#35, 2/17 – The Band Wagon (1953) (dvd)

I like Fred Astaire’s endearingly goofy on-screen persona. And when I respond well to actors, be it Gena Rowlands or Philip Seymour Hoffman (Phil!), that’s what I’m reacting to. I’m no judge of acting talent. I’m not able to say with any degree of certainty that any particular performance was good or bad. I just react to what they radiate. So, you know, maybe Tom Cruise and Gwyneth Paltrow are great actors. I don’t know. I just don’t like the energy they put on the screen.

Anyway, back to Astaire. I like him. Were I to list out my twenty-five favorite actors of all time (I won’t), he’d almost certainly be on the list. I can watch Daddy Long Legs (the movie he made right after this one) again and again and again because of his, let me repeat myself, endearingly goofy on-screen personality. Yay Fred. It was also good to see Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant seeming an awful lot like I imagine writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green might have been, publicly. And I rented it, actually, for Cyd Charisse since, get this, I’d never seen her in a starring role and I felt the need to correct that. So I did.

It’s hardly my favorite musical—and by no means my favorite from Comden and Green—but it’s fun and cute, and that’s good enough. Plus, I loved hearing Fabray sing “Louisiana Hayride”, even if it made absolutely no sense for it to be in the movie. None. But, hey… that’s entertainment!