I would love for Netflix to get this in their inventory someday. I haven't seen it since the night it opened in San Francisco. I don't want to buy it, just..a revisit. I found The Fertility Dance on youtube, and include it here. I think (personal opinion) that seeing it once, was enough; but here it is - it's so..bizarre. I think I'd rename it, 'Le Petit Prance'.
And then there's this video for the extreme fan of the film:
That's a well to do appreciation society by all accounts. They're to be envied! I kept thinking all the way through the doco where does that underscore hark from?
What's not to like? A James Hilton story questioning the thread of human existence being embraced by so many high profilers who, no doubt, expected to be involved in a quite possibly ground breaking evokation of past Hollywood glories delineated upon the expansive canvas of a drama/musical combo not entirely unlike the other Hilton throwback made close in time to it.
Of course, the film is riddled with execution errors - we already know that. It's a bit of a shock to see what used to be classified as a normal mode of being looking decidely skewered by todays dotty standards. Are we evolving or devolving?
It's an astonishing film, often for the wrong reasons; it must have seemed very out of place when it hit theaters in 1973. I still enjoy despite it's issues and I'm certainly glad Sony did such a great job cleaning it up, restoring it, and releasing it on DVD, and allowing Twilight Time to issue the Blu-Ray.
I actually paid to see this film in a theatre when it first opened. I have long been a devotee of the 1937 original, and wanted to see what the remake would be like.
I saw it early in the run, but by then it had already been cut. My older brother, who was a film critic for a local New Jersey paper, had seen a press screening, which had then included the "Fertility Dance." He said the, invited, audience had laughed so hard upon seeing this, that their reaction affected the producers enough to cut it. As well as to shorten the length of the film, in order to accommodate more screenings in a given day.
The Bachrach score is quite good in its own right, but it's a terrible match for the story, with the songs consequently seeming ridiculous. Even the audience when I saw the cut version was laughing now and then.
Whatever possessed Warner Brothers to make this, then to fudge on the sets, by recycling former sets from CAMELOT, is still beyond me. The first section is almost the same as the 1937 original, then the songs come in once they arrive at Shangri-La, and the whole thing falls apart. Finch is good, though not a singer. Liv Ullman is a total mismatch for musicals; she wasn't even good in the musical stage version of "I Remember Mama." The dances were juvenile, and the other characters just out of place, with Sally Kellerman and Bobby Van loitering around the sets.
Just a big mess.
For years, the "Fertility Dance" was rumored to be one of the most embarrassing musical moments in film. Like many such productions, bad musicals end up being just boring, continuing to amaze with their stupidity at thinking what they are doing is effective.
I actually paid to see this film in a theatre when it first opened. I have long been a devotee of the 1937 original, and wanted to see what the remake would be like.
I saw it early in the run, but by then it had already been cut. My older brother, who was a film critic for a local New Jersey paper, had seen a press screening, which had then included the "Fertility Dance." He said the, invited, audience had laughed so hard upon seeing this, that their reaction affected the producers enough to cut it. As well as to shorten the length of the film, in order to accommodate more screenings in a given day.
The Bachrach score is quite good in its own right, but it's a terrible match for the story, with the songs consequently seeming ridiculous. Even the audience when I saw the cut version was laughing now and then.
Whatever possessed Warner Brothers to make this, then to fudge on the sets, by recycling former sets from CAMELOT, is still beyond me. The first section is almost the same as the 1937 original, then the songs come in once they arrive at Shangri-La, and the whole thing falls apart. Finch is good, though not a singer. Liv Ullman is a total mismatch for musicals; she wasn't even good in the musical stage version of "I Remember Mama." The dances were juvenile, and the other characters just out of place, with Sally Kellerman and Bobby Van loitering around the sets.
Just a big mess.
For years, the "Fertility Dance" was rumored to be one of the most embarrassing musical moments in film. Like many such productions, bad musicals end up being just boring, continuing to amaze with their stupidity at thinking what they are doing is effective.
Warner's did not produce it. Ross Hunter produced it for Columbia Pictures. The sets were recycled from Warner's Camelot.
