Movie Movie (Donen, 1978): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.50pm
This late Stanley Donen film is part of the 'You Must Remember This presents: The Old Man is Still Alive' season at BFI Southbank. Many great directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, from the 1930 to ’50s, radically changed course in the later years of their career – a theme that runs through the new season of the podcast You Must Remember This and this BFI season. The men behind undeniable classics like It’s a Wonderful Life, My Fair Lady, Sunset Boulevard, Gigi and Psycho, attempted – or were forced – to engage with massive changes in technology; shifts in attitudes towards race and gender, and a new generation of studio executives and audiences who could be sceptical that an ‘old man’ had anything to offer in a world obsessed with burning down the past and starting fresh. Some railed against the new ‘degenerate’ cinema made by, in Billy Wilder’s phrase, ‘the kids with beards’ and tried to preserve the status quo; others attempted to make films that confronted the generation gap and a transformed society.
This 35mm presentation is also screened on April 20th. Full details of the season can be found here.
Chicago Reader review:
A parody of Old Hollywood conventions that is, for once, clever,
insightful, and genuinely funny—thanks, no doubt, to the intelligence
and stylistic know-how brought to bear by Stanley Donen, who was there (Singin’ in the Rain).
It’s a double feature—a fight picture and a backstage musical—with
actors, lines, plot twists, sets, and shots repeated in both films. The
screenplay relies too heavily on facile non sequiturs, but Donen has the
shape down pat: squared off, symmetrical, and wholly self-contained.
Dave Kehr
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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