Carnival of Rhythm

Katherine Dunham leads a song and dance musical short to celebrate the Brazilian culture. Here's the deal. This is basically a dinner performance in one of those all inclusive resorts. Authenticity cannot be expected. The colors are bright and gaudy in Technicolor. It's like a off Broadway show. There is no plot. I do appreciate that there is some darker shades if you know what I mean. The lighter tones do get center stage but the darker shades have plenty of screen time. In a way, this is of its time and I always appreciate work for performers who don't usually get their opportunities.

If pulsating drums beating out Latin rhythms were enough to satisfy my taste for Latin American music, CARNIVAL OF RHYTHM would be an ideal musical short.

However, the songs chosen for the KATHERINE DUNHAM DANCE TROUPE are not at all memorable (or even stirring), her voice on a "song of sorrow" is enough to create a wail of protests from sensitive musician ears, and the dance troupe itself is not given imaginative enough material to work with.

So, in short, it's something you can easily afford to skip. The opening with the sound of voodoo drums promises something that it never delivers. The studio-painted sets look garish and cheap for scenes that are supposed to be taking place outdoors during morning, afternoon and evening. There's a clumsiness to the "Indian dance of courtship" that makes it more laughable than exotic (or erotic) and the narration concludes that the men return from their work shift "untamed, savage as the night", hinting that the women will soon have a night full of "love's fulfillment".

Summing up: Unworthy of the Dunham troupe--full of clichés and silly in concept.

This is actually a fairly decent little short subject, and it's not because of the fair choreography, the unmemorable singing or Knox Manning's usual pompous delivery of overwritten lines like 'savage as the night from which it comes'. It's because the unnamed set designer and Technicolor DP Charles P. Boyle agreed on a set that looks like it was designed by German expressionists with a sense of humor, and dressed up in bright but shadow-lit colors, so you get a constant stream of impressionist blotches, like Mondrian on a black canvas. So if you can ignore the sound, this is a great picture, worth a rating of ten .... but the soundtrack brings it down to merely good.

Does anyone but me think Katherine Dunham is a dead ringer for Phylicia Rashad?