The Band Wagon

Cinema Classics on DVD Curated Collection


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The Band Wagon - 2 Disc Special Edition

" The Band Wagon (1953) came only a year after the same writers, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, wrote "Singin' in the Rain." Both are great backstage musicals, one about Hollywood, the other about Broadway, one starring Gene Kelly, the other Fred Astaire. "Singin' in the Rain" is a comedy, but "The Band Wagon" has a note of melancholy along with its smiles, a sadness always present among Broadway veterans, who have seen more failure than success, who know the show always closes and that the backstage family breaks up and returns to the limbo of auditions and out-of-town tryouts."

"The movie [also starring Cyd Charisse, Nanette Fabray, and Oscar Levant] takes a would-be musical through all the stages of writing, casting, production, choreography, rehearsals, failure on the road and eventual triumph on Broadway. It's so happily aware of its genre that we actually do hear mention of renting a barn and putting on a show. But it draws on experience with the actual working conditions of Broadway professionals, just as "Singin' in the Rain" knew a lot about how movies are made."

"The Astaire and Charisse characters are brought together by Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan), a director-producer-star with artistic pretensions, who thinks the lively little musical by [writers] the Martons should be reworked as a version of "Faust." The Cordova character is said to be inspired by Jose Ferrer, who at the time was starring in one Broadway show and producing three others, but in the ego and the big plans there's also an echo of Orson Welles."

"Many of the movie’s songs, by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Deitz, already existed; MGM in those days didn’t simply recycle Broadway hits but created new musicals from scratch, often using songs it already owned. That works here because, after dumping the Faustian musical, the performers decide to put on a revue. One song written new for the movie would become a touchstone: Deitz and Schwartz’s “That’s Entertainment,” which celebrates show business in a way as joyous but not as zany as Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘em Laugh” in “Singin’ in the Rain.” ----- Roger Ebert

Other songs include "Dancing in the Dark", "By Myself," "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan.", Triplets" , and Shine on Your Shoes" .

Selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry of American Film.

DVD - 2 Disc Special Edition

Available subtitles: English, Spanish, French
Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 1.0), French (Dolby Digital 1.0)
Commentary by Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein
New digital transfer from restored picture and audio elements
New making-of documentary: "Get Aboard! The Band Wagon"
Vintage documentary: "The Men Who Made the Movies: Vincente Minnelli"
Outtake musical number: Two Faced Woman, plus dailies
Musical short: Jack Buchanan with the Glee Quartet
Astaire trailer gallery

Curator's Comments:
Read Roger Ebert's essay on this DVD Classic.

Director: Vincente Minnelli
Color
112 minutes
Released: 1953
Rated: NR

Country: U.S.A.
Language: English
Genre: Comedy, Musical

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