IF THE 

SHOE

FITS...

Today, in the ‘Arts & Entertainment’ section the BBC website, Auntie has a piece about Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical(?) ‘Cinderella’, prior to its press night.

Neath the headline, “You may go to the ball: Cinderella opens in the West End”, we are informed that “The tale has been made more relevant for today’s audiences…” My immediate response was to think of the word ‘ball’ in the plural.

This promotional piece includes some clips of what one presumes is the dress rehearsal… with a stage chock full of hyper-actives all going absolutely bananas. Quantity, not quality is the name of the game it would appear!

Of course, this is the norm theses days, but then we have seen it all before… for some time now. Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Moulin Rouge’, made 20 years ago, for example. Someone on the IMDB website describes it as “…technicolor vomit!” I had the misfortune to watch that film… or at least part of it… but I deliberately gave Baz’s version of ‘The Great Gatsby’ a miss… IMDB again – “Total garbage!”. Nothing recedes like excess!

Why do directors think that everything needs to be “current” to be successful? If they want to see quality, they need not look any further than Walt Disney’s ‘Snow White’ (1937), ‘Pinocchio’ (1940), ‘Bambi’ (1942) ‘Cinderella’ (1950), ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (1951) and ‘Peter Pan’ (1953) If anyone has a problem with these films, or doesn’t appreciate the staggering quality, they don’t know shirts from Shinola!

Ironically, Mr Webber wrote a musical version of ‘Sunset Boulevard’… "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!" The 1950 film was directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, who was awarded a total of 6 Oscars during his writing and directing career. In 2017 his film ‘Some Like It Hot’, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, which Wilder directed and also co-wrote, was voted the best comedy film ever made, by more than 250 film critics from over 50 countries.

As long ago as 1976 at the age of 70 he said, “They say Wilder is out of touch with his times. Frankly, I regard it as a compliment. Who the hell wants to be in touch with these times?”

Well, Billy… it’s got worse… much, much worse.

A famous sign on the wall in Billy Wilder's office asked, ''What would Lubitsch have done?'' Wilder meant the question as a tribute to Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947), his master, mentor and sometime boss… a comic filmmaker whose elegant and effortless command represented, to Wilder and many others, the apogee of cinematic wit, sophistication and technical precision. 

Stage or screen… it ain’t there anymore, because… we’ve had the best… and now you’ve got the rest...offering up ordure with overkill!”

Heigh-ho!

 

Howdy Doody  was a freckle-faced boy marionette originally voiced by Buffalo Bob Smith on an American children's television programme telecast on the NBC network from December 1947 to September 1960... but then you knew that, didn't you!