In "The Bad and the Beautiful," Kirk Douglas plays a successful producer who fires his director (clearly based on Fritz Lang) because that director isn't goosing up a certain scene. On his way out, the director warns that you can't use the same tone all the way through: you have to build a film with ups and downs, with rhythm and song.
The producer takes over and ends up with a movie that he shelves. It had passion in every scene but no life.
This movie could be that one. Superficially, it has a lot: sexy girls, musical numbers that aren't bad (at least compared to the norm), more or less competent actors (again, compared) and a pretty good setup.
The story revolves around the Paradise Club, where our heroine a good girl with oafs for father and brother ends up as a "dancer." A good half of the movie is spent getting us there and introducing the characters.
She is loved by a beginning bandmaster who makes good (in another club) by the end of the movie. But she loves a gigolo who has already been through the club's owner, a strong, sexy blond. He is completely without redeeming value, but all the girls love him. During the story, he hits up his old loves for money until he ditches our heroine, then comes to her for money to leave town with her best friend.
This could have been a noir "Moulin Rouge" where the performance and life overlapped, and you can see that writer had something like that in mind, even highlighting that the second half of the movie could be a dream.
But it has no variation in tone at all. Things start at 35 miles per hour and stay there forever. That has killed this movie, so dead that it is all but unavailable, and I'm the first commenter.
Now that's dead. Kirk would understand.
(This movie is in the public domain.)
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
