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That's Entertainment, 1974
In this film, several MGM stars offer a retrospective of MGM's best performers and musical numbers. Performers like Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Don O'Connor, Kimmy Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor introduce various clips from different MGM films.
For me, this is an interesting case of separating out the central content (the film clips) from the packaging (the actor introductions).
The clips, including such legendary sequences as "New York, New York," "Singin' In the Rain," and "Make 'Em Laugh", are all good stuff. I had seen probably about 70% of them, but there were a few sequences I've never seen in whole and that was really cool.
But I was far less sold on the whole framework. Things get off to a weird start when the host announces a clip by saying that the lead performer was surrounded by "overweight chorus girls". It's such a casually cutting and strange remark, and entirely unnecessary (also dude, pot, kettle). I didn't make note of them, but there were a handful of other remarks that made me cringe a bit.
Then there's the whole "rah rah" tone of it all. This is of course to be expected when a studio makes a film about how great it is. But the hosts introduce clips of people in blackface without a moment of hesitation. Likewise, the film trots out a ton of content from Judy Garland, made strange by what we now know about how Garland was treated by the studio and those in charge of it---restricted and criticized and fed a range of drugs just to get the output they wanted.
It was fun seeing some actors who I've never seen out of their "prime"--people like O'Connor where I only know them as 30-40 year olds.
So the clips are great and the hosts are charming enough, but there's something a bit off about it all. Like one of those infomercials that a company creates about itself.
That's Entertainment, 1974
In this film, several MGM stars offer a retrospective of MGM's best performers and musical numbers. Performers like Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Don O'Connor, Kimmy Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor introduce various clips from different MGM films.
For me, this is an interesting case of separating out the central content (the film clips) from the packaging (the actor introductions).
The clips, including such legendary sequences as "New York, New York," "Singin' In the Rain," and "Make 'Em Laugh", are all good stuff. I had seen probably about 70% of them, but there were a few sequences I've never seen in whole and that was really cool.
But I was far less sold on the whole framework. Things get off to a weird start when the host announces a clip by saying that the lead performer was surrounded by "overweight chorus girls". It's such a casually cutting and strange remark, and entirely unnecessary (also dude, pot, kettle). I didn't make note of them, but there were a handful of other remarks that made me cringe a bit.
Then there's the whole "rah rah" tone of it all. This is of course to be expected when a studio makes a film about how great it is. But the hosts introduce clips of people in blackface without a moment of hesitation. Likewise, the film trots out a ton of content from Judy Garland, made strange by what we now know about how Garland was treated by the studio and those in charge of it---restricted and criticized and fed a range of drugs just to get the output they wanted.
It was fun seeing some actors who I've never seen out of their "prime"--people like O'Connor where I only know them as 30-40 year olds.
So the clips are great and the hosts are charming enough, but there's something a bit off about it all. Like one of those infomercials that a company creates about itself.