The Band Wagon Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

The Band Wagon Blu-ray Movie Review

This IS Entertainment!

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 12, 2015

The Band Wagon is like some fabulous contraption that defies every principle of aerodynamics and should never get off the ground—but it soars aloft anyway, floating as if on gossamer wings. At a time when Rodgers and Hammerstein were redefining the American musical so that songs had to advance the plot, The Band Wagon was created to exploit a catalog of existing songs by the team of Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz. When this is done today, it's called a "jukebox musical" and, with a few exceptions, treated with disdain. But in 1952, legendary MGM producer Arthur Freed asked Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the writers of Singin' in the Rain, to dream up a scenario that would accommodate the cream of the Schwartz & Dietz catalog. The two writers, who were often mistaken for husband and wife, though each was happily married to someone else, returned to their roots in the theater for a backstage comedy that drew on every troubled show they'd ever experienced. Even the writers conceded that the plot they cobbled together was "thin".

The director charged with assembling the package into a hit film (and it was a hit) was Vincente Minnelli, who drew on his own background staging shows on Broadway and at Radio City Music Hall to parody his former stomping ground with an affectionate wink. "One man must be at the helm", says the eccentric director of The Band Wagon's show-within-a-show, and Minnelli was certainly the boss of his set, overseeing everything from casting to the performance of each extra to the colors of the scenery design and props. He even painted some of the pictures that hang on the walls of the set.

Thanks to Minnelli's exceptional command of every detail, the thinness of The Band Wagon's story passes without concern (though not unnoticed). Minnelli fills in the gaps with style, with song, with the dramatic tension of dancers moving on screen, communicating without words. Minnelli spoke of his desire to create "magic" in movies. In The Band Wagon, perhaps his greatest magic trick is to convey a sense of genuine emotion pulsing at the center of a creation whose artifice is always apparent. Indeed, Minnelli was such a superb showman that he could engineer artifice while simultaneously poking fun at it. Part of The Band Wagon's effervescence derives from its dead-on satire of the insular theatrical world, with its ups and downs, clashing egos, eccentric personalities and barely controlled chaos. Anyone who followed the saga of the recent Spider-Man musical knows that the crazed spirit blowing through The Band Wagon still exists on Broadway today.

The Band Wagon's script draws many elements from life, always with a wry twist. Fred Astaire plays Tony Hunter, whose career in movies was very similar to that of Fred Astaire. Now, though, Tony is considered a faded star, which is analogous (though not identical) to Astaire's status during his several "retirements". While his props and costumes linger on a Hollywood auction block, Tony has been lured east to Broadway by his old friends, the writing and performing team of Lester and Lily Marton (Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray), who have created a dynamite script for him called, you guessed it, "The Band Wagon". The Martons are closely modeled on writers Comden and Green, who also performed, except that the Martons are married, because, as Comden and Green later explained, the audience wouldn't believe it if they weren't. (They also made Lester a hypochondriac, because Levant was notorious for being one in real life.)

To direct their production, the Martons recruit the tireless Jeffrey Cordova (British thespian Jack Buchanan), who already has three shows up and running, including a production of Oedipus Rex in which he's playing the lead. Jeffrey was originally based on actor José Ferrer, who was similarly busy on Broadway at the time, but many believe that the character came more to resemble Maestro Minnelli himself. In any case, it is Jeffrey who succeeds in recruiting the beautiful and talented ballerina, Gabrielle Gerard, to star opposite Tony, even though Gabrielle's manager and boyfriend, Paul Bryd (James Mitchell), has consistently rejected non-ballet offers until now. Gabrielle is played by Cyd Charisse, who, like her character, was taking her first starring role, and also like her character, made her leading man insecure about his height. (It became a recurring joke in the film.)

Artiste that he is, Jeffrey tosses out the Martons' script in favor of his own concept, a modern-day Faust, which is what he sells to his wealthy backers. We never see much of Jeffrey's show, but it looks dreadful. After he's spent weeks tormenting the cast and crew into shape, the out-of-town preview in New Haven is a disaster. (The scene of the crestfallen backers leaving the theater is brilliant.) At a cast party/wake, Tony decides to start over again with the Martons' original script and try to rebuild the show "on the road". Does he succeed? If you need to ask, you've never seen a musical comedy.

The bare outline of a plot is more excuse than story. From the moment Tony steps off the train at Grand Central Station, Minnelli takes every opportunity to stage memorable moments, both musical and non-musical, that so thoroughly fill the screen with movement and color you may not even notice how little they have to do with advancing the ramshackle narrative. A classic example is Tony's elaborate adventure in Times Square to the tune of "Shine on My Shoes", an elaborately choreographed routine involving a dozen specially designed arcade machines and a real Times Square shoeshine man who just happened to be a great dancer. Somewhat more substantive is the film's most famous song, "That's Entertainment!", one of a handful of original compositions by Schwartz & Dietz for The Band Wagon, in which Jeffrey, Tony and the Martons summarize the essence of musical theater. Most substantive of all is the elegant dance performed by Tony and Gabrielle in Central Park to the music of "Dancing in the Dark", where the initial hostility between them dissolves into a partnership (and possibly more). A masterpiece of performance by Astaire and Cyd Charisse and direction by Minnelli, it may be the film's finest sequence.

In the last half hour of The Band Wagon, story virtually disappears, as one musical number follows another on the pretext that we're seeing selected scenes from the reworked show-within-a-show. I defy anyone to figure out what the Martons' original script was about, but with numbers this inventively staged, who really cares? Both shows have a happy ending, which is what everyone wants.

The Band Wagon Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Band Wagon was the last film credited to cinematographer Harry Jackson (Three Little Words), who died shortly before the film's release. A three-strip Technicolor production, the film has been restored by Warner's MPI facility using their patented "Ultra Resolution" process that digitally aligns the three layers to achieve a previously unprecedented degree of sharpness, stability and detail. The results, as seen on Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, are stupendous. The Band Wagon's complex and colorful imagery has depth and clarity to which even the fastidious Minnelli would have given his approval. An elaborate sequence like Fred Astaire's Times Square song-and-dance frolic reveals the detail of the various machines and the elaborately costumed extras with whom the dancer interacts. The complex meltdown of Jeffrey's climactic Faust sequence during rehearsal, which combines multiple slapstick gags into one, is all clearly visible so that your eye keeps darting around the frame, busily taking in each malfunction. The "Triplets" routine, which depends on solid blackness surrounding Astaire, Buchanan and Fabray to create the illusion, works perfectly because the blacks are excellent. Cyd Charisse's colorful wardrobe is shown to best advantage, especially her red dress in the climactic "Girl Hunt Ballet".

Warner has mastered The Band Wagon at an unusually high average bitrate (for Warner) of 27.93 Mbps. I have heard rumors that Warner Home Video is on the verge of dropping their addiction to bitrates in the 20-25 Mbps range. Perhaps this title and Kiss Me Kate are a sign of things to come.

The Band Wagon Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Band Wagon was originally released in mono. The Blu-ray features a 5.1 remix encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. The remix is conservative and front-oriented, although the multi-channel format does open up the front soundstage considerably. The dialogue and lyrics are clearly rendered, and the quality of the recording is excellent. The orchestrations by Conrad Salinger, Skip Martin and Alexander Courage (yes, the author of the original Star Trek theme) have been beautifully preserved, with a sweet tonal quality that is especially evident on the strings in "Dancing in the Dark". (The song will be instantly familiar to anyone who recalls the parody performed by Steve Martin and Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live in 1978, which was shown on SNL as a tribute to Radner after her death eleven years later.)

The Band Wagon Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Warner previously released The Band Wagon in 2005 in a "Two-Disc Special Edition" with most of the same extras that appear on the Blu-ray. Missing is the "Astaire Trailer Gallery" and the "Outtake Musical Number: Two Faced Woman Plus Dailies". Added for the Blu-ray is the cartoon "The Three Little Pups".

• Commentary with Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein: Minnelli gushes with family stories, many of them from time spent on the set of The Band Wagon at age six, while Feinstein plays the historian, filling in details about songs, costumes, career paths and all manner of details about the production. The track may not be as detailed as a typical scholar's commentary, but it's certainly lively.



• Get Aboard! The Band Wagon (480i; 1.33:1; 37:09): This 2005 retrospective featurette includes interviews with Liza Minnelli, Jonathan Schwartz (son of songwriter Arthur Schwartz), screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Ava Astaire-McKenzie (daughter of Fred Astaire), choreographer Michael Kidd and actors Cyd Charisse, Nanette Fabray and James Mitchell.



• The Men Who Made the Movies: Vincente Minnelli (480i; 1.33:1; 58:25): This 1973 PBS broadcast was one of an eight-part series written and directed by critic and film historian Richard Schickel. With narration by Cliff Robertson, it hits several high points of Minnelli's career, including The Band Wagon, and features rare interview footage with the director discussing a variety of subjects from Fred Astaire to movie "magic".



• Jack Buchanan with the Glee Quartet (480i; 1.33:1; 6:00): A comedy short in which Buchanan plays a last-minute replacement in an a capella quartet.



• The Three Little Pups (480i; 1.33:1; 6:46): Tex Avery's version of The Three Little Pigs.



• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 1.33:1; 3:14).

The Band Wagon Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As both a sterling example of what a great studio, producer, cast and director could create in an earlier era, and of what a first-rate technical crew can reproduce in the digital domain today, the Blu-ray of The Band Wagon is great entertainment. It just requires a different set of viewing sensibilities than today's effects extravaganzas. With that caveat, highly recommended.