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Easter means finding a bunny plush doll for your sweetheart, a brat has it so the Broadway star (Fred Astaire) distracts him with a bit of virtuosity on miniature drums and saunters off with the toy in hand. Said sweetheart (Ann Miller) is also his dancing partner, she calls it quits on both fronts and he's next seen at the saloon contemplating a pint, "can you drown a brunette in this?" For her replacement, he plucks a chorine (Judy Garland) out of the floor show and goes about reshaping her. (Among the tests is seeing if she can turn men's heads on the street, she gets no results until she adopts Harpo's "Gookie" face.) "You could get anyone to dance with you. You could get the very best." "I don't want the very best—I want you!" A cozy adumbration of Vertigo on the MGM lot, an Irving Berlin medley in a Ziegfeld Follies invocation, a typically genial Charles Walters arrangement. Strutting in Boudu drag ("A Couple of Swells") or recoiling from overheard baby-talk ("Snookey Ookums"), the stars breeze through set piece after set piece. Resplendent in white suit, Astaire in "Steppin' Out with My Baby" turns in slow-mo like Deren's swordsman (Meditation on Violence), elsewhere "Better Luck Next Time" spotlights Garland's bittersweet contralto: "That sounds all right in a careless rhyme / But there's seldom a second time." Miller in "Shakin' the Blues Away" is a dervish in flapper gown and elbow gloves, her glide down Fifth Avenue with leashed hounds is emulated by Anger in Puce Moment. Peter Lawford makes the heroine's acquaintance under a fruit peddler's yellow umbrella during a downpour, comedy comes from the sidelines courtesy of Jules Munshin's culinary pantomime and Clinton Sundberg's philosophical deadpan. "Oh, I could write a sonnet / About your Easter bonnet," the duo back together just in time for the parade, "why didn't you tell me I was in love with you?" Minnelli has his own Pygmalion theme to pursue in Gigi. Cinematography by Harry Stradling.
--- Fernando F. Croce |