he was first a painter, and then an etcher, of the landscapes of Venice and its surrounding area. I enjoyed that his series of prints included landscapes both real and imaginary. He was gifted with the ability to clearly and accurately represent what was right before him as well as the ability to create something of his own imagining. Some of his prints fell into an in-between place where he was depicting an actual place but chose to rearrange some of the placement of objects in order to create a more scenic view.

While not one of his etchings, this painting by Canaletto gives a good idea of his typical subject matter and style.

Tiepolo, on the other hand, worked in a style known as “expressive heads.” His primary subjects were people. He etched all matter of characters in various poses indicative of their emotional state. His early works were often reproductions of his famous father’s paintings, but he would choose to focus on a minor character from a painting instead of etching the entire work. It was noted that these small-scale etchings could be used as a way of whetting the appetite for his father’s works by introducing the viewer to only a small portion of a larger painting.

Again, a painting not an etching, but this gives a view of Tiepolo's typical subject matter and style. Indeed, there was an etching on display that was very similar to this painting.

As I mentioned, at first Tiepolo’s works were the ones that struck me more. I was drawn by the idea of works that featured people and their emotional state as inferred by their expression more than a landscape of a touristy spot. But on the second time around, the level of detail in Canaletto’s works was what astounded me. The curator’s explanation of the etching process left me in awe of any one who does that kind of work by reinforcing how much effort goes into each print, but Canaletto’s skill was particularly impressive for his inclusion of such tiny details as a perched bird or a skyline receding so far into the distance that you need to be standing an inch away from the print to be able to notice it. And the beauty of his scenes left me ready to book the next flight to Venice and be swept up in its wonders! (Alas, reality would not allow that…) Tiepolo’s etchings of numerous faces, however, were surprisingly very similar on closer inspection and did not show much variety in expression after all.

In addition to the exhibit featuring the prints of both Canaletto and Tiepolo, a small nook was reserved for some other prints from the Zimmerli collection. This sampling included works from the 17^th to the 20^th centuries and featured artists such as Rembrandt (who was an influence on Tiepolo), Picasso, and Donald Judd. It also displayed some prints by Giovanni Battista Piranesi who also etched in the vedute style, but his landscapes were of Rome. The curator noted that there are some 100 prints of Piranesi’s in the Zimmerli’s collection, so my fingers are crossed for an exhibit featuring these!

Here is a sample of Piranesi's etchings of Rome.

When I was done exploring the exhibit in closer detail, I emerged to find that the mandolin players (whose music I could hear throughout the exhibit) were accompanied by the interpretative dancers (whose numbers had grown). Again, as I’m not a big fan of interpretative dance, I did not feel I had missed much.

After watching them wind down their performance, it was time for the brief version of The Merchant of Venice, which was acted by only two performers. This is one Shakespeare play that I actually have not read and have no knowledge of its basic story or characters. Because of this, the condensed version left me puzzled nearly the whole time trying to figure out what was going on, with the lack of such helpers as scenery, props, or even 100% distinguishable characters. The two actors valiantly portrayed all the characters by switching their outerwear (a vest, a jacket, etc.) but it was still a bit confusing as one character appeared to be shared between them. And, in several scenes, one actor was continually taking on and off the one jacket at such a rapid pace it was difficult to tell when was the end of one character’s lines and the beginning of the next character’s lines. But, the acting was well done, especially given the limitations, and I found it very funny (and fitting with the practice of Shakespeare’s time) that the male actor portrayed a woman in one scene by putting on a lacey top and speaking in a high falsetto voice. I’m now motivated to pull out my giant book of all of Shakespeare’s works to read through The Merchant of Venice and see what it’s all about.

Overall, an excellent evening of arts and entertainment was put on by the Zimmerli Art Museum. And while you might not be able to enjoy all the activities found there tonight, it’s still well worth checking out the new exhibit. Two Venetian Masters: Canaletto and Tiepolo Etchings from the Arthur Ross Foundation is on display until January 2012.