Fractal Man
Cinematic entertainments of the 1930s, when they weren't playing on the level of intimate drama or even broad comedy, were similar to each other across nations in that screen extras moving in organized formations created a look of orchestrated masses.
The 1930s, too, was a decade characterized by peoples reacting to worldwide economic depression. Germany began to recover from these financial circumstances sooner than other nations due to its Nazi leaders' commitment to building a new militarized society. The United States sputtered under Herbert Hoover's inept leadership, but under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the country's workforce grew and became purposeful.
The organization and rise of major world powers after depressed times leads to economic competition, leads to new wars, to a struggle for dominance of certain natural resources required by societies powered by such resources.
The line between democratic (people power in the sense of the Greek root word, demos, or people) and totalitarian and/or fascist governmental systems is thin where the masses of any given nation are concerned. Any country changes over time. The U.S. has become an oligarchy; Russia is the same. Unbounded capitalism leads to rule by the wealthy. Propaganda from that sector attempts to convince the majority of a nation's people that they actually live in a democracy, or a republic, or what have you.
This really is a film review. As I watched Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1935, marveling as always at Berkeley's jaw-dropping choreography, dreamed up by him, executed by mobs of identically dressed men and women moving harmoniously like the parts of a fine timepiece, it occurred to me that in 1934 and 1935, when the film was made in Hollywood, Nazi Germany was putting on perfectly choreographed shows like the Nuremberg Party Rallies, as seen in Leni Riefenstahl's contemporary Triumph of the Will.
I'm not suggesting Berkeley or his producers were Nazi sympathizers. The 1930s was a decade of mobilization of the masses. This is shown in Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda and other Nazi newsreels of the period, all approved by Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda. It's also shown in Berkeley's films, albeit in a form more prone to humor and the kind of cinematic surrealism not allowed in Nazi era cinema.
This 1935 Hollywood film, less well known, or at least less shown on Turner Classic Movies than other Berkeley extravaganzas like Dames, Gold Diggers of 1933, and 42nd Street (those three made during the racy Pre-Code era), has a straightforward romantic premise with funny moments; Hugh Herbert, a middle-aged eccentric obsessed with writing his 1,800 page book about snuff and snuff boxes--he's engaged to fey blonde Gloria Stuart, a full six decades before she appeared in James Cameron's Titanic. Dick Powell, a medical student working at a hotel, happens to have a great singing voice, performs in the two main incredible show pieces near the film's end; Glenda Farrell, a funny fast-talking actress who was soon to appear in her own series of wonderful newspaperwoman films as Torchy Blane.
Berkeley highlighted the differences between rich and poor. It's clear he sympathized with the working class, although I wonder what it was like to be part of his performance pieces, every little step of complex choreography needing to be exactly right, but multiplied, at times by a hundred extras or more. There's a sequence in this film involving an astounding array of white pianos mock-played by at least fifty women in ball gowns, all of them smiling, moved around in perfect synchrony by dark-trousered men crouched underneath each piano. In one shot, the pianos wave and flutter as if in a breeze; they come together like puzzle pieces with a woman on top of of them moving about, her veils flowing strangely until I realized the shot is backwards.
In another set piece, a couple appears and begins dancing their way down stairs. A very long and increasingly high crane shot reveals staircase after staircase, coming back to part of an orchestra and high above the scene a table set for Dick Powell and Wini Shaw, a great singer who begins the entire sequence as a disembodied face, a dot of light in blackness, approached in an almost imperceptible at times tracking shot until her face fills the screen at the climax of her song.
The stairs, the pianos, the endless smiling women...it's as if Busby Berkeley accidentally discovered fractals. Had he lived long enough, I suspect he would have been fascinated by fractals--endless patterns of the same shape. In Berkeley's choreography, a basic thing, like someone playing a piano, becomes a multitude of the same. Applying this idea to a more totalitarian viewpoint, one can see how such multiplicity can serve propaganda as we view on the news, for instance, North Korean soldiers marching in lockstep before Kim Jong-un The truth is, all militaries of the world have soldiers that learned how to march, creating the appearance of a single mind. Recall that the United States Army had a slogan for many years: "An Army of One."
Cooperation, required in any venture big or small involving a group of people, can result in mass public works projects, as in the New Deal, but it can also result in aggressive attempts to seize the land and resources of other countries.
I know Busby Berkeley didn't have some of these ideas of mine in mind when he made his singular and entertaining movies. I also think that the world of his time almost required someone to create a vision of people working together harmoniously, in his case, from the artist's viewpoint, while Leni Riefenstahl was more interested in depicting the surface poses of Aryan automatons praising a painter who gave up on his art, became a soldier, and then a politician.
Obviously, I prefer Busby to Leni.
Vic Neptune
Cinematic entertainments of the 1930s, when they weren't playing on the level of intimate drama or even broad comedy, were similar to each other across nations in that screen extras moving in organized formations created a look of orchestrated masses.
The 1930s, too, was a decade characterized by peoples reacting to worldwide economic depression. Germany began to recover from these financial circumstances sooner than other nations due to its Nazi leaders' commitment to building a new militarized society. The United States sputtered under Herbert Hoover's inept leadership, but under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the country's workforce grew and became purposeful.
The organization and rise of major world powers after depressed times leads to economic competition, leads to new wars, to a struggle for dominance of certain natural resources required by societies powered by such resources.
The line between democratic (people power in the sense of the Greek root word, demos, or people) and totalitarian and/or fascist governmental systems is thin where the masses of any given nation are concerned. Any country changes over time. The U.S. has become an oligarchy; Russia is the same. Unbounded capitalism leads to rule by the wealthy. Propaganda from that sector attempts to convince the majority of a nation's people that they actually live in a democracy, or a republic, or what have you.
This really is a film review. As I watched Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1935, marveling as always at Berkeley's jaw-dropping choreography, dreamed up by him, executed by mobs of identically dressed men and women moving harmoniously like the parts of a fine timepiece, it occurred to me that in 1934 and 1935, when the film was made in Hollywood, Nazi Germany was putting on perfectly choreographed shows like the Nuremberg Party Rallies, as seen in Leni Riefenstahl's contemporary Triumph of the Will.
I'm not suggesting Berkeley or his producers were Nazi sympathizers. The 1930s was a decade of mobilization of the masses. This is shown in Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda and other Nazi newsreels of the period, all approved by Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda. It's also shown in Berkeley's films, albeit in a form more prone to humor and the kind of cinematic surrealism not allowed in Nazi era cinema.
This 1935 Hollywood film, less well known, or at least less shown on Turner Classic Movies than other Berkeley extravaganzas like Dames, Gold Diggers of 1933, and 42nd Street (those three made during the racy Pre-Code era), has a straightforward romantic premise with funny moments; Hugh Herbert, a middle-aged eccentric obsessed with writing his 1,800 page book about snuff and snuff boxes--he's engaged to fey blonde Gloria Stuart, a full six decades before she appeared in James Cameron's Titanic. Dick Powell, a medical student working at a hotel, happens to have a great singing voice, performs in the two main incredible show pieces near the film's end; Glenda Farrell, a funny fast-talking actress who was soon to appear in her own series of wonderful newspaperwoman films as Torchy Blane.
Berkeley highlighted the differences between rich and poor. It's clear he sympathized with the working class, although I wonder what it was like to be part of his performance pieces, every little step of complex choreography needing to be exactly right, but multiplied, at times by a hundred extras or more. There's a sequence in this film involving an astounding array of white pianos mock-played by at least fifty women in ball gowns, all of them smiling, moved around in perfect synchrony by dark-trousered men crouched underneath each piano. In one shot, the pianos wave and flutter as if in a breeze; they come together like puzzle pieces with a woman on top of of them moving about, her veils flowing strangely until I realized the shot is backwards.
In another set piece, a couple appears and begins dancing their way down stairs. A very long and increasingly high crane shot reveals staircase after staircase, coming back to part of an orchestra and high above the scene a table set for Dick Powell and Wini Shaw, a great singer who begins the entire sequence as a disembodied face, a dot of light in blackness, approached in an almost imperceptible at times tracking shot until her face fills the screen at the climax of her song.
The stairs, the pianos, the endless smiling women...it's as if Busby Berkeley accidentally discovered fractals. Had he lived long enough, I suspect he would have been fascinated by fractals--endless patterns of the same shape. In Berkeley's choreography, a basic thing, like someone playing a piano, becomes a multitude of the same. Applying this idea to a more totalitarian viewpoint, one can see how such multiplicity can serve propaganda as we view on the news, for instance, North Korean soldiers marching in lockstep before Kim Jong-un The truth is, all militaries of the world have soldiers that learned how to march, creating the appearance of a single mind. Recall that the United States Army had a slogan for many years: "An Army of One."
Cooperation, required in any venture big or small involving a group of people, can result in mass public works projects, as in the New Deal, but it can also result in aggressive attempts to seize the land and resources of other countries.
I know Busby Berkeley didn't have some of these ideas of mine in mind when he made his singular and entertaining movies. I also think that the world of his time almost required someone to create a vision of people working together harmoniously, in his case, from the artist's viewpoint, while Leni Riefenstahl was more interested in depicting the surface poses of Aryan automatons praising a painter who gave up on his art, became a soldier, and then a politician.
Obviously, I prefer Busby to Leni.
Vic Neptune
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