Shooting Down Pictures #938: Dames

video essay of Dames (1934, Ray Enright, Busby Berkeley), #938 of Shooting Down Pictures project. To find out more visit http://alsolikelife.com/shooting/?p=205

To view the sequence in its original form, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akET7aP01_8

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• alsolikelife
• shooting
• down
• pictures
• tspdt
• 1000
• dames
• busby
• berkeley
• musical

[berkeleysgal]

I like the way you include the soundtracks in your montages, unlike those on YouTube who insist on adding rap music(?) or some such nonsense to destroy the original. However, I find your amatuer pop-psychology to be tedious. Art does not lend itself itself to this type of thing. Do you also "analyze" Mozart and Picaso?

[alsolikelife]

no but I can refer you to a couple of people who do! :-)

[berkeleysgal]

To what useful purpose?

[alsolikelife]

well for one thing they can show you how to spell Picasso correctly. And you'll get some illuminating anecdotes about how young Amadeus' potty training traumas contributed to the genius of "Don Giovanni."

[ragemanchoo82]

... we got it when we saw it (at least those of us who graduated high school and watched a lot of the History Channel). You're basically over analyzing it.

[scotpens]

(continued from previous post)

In fact, many of Berkeley's numbers were inspired by drills he had learned in his Army days. Whenever one of his routines called for real technical dancing, someone else would be called in to direct and choreograph that portion (as for example, the tap dancing in "Lullaby of Broadway" from "Gold Diggers of 1935").

[scotpens]

I find much of your pop-psychological analysis to be tiring and silly. However, your comment that "a control freak like Busby Berkeley is scared to death of dancing" is probably accurate. Berkeley was not a choreographer or dance director; he didn't know squat about technical dancing. He was an ensemble director who created striking images by moving masses of people and props around in lots of interesting ways.

[Levanthion]

I don't get it. Are you a movie critic or a shrink?

[berkeleysgal]

Not only have I seen Don Giovanni performed live three times, but I've read extensively from a large sample of the thousands of books written about Mozart. I have all of his Piano Concertos and a large assortment of his other works. Again, I find pop-psychology to be not only silly, it also serves no useful purpose to any art student such as myself.

[berkeleysgal]

Nor should you! Are you also one of those who criticizes Beethoven's music for its "sexual" content?

[berkeleysgal]

The "croch shots" are in the eye of the beholder - namely you. Busby Berkeley was a genius who is immune to amatuer criticism from untalented hacks!