Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 171: Thu Jun 20

Cover Girl (Charles Vidor, 1944): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.45pm

This film, part of the Rita Hayworth season at BFI Southbank, also screens at the cinema on June 16th. More details here.

Here is the BFI introduction: Loyalty is tested as top-form Hayworth swaps Gene Kelly’s Brooklyn club for Broadway fame via Vanity magazine. Hayworth positively gleams, doubles as her character Rusty’s grandmother and dances like a dream in the sockeroo title number. With Phil Silvers making it an ebullient song’n’dance trio, astringent Eve Arden, Jerome Kern-Ira Gershwin songs and more millinery than you can shake a stick at, it’s the finest musical Hayworth made.

Chicago Reader review:
A lush 1944 musical vehicle built for Rita Hayworth at the height of her popularity by Columbia's specialist in glitz, Charles Vidor (who went on to create the definitive Hayworth in Gilda). Gene Kelly, languishing as a contract player at MGM, made his first big impression on this loan-out, helped by a fresh-faced kid from South Carolina named Stanley Donen, who directed all of Kelly's dance numbers.                                         
Dave Kehr

The screening on Sunday 16 June will be introduced by season curator David Benedict.

Here is an extract.

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