I have this notion that the thirties was a great pressure cooker for movies, during which time all sorts of experiments were tried. Out of that period came the genres we know today, plus the great invention of Noir, uniquely American.
So I've been watching lots of 30s movies, not because they are good or particularly enjoyable. But because you can see the genotype of today's movies, which is to say I can see the origins of how we all dream and mostly imagine.
Now here is an anomaly, a 30s movie made in the 40s. I can only imagine that it was to feed the war-starved theaters. It is a remake and "borrows" musical numbers from a couple films that really were made in the 30s.
It is a spliced picture, three movies combined, something that was common in the 30's.
One movie is a stage show. Simple and straightforward. Lots of variety here.
A second movie is a comedic fold: a movie where all the players are involved in some way in a play (different than the earlier mentioned performances and more like "Gone with the Wind"). Lots of physical humor here. Red Skelton's technique was to perform a comedic motion (like rolling his eyes after getting bonked) in an exaggerated fashion and then abruptly stop before it finished and look at the audience with a big grin. It was humor about humor, a not very sophisticated but an effective fold that would grow into what we have today (and call irony).
The third movie has a wartime saboteur. Because the "fold," the notion of the play within the play, is explicit here, the explosion is to blow up the theater (and somehow simultaneously threaten the nation by mechanisms unexplained).
Its a mess, these three parts not integrated in any way.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
