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The WWII homecoming and its binge-drinking and Dear John letters, far closer to The Best Years of Our Lives than to On the Town. "People don't love drunk civilians like they love tipsy solders." Returning Gis (Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Michael Kidd) romp in the streets with trashcan lids and yellow cabs for props, regroup back at the tavern and bet that their friendship can survive a decade, each goes his own way while the camera cranes back to reveal "this big, cold canyon we call New York." Comes 1955 and idealist Kelly is a ruined gambler promoting fixed prizefights, Dailey the aspiring painter is a miserable ad-agency drone, wannabe restauranteur Kidd runs a hamburger joint. The reunion finds them loathing each other in internal monologues set to Strauss, their carousing gives way to isolated laments stitched together via split-screen: "Once I had a dream, what a joke / Gone is that dream, up in smoke." Cassavetes in Husbands gives the idea the treatment it demands, Betty Comden and Adolph Green steer it toward Madison Ave. satire, Kelly and Stanley Donen film it for widescreen bustle and melancholia. (The continuous slicing of CinemaScope frames into trios evokes Gance's Polyvision.) TV is a medium for phonies, useful for late-night idolatry (Dolores Gray and detergent) and unmasking racketeers; Dailey at the cocktail party describes his marriage as "a combination of boredom, disgust and pity," the rambunctious demolition that follows looks ahead to Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and Pierrot Le Fou. Cyd Charisse hoofing amid palookas in "Baby, You Knock Me Out" and Kelly serene on roller skates in "I Like Myself" sweeten the acid, tuxedo-clad somersaulters in "Thanks a Lot, But No Thanks" get bullets and dynamite. Doleful crane and desolate studio-city are repeated at the close, in early eulogy for an already vanishing genre. With David Burns, Jay C. Flippen, Steve Mitchell, and Lou Lubin.
--- Fernando F. Croce |