Dancing Sweeties

There is at least one reason to watch bad films, especially old ones.

So much in life is the result of odd quirks of evolution, or happenstance if you prefer. All the things we are surrounded by seem as natural as sunlight and the only way they could be. But we live in a world where the stilted possibilities so outweigh the lucky happenstance that it is amazing we can stand it.

Movies are a small cosmos we create as our own gods and they behave the same way. So what we watch and how our visual imagination works is largely accidental. You can see some of the broken paths in old films. These reflect the "what might have beens" of the real world and are the real nodes of extinct possibilities in movies.

And when it is a dance movie, so much the better, because film and dance have been on- again off-again sweethearts from the beginning to now. And perhaps no romance in film has been more passionate but constrained than this.

Now. This movie, a vitaphone from the first real year of talkies is an interesting find. The story is simple and staged as a play except for the dance scenes. That story would be unacceptably simple and direct today: a guy is a dancing fool who cannot live without spending nights at the local dance hall competing. The text after the title sequence assures us that such passionate folk exist.

The girl is a simple, ordinary type, interested in building a home and family. By the thinnest of devices, they meet, marry and events transpire as expected. (Dance loses, family wins.)

And that's what happens in the movie proper. Dance is left by the wayside. In fact, except for the title sequence and a bit in the middle where our players watch a Charleston-type group, the dance is a matter of talking about it and some amazingly ungraceful boxstep.

What prompted me to this was seeing "Take the Lead," the newest dance movie as I write this. In a way, these are two ends of two family trees that still hasn't found the perfect mating.

Sigh.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.