Cyd Charisse is my favorite of all the Golden Age dancer/actresses.A couple of weeks ago when TCM was showing a full day of her films,I decided to spend a few hours watching. This film,The Unfinished Dance, was unfamiliar to me,so I decided to check it out. Oh boy.
Miss Charisse is of course,as beautiful as ever and her dancing is wonderful as usual,but there are enough plot holes and total implausibilities in this film to make it completely unbelievable.
First,we have a ballet school with the most untalented group of budding ballerinas with the worst attitudes ever. Our main ballerina to be is Meg Merlin played by child actress Margaret O' Brien. Miss O'Brien was to the 40s what Shirley Temple was to the 30s. She was actually talented,as evidenced by her performance in Meet Me in St. Louis, where she held her own and then some against Judy Garland. Here,she is an insufferable brat with a mean streak and a horrendous girl crush on Prima Ballerina Mlle. Bouchet,played by Cyd Charisse.Mlle.Bouchet is a wonderful dancer,but she's as shallow as a kiddie wading pool. We get to see her petulant side when she discovers that the ballet company is getting a new artist in residence,La Darina,played by Karin Booth. La Darina is supposedly European,but she speaks perfect English,with an American accent,no less. Okay. Anyway,Meg is so devoted to Mlle. Bouchet that she is willing to do anything to see that her crush becomes a huge star. This includes sabotaging La Darina's performance of Swan Lake which results in the dancer being hurt and possibly never being able to dance again. Meg's frenemy Josie(Elinore Donahue) knows what Meg did and begins blackmailing her to keep what she knows from becoming public knowledge. There's also another little brat that suspects something is up and she keeps pestering Josie to let her in on it. Yeah,these kids are great at backstabbing and blackmail. Dancing,not so much. The ballet students range in age from about 6 to 11. They are already dancing on their toes. No reputable dance school would put kids that young on their toes.
Then there is young Meg's home life. It appears she is an orphan that now lives with her aunt, a chorus girl, over the shop of Mr. Paneros. Mr. Paneros,played by Danny Thomas, specializes in selling and repairing watches and clocks. Some have criticized Thomas's performance here. To be fair,it was his first film role,also I'm sure he was directed to play the Paneros character as "ethnic" as possible. In the 40s there was no shading,if a character wasn't a WASP, that person was usually a caricature or stereotype.Check out Mlle. Bouchet's African American maid later in the film for an even more egregious stereotype. Anyway,Paneros is in love with the Auntie, who takes advantage of this when she goes away on tour and leaves little Meg with her "almost Uncle." Apparently,Paneros has no problem with Meg wandering all over town by herself, as she shows up in places unexpectedly such as the upscale department store where Bouchet and her fiancé are shopping(Meg gets a hat out of that trip) and La Darina's house. The film continues to pile up implausibilities until the very end when it comes out that Meg was responsible for Darina's injury and there is no,absolutely not one,comeuppance! Does she get thrown out of ballet school?No. Does she go to juvie? Nope.She continues to dance, but not before she also manages to break up Bouchet and her fiancé. Cyd Charisse later did much better films,so did Danny Thomas and he and Elinore Donahue became sitcom stars as well. Watch these actors in those things. Skip this.
Miss Charisse is of course,as beautiful as ever and her dancing is wonderful as usual,but there are enough plot holes and total implausibilities in this film to make it completely unbelievable.
First,we have a ballet school with the most untalented group of budding ballerinas with the worst attitudes ever. Our main ballerina to be is Meg Merlin played by child actress Margaret O' Brien. Miss O'Brien was to the 40s what Shirley Temple was to the 30s. She was actually talented,as evidenced by her performance in Meet Me in St. Louis, where she held her own and then some against Judy Garland. Here,she is an insufferable brat with a mean streak and a horrendous girl crush on Prima Ballerina Mlle. Bouchet,played by Cyd Charisse.Mlle.Bouchet is a wonderful dancer,but she's as shallow as a kiddie wading pool. We get to see her petulant side when she discovers that the ballet company is getting a new artist in residence,La Darina,played by Karin Booth. La Darina is supposedly European,but she speaks perfect English,with an American accent,no less. Okay. Anyway,Meg is so devoted to Mlle. Bouchet that she is willing to do anything to see that her crush becomes a huge star. This includes sabotaging La Darina's performance of Swan Lake which results in the dancer being hurt and possibly never being able to dance again. Meg's frenemy Josie(Elinore Donahue) knows what Meg did and begins blackmailing her to keep what she knows from becoming public knowledge. There's also another little brat that suspects something is up and she keeps pestering Josie to let her in on it. Yeah,these kids are great at backstabbing and blackmail. Dancing,not so much. The ballet students range in age from about 6 to 11. They are already dancing on their toes. No reputable dance school would put kids that young on their toes.
Then there is young Meg's home life. It appears she is an orphan that now lives with her aunt, a chorus girl, over the shop of Mr. Paneros. Mr. Paneros,played by Danny Thomas, specializes in selling and repairing watches and clocks. Some have criticized Thomas's performance here. To be fair,it was his first film role,also I'm sure he was directed to play the Paneros character as "ethnic" as possible. In the 40s there was no shading,if a character wasn't a WASP, that person was usually a caricature or stereotype.Check out Mlle. Bouchet's African American maid later in the film for an even more egregious stereotype. Anyway,Paneros is in love with the Auntie, who takes advantage of this when she goes away on tour and leaves little Meg with her "almost Uncle." Apparently,Paneros has no problem with Meg wandering all over town by herself, as she shows up in places unexpectedly such as the upscale department store where Bouchet and her fiancé are shopping(Meg gets a hat out of that trip) and La Darina's house. The film continues to pile up implausibilities until the very end when it comes out that Meg was responsible for Darina's injury and there is no,absolutely not one,comeuppance! Does she get thrown out of ballet school?No. Does she go to juvie? Nope.She continues to dance, but not before she also manages to break up Bouchet and her fiancé. Cyd Charisse later did much better films,so did Danny Thomas and he and Elinore Donahue became sitcom stars as well. Watch these actors in those things. Skip this.