A Damsel in Distress

Rather than talk about the snow (which is still there and may or may not cause work to be shut down for a second consecutive day), I choose to talk about this movie Ijust saw: A Damsel in Distress.

I've wanted to see it for a long time, because the script is by P.G. Wodehouse, and is stars Fred Astaire, Joan Fontaine, and Burns and Allen. I love Burns and Allen! If the Big Broadcast movies were available on DVD, I'd own them. Unfortunately, only the 1938 one is out, and Burns and Allen aren't in that one. I think it only got to be on DVD because of Bob Hope.

Anyway, A Damsel in Distress is a musical, and features songs by Ira and George Gershwin. So that's not too shabby. The plot is goofy, and features no particularly distressed damsels. In fact, the only reason there is a plot is because the damsel (Fontaine) doesn't just go ahead and fling herself at Astaire like everyone knows she's going to. You'd think she could maybe fling herself at George Burns, who's funny and not as weird-looking as the young Fred Astaire (this is from 1937, before all the Astaire-Rogers movies), but Burns is comic relief, so that's obviously not going to happen.

Well, Burns isn't really the comic relief. Obviously, Gracie Allen is. But Burns is around to set up her jokes and eventually get paired off with her against his will. So they're like a comic relief team. And I'm pretty sure they just brought their own material instead of using the Wodehouse script. Really, there's very little Wodehousery going on, except in terms of the plot, which is very Blandings Castle. It's got an Earl and his domineering sister who wants the daughter to marry the flighty son, and there's a butler -- you know the type, right? I don't think I've read the book, but I may have read a reworking of it. Wodehouse reused plots sometimes, you know. Don't hold it against him.

There was a lot of dancing. Sure, you're thinking that it's a Fred Astaire movie, but there was more than you'd expect. Some people complain about Broadway musicals, because they can't handle the way people burst into song. In this movie, people break into elaborate dance numbers. Burns and Allen have two dances with Astaire, because George and Gracie both used to dance in vaudeville. In fact, Gracie was doing a clog-dancing act with her sisters when she first met George. And one of the dances takes like twenty minues and goes all through a fun house, involving conveyer belts and trick mirrors and all sorts of other gimmicky foolishness. It won an Academy Award for the choreographer, who appears to be named "Hermes Pan."

So I loved it. It was a lot of fun and really, almost every single element was being done by someone great at the top of their form. I could go on about it for hours, but I should probably go to sleep. You know, in case there's a chance I have to go to work tomorrow.