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    A Song Is Born

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    عدد المساهمات : 10329
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    تاريخ التسجيل : 08/04/2009
    العمر : 32
    08062010

    A Song Is Born Empty A Song Is Born

    مُساهمة من طرف GODOF

    A Song Is Born Asongisborn1
    Howard Hawks amassed such a consistent, and
    consistently fascinating, oeuvre by always making, with very few
    exceptions, only the films he really wanted to make. In an era when
    directors had very little power or prestige in Hollywood, Hawks was
    notable for working largely independently, outside of the usual studio
    system; he moved from studio to studio, breaking contracts and going
    elsewhere when he couldn't get his way. Hawks thus earned a reputation
    as a director who seldom bowed to the pressure of producers, who always
    stuck to his own vision. One of the few exceptions to this independence
    was A Song Is Born, which Hawks made at the insistence
    of Samuel Goldwyn, who got Hawks to say yes to the project by, quite
    simply, offering him an exorbitant amount of money. The resulting film
    feels like the work of a man who's just earning a paycheck, too. It's
    not so much a remake of Hawks' Ball of Fire as it is a
    shameless pilfering of the earlier film, barely bothering to alter the
    example set by its predecessor; the film basically counts on fresh
    audiences who hadn't seen Ball of Fire. Hawks of course was
    famous for such pilfering and recycling. If a bit worked in one film, he
    wasn't afraid to translate it into a new context, and late in his
    career he kept remaking the basic scenario of Rio Bravo,
    riffing on its relationships and structure in interesting ways. This is
    nothing like that: A Song Is Born simply repeats, by rote, the
    best lines and moments from the earlier film, barely bothering to offer
    anything new. It's stale, and dull, and comes off as the one thing Hawks
    otherwise never made: a formulaic flop.

    The basic set-up is
    taken right from Ball of Fire. Seven professors, six old
    bachelors and a younger man named Hobart Frisbee (Danny Kaye), are
    researching an ambitious musical encyclopedia that would chronicle the
    entire history of music, with accompanying recordings of various musical
    forms. In the earlier film the professors needed to learn about slang,
    but in any event the film's plot is triggered by Frisbee's realization
    that he's out of touch, that he needs to go out into the world and get
    refreshed on current events in his field, folk music. In other words, he
    needs to learn about jazz. The film's enduring appeal — indeed,
    virtually its only appeal — comes from the inclusion of musical
    appearances by some of the great jazz musicians of the era, including
    Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, Mel Powell, Lionel Hampton and many more.
    At its best, the film is merely an excuse to throw all these musicians
    together into massive jam sessions. It's fun stuff, and Hawks thankfully
    put his foot down by refusing to segregate the black and the white jazz
    musicians, one of the few stands he took on a picture he otherwise
    didn't seem to care about at all.

    The jam sessions and the
    scenes at jazz nightclubs thus incorporate both white and black
    musicians, refusing to ghettoize the black players or maintain a racist
    separation. The notoriously conservative Hawks was at least enlightened
    enough to recognize that such attitudes would have been as out of place
    in the free-wheeling jazz milieu as they were in the lily-white Song
    of the Thin Man
    , which was shot the year before and similarly
    tried to chronicle the jazz scene, but with no black musicians at all.
    Hawks' film is thus notable for acknowledging the music's black roots —
    one number explicitly chronicles the nascent origins of jazz in slave
    spirituals — and the importance and talent of black musicians. The whole
    crew reportedly wasted a lot of time simply jamming and listening, both
    on camera and off, but not much of this no doubt lively atmosphere
    really makes it into the film. A lot of the music is infectious and
    enjoyable, but there's not enough of it to distract from the rote
    dullness surrounding it.

    A Song Is Born Asongisborn2
    Part of the problem is Danny Kaye, who Hawks
    was saddled with since the film was conceived by Goldwyn mainly as a
    vehicle for the MGM comedic star. There's also the problem of Virginia
    Mayo, taking on the Barbara Stanwyck role from the earlier film, as
    singer and gangster's moll Honey Swanson. Mayo doesn't have Stanwyck's
    side-of-the-mouth toughness, or her edgy sex appeal, just as Kaye
    doesn't have the earnest goofiness that Gary Cooper brought to the role
    of the stiff professor in Ball of Fire. Instead, Kaye's Frisbee
    just seems stiff and boring, which is fitting for a stuffy, starched
    professor but doesn't leave much wiggle room for his eventual
    realization that he loves Honey and wants to be looser and freer. Hawks
    can't coax the comedic performance he got out of Cooper from Kaye, nor
    can he get Mayo to give Honey quite the edge she requires. Mayo's
    actually fine here, radiating a cheery girl next door quality, and she
    infuses the best patter from Ball of Fire — like her veiled
    naughty allusions when trying to convince Frisbee to let her stay
    overnight — with just enough zing to get them across. But she lacks the
    slight dangerous quality, the realistic vibe of a been-there-done-that
    kind of gal, that Stanwyck naturally brought to the role. If there
    wasn't that precedent to compare her against, Mayo would probably seem
    perfectly okay.

    So in one sense, the only real problem with A
    Song Is Born
    is coming second. If it weren't for the familiarity
    of it all — and a majority of the film is outright stolen, line for line
    and sometimes shot for shot, from the earlier film — A Song Is Born
    might be a slight but enjoyable musical comedy. Unfortunately, as it is
    it's impossible to avoid the comparison, and A Song Is Born
    can't help but seem especially wispy in relation to its source. There's
    just no imagination here, none of the playfulness that Hawks so often
    brought to his best works. Kaye is allowed to simply be a dreary
    killjoy, rather than being lovably shy and naïve. And unlike in Ball
    of Fire
    , Hawks never manages to do much with the gangster subplot
    that takes over the film for its finale, as the gangster Tony Crow
    (Steve Cochran) arrives to claim Honey as his girl. The whole thing just
    seems rote, so much so that Hawks even skips over the great gag where
    Frisbee, confronted with fighting Crow, quickly teaches himself boxing
    from a book before pummeling the thug. Hawks skips the joke and just has
    Frisbee pounce on the gangster and beat him up.

    That's the
    film's dominant aesthetic: cutting corners, recycling earlier bits but
    without the edge, without the humor, without the unpredictable chemistry
    of fine actors bouncing off one another. The basic elements are all
    there, the framework of the fine film that Hawks had, in fact, already
    made just seven years earlier. This time around, the framework is all
    there is; it's never filled in with any of the warmth and excitement
    that would've been needed to make this one of Hawks' more creditable
    attempts at a remake, like the way in which El Dorado riffs on
    the central conceit of Rio Bravo. Instead, Hawks took his money
    and turned out a generic film that's only enlivened by its sporadic
    bursts of music and its status as a Hollywood record of the era's jazz
    scene.
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