From the Archives: Murder, She Wrote ( 1985 )

Angela Lansbury and Cyd Charisse are decked out in glamourous fashion for the second season premiere episode of Murder, She Wrote ( 1985 ) entitled "Widow Weep for Me". In this episode, the snoopy sleuth goes undercover as a wealthy widow at a posh Caribbean resort and meets up with all sorts of celebrities including Mel Ferrer, John Phillip Law, Anne Lockhart, and Ms. Charisse. 

From the Archives is our latest series of posts where we share photos from the Silverbanks Pictures collection. Some of these may have been sold in the past, and others may still be available for purchase at our Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SilverbanksArchives

Wintry Westerns - 8 Classic Westerns Set in Winter

I love westerns. I don't review them nearly as often as I should but I certainly do watch plenty of them! And, at this time of year, the best westerns to watch are the Wintry Westerns....those that are set in snowy locales. Most westerns take place in dusty desert areas such as Arizona and Texas or in lush green cattle-grazing lands like Wyoming and Colorado so this is a small niche. They are great to watch on a cold winter's day with a cup of hot cocoa, especially when the snow is falling outside.

I'll share with you some of my favorites ( from the oldest to the newest ) and hopefully, you'll share some of your favorite wintry western titles as well. 

THE WILD NORTH ( 1952 ) 

Stewart Granger plays a trapper accused of murdering a man in a Canadian village. He takes refuge in the mountains but can't shake a Mountie ( Wendell Corey ) off his trail. Instead, during a fierce snowstorm, they band together to battle the forces of nature and survive in the "wild North". This is one of my favorites, not only because of the great location scenery of Idaho ( not Canada ) but because of the presence of Stewart Granger and Cyd Charisse as an Indian maiden. 

BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY ( 1953 )

Perhaps this might not qualify as a western, but it takes place in the 1870s in snowy Alaska, so that's close enough for me. Rock Hudson plays an American sea captain who is taking a cargo of furs down to the states from Canada via dogsled. Contending with the weather is harrowing enough, but Rock also has a broken leg and two dangerous villains on his heels. 

TRACK OF THE CAT ( 1954 ) 

Robert Mitchum stars in this visually striking western as the son of a ranching family who heads out into the snow to track down a panther who is killing the family's livestock. Diana Lynn and Teresa Wright co-star and yes, that's William Hopper Jr. with a beard. Director William Wellman's son stated that his father created the picture as a "black and white film shot in color" with specific pops of color adding a beautiful splash to the overall monochromatic look. 

DAY OF THE OUTLAW ( 1959 ) 

"A day you'll never forget!" declares the poster to this Robert Ryan film. Unfortunately, I did forget most of this gritty western, but I do remember the winter landscape and Burl Ives cutting a powerful image on horseback. It's about a cattleman trying to save a small frontier town from Burl Ives and his gang of thugs. 

WILL PENNY ( 1967 ) 

This film starts off as a regular "sunny" western but about half way through we see the winter scenes. Will Penny ( Charlton Heston ) is an aging cowboy who gets a line camp job on a large cattle spread and finds that there is a woman ( Joan Hackett ) and her son already living in the cabin he is supposed to occupy by himself. He lets them stay over the winter and protects his "family" when the wicked Quint ( Donald Pleasance ) invades his home. 

THE GREAT SILENCE ( 1968 ) 

Spaghetti westerns are one of those genres that you either love or hate. I could live without them - especially the brutal ones - but I had to include this film because it is set is a snow-covered Utah and is renowned for being one of the best spaghetti westerns ever made. It's about a mute gunfighter who takes it upon himself to defend a group of outlaws from a band of bloodthirsty bounty hunters. Jean-Louis Trintignant, a French actor who couldn't speak a word of English, starred as the mute gunslinger "Silence". 

McCABE AND MRS. MILLER ( 1971 ) 

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie star as a gambler and a prostitute who become business partners in a brothel in a remote mining town. Their business trives until a major corporation comes to buy them out. This film is often cited as one of the first "anti-westerns" because it features no gunfights and no heroes but our purpose it can be classified as a western. McCabe and Mrs. Miller really captures the cold environment of winter and features some beautiful filming from director Robert Altman. 

JEREMIAH JOHNSON ( 1972 )

Robert Redford stars as mountain man Jeremiah Johnson in this outdoorsman's adventure set in the beautiful hills of Utah ( and filmed on Redford's recently acquired Sundance ski area ). Johnson is a  Civil War veteran who abandons mankind and heads for the mountains of Utah to become a trapper. With the help of another grizzled mountain man ( Will Geer ), he learns to live of the land but must contend with hostile natives when he incurs the wrath of a Crow chief. 

Brigadoon ( 1954 )

"If you love someone deeply enough, anything is possible."

'Tis true. Tommy Albright (Gene Kelly) learns just how powerful love is when he comes to the enchanted village of Brigadoon and meets his true love Fiona (Cyd Charisse). Tommy and his friend Jeff Douglas (Van Johnson) come across the village when they are lost in Scotland during a hunting trip. Life in Brigadoon, which only appears for one day every 100 years, is unchanged since the 1700s. Tommy meets and falls in love with the beautiful Fiona and then must make the decision whether to stay in the magical world of Brigadoon and turn his back on the world he knows or whether to depart from it forever. 

"Why do people have to lose things to find out what they really mean?" -Tommy  

Of all of the musicals made during MGM's golden era, Brigadoon has received the most motley assortment of reviews from critics and fans alike. Director Vincente Minnelli and Gene Kelly himself felt that the entire production did not reflect what they had originally envisioned for it. Kelly was especially disappointed that the picture would not be shot on location in Scotland (due to the weather) and that, because of budget cuts, he would not be permitted to experiment with different dance sequences. 

Most viewers can see the potential in Brigadoon that was not realized, hence, it seems like the film is only a shadow of what it could have been. However, what was made is mighty fine entertainment regardless!

Brigadoon has a lovely magical feel to it and the staged setting actually helps create this effect rather than hinder it. 

Unlike many of the characters Gene Kelly plays in musicals, Tommy is not a happy-go-lucky fellow out to have a night on the town. Instead, we see him as a confused man. He went on a hunting trip to Scotland with the hope that a vacation would clear his mind and help him to decide what he wants in life, but his brief visit to Brigadoon confuses him all the more. Prior to his trip, he was engaged to a beautiful socialite in New York City but continually put off the wedding because he was discontented with his fiancee. Once he meets Fiona, his love for her clears the fog in his heart, but then he is torn between staying in what Jeff calls a "fairyland" or returning to "reality."

"Sometimes the things you believe in can become more real than all the things you can explain away or understand."

The film could have been developed into a light-hearted musical, much in the vein of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but then it would have risked losing its romantic mystic quality which really is the heart of the picture.  

Brigadoon, which was based on the 1947 Broadway show of the same name, features a number of excellent songs by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe including "Waitin' for my Dearie," "Almost Like Being in Love," the titular "Brigadoon," "Heather on the Hill." The balletic dance sequences - especially "Heather on the Hill" and its reprise - are beautiful to watch, as are the more lively numbers such as "I'll Go Home with Bonnie Jean."  Unfortunately, the film version cut several of Lerner and Loewe's best songs including "Come to Me, Bend to Me," "There But for You Go I," and "From This Day On."

Brigadoon went into production the same time that director Stanley Donen was planning his musical extravaganza Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer debated whether to drop one of the two productions because they felt they could not fund both projects at once but Seven Brides producer Jack Cummings insisted on continuing with the film on a cut budget. It was presumed that Brigadoon would be the more successful of the two films. Instead, Seven Brides reaped nearly four times its budget, while Brigadoon took a loss at the box-office.

In spite of the setbacks during its production, Kelly was pleased to be starring alongside his good friend Van Johnson. Originally, actors David Wayne, Donald O'Connor, and Alec Guinness were considered for the role of Jeff instead of Johnson. Surprisingly, Oscar Levant was not considered, even though the sarcastic nature of Jeff would have suited him perfectly. 

Cyd Charisse was ideally cast as Fiona; she never looked or danced better. Charisse was happy to reunite with director Vincente Minnelli whom she worked with in The Band Wagon just one year prior. Albert Sharpe (Darby O'Gill and the Little People) and Barry Jones were also perfectly cast. Hugh Laing, a ballet dancer with the New York City Ballet, was cast as Harry Beaton, the one discontented citizen of Brigadoon. Jimmy Thompson (Singin' in the Rain) was the handsome Charlie Dalrymple and upcoming stars George Chakiris and Stuart Whitman appear as extras. 

Brigadoon's failure at the box-office and its poor critical response marred its initial release but years later it can be seen as a highlight in MGM's output of musicals. It may not be what the director or Kelly intended it to be, but what was created was a colorful gem in itself. Aye, a bonnie good film. 

From the Archives: Twilight for the Gods ( 1958 )

Rock Hudson and Cyd Charisse in a scene from Twilight for the Gods ( 1958 ). Don't let the black-and-white photograph fool you, this Universal picture was filmed in eye-popping Eastman Colour. Hudson plays a boozy sea captain who must take his passengers ( including a call girl ) "out of the raging fury of wind and water" to safety. It was based on a book by Ernest K. Gann, who also wrote "The High and the Mighty" and "Fate is the Hunter", both of which were made into motion pictures. 

From the Archives is our latest series of posts where we share photos from the Silverbanks Pictures collection. Some of these may have been sold in the past, and others may still be available for purchase at our eBay store : http://stores.ebay.com/Silverbanks-Pictures

Eugene Loring - Choreographer

It has been quite a while since we have profiled someone for our Behind-the-Screen: The Hidden Masters of the Golden Age of Filmmaking series, so as a special treat the spotlight will be put on an occupation not usually covered in this series - that of the choreographer. 

Eugene Loring was never a household name and yet his unique style of dance was recognizable in many musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. His best-known works are Silk Stockings ( 1955 ) and Funny Face ( 1957 ), but it was through the peppy "La Bamba" number in Fiesta ( 1947 ) that first made me take notice of him. Loring blended jazz with ballet and contemporary dance to create innovative moments that were exciting to watch onscreen.

Eugene Loring, born in 1911 in Milwaukee, fell in love with music and dance at a young age. His father ran a saloon and dance hall and Loring would always join in for the Friday night dances. He was also a self-taught pianist. One day, he saw Uday Shankar, a talented Indian dancer, perform and Eugene knew that he wanted to become a professional dancer. 

He went to New York City to study with George Balanchine at the School of American Ballet in 1934, beginning at the ripe old age of 24. Loring had a powerful physique and chiseled facial features that made him look like an ancient Grecian dancer. He joined with Michel Fokine's dance troupe only two months later and quickly moved from being a character dancer to a soloist in his productions. By 1936, Loring was already creating his own ballets for the Ballet Caravan, a touring company specializing in an all-American repertoire. These ballets included Harlequin for President ( 1936 ), Yankee Clipper (1937), and Billy the Kid ( 1938 ), which featured a score by Aaron Copland and is still often performed today.

Based on his work in these productions, he was offered a lucrative six-month MGM contract in 1943. But, in typical Hollywood fashion, the studio did not know what to do with Loring after they signed him and so his first work in film was actually an acting job as jockey Taski in National Velvet ( 1944 ). It was not until 1945 that Loring was tasked with choreography work, helping to create some of the dances in Ziegfeld Follies. It was during the making of this film that he met Fred Astaire, whom he would work together with on four films, including his next production Yolanda and the Thief, which gave Loring his first onscreen credit as choreographer.

Loring staged a number of interesting dances for productions throughout the 1940s including The Thrill of Brazil ( 1946 ), Fiesta ( 1947 ) which showcased Ricardo Montalban's fine dancing ability; Abbott and Costello's Mexican Hayride ( 1948 ) and even The Inspector General ( 1949 ). Most of these films featured only a few dance numbers and so Loring had plenty of time to continue his work in ballet, his true love. He choreographed the marvelous "Carmen Jones" on Broadway and in 1948 founded the American School of Dance in Hollywood. 

Loring felt strongly about how American dancers ought to be trained. He always believed that dance was dance and no dancer should learn simply one style but instead embrace a wide variety of forms and movement.

“Americans are a composite lot and American dancers must be as many-faceted as the melting pot” Loring said in an interview conducted for Dance Magazine in 1956. The American School of Dance was open to anyone interested in dance and featured all forms - tap, ballet, jazz, modern dance - blended in a unique well-rounded curriculum. 

In the early 1950s, Loring worked on several MGM productions that featured Mario Lanza including the fun "Tina-Lina" from The Toast of New Orleans ( 1950 ), and "One Alone" and "It" from Deep in My Heart ( 1954 ) that beautifully showcased Cyd Charisse's ballet ability and Ann Miller's fantastic tapping skills. 

But Loring is best known for his work with Fred Astaire in two MGM musical classics - Funny Face ( 1957 ), which gave Audrey Hepburn a chance to jazz to an eclectic beat in "Bohemian Dance", and Silk Stockings ( 1957 ) which again featured the lovely Cyd Charisse in the exciting "The Red Blues" and "All of You" dance numbers. 

Eugene then took time off from Hollywood productions and, aside from a few television productions ( including Cinderella in 1965 ), he focused his attention on teaching. He founded the dance department at the University of California at Irvine where he taught up until his death in the early 1980s.

Eugene Loring may be one of the lesser-known choreographers, but during his lifetime he created a fine body of work. He invented marvelous dance numbers for all of the films he worked on and left "Billy the Kid" as his legacy to the world of dance. Please click on the links hidden within the text to enjoy and appreciate Loring's work, the man deserves more recognition for his contribution to film choreography than he has received. 

The Wild North ( 1952 )

"There's no wilderness wide enough to hide a sin"

When a man is separated from civilization and must contend with the forces of Mother Nature way up in the wild, wild north woods of Canada, he may discover savage instincts laying deep within him begin to emerge in his efforts to survive. 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Wild North tells the tale of a man who is placed in such circumstances. Jules Vincent, portrayed by Stewart Granger, is a French Canadian fur-trader who comes into a riverside town in Northwest Canada twice a year to purchase supplies, trade his goods, and drink a few beers. On a recent visit to town, he befriends a curvaceous Chippewa Indian woman (Cyd Charisse) who is working as a singer at the local bar. She would rather return to her tribe then receive the not-too-flattering attention of drunken traders. Gallantly, Jules offers to take her back to her people in his canoe before returning to his cabin in the remote village of McQuarrie. 

Joining them on the river excursion is Max Brody, another fur trader; but by the time they reach McQuarrie we find that Max is strangely missing from the canoe and Jules is now shielding his face from the local priest. Soon, the Northwest Mounted Police, in the form of Constable Pedley ( Wendell Corey ) is hot on the trail....a trail that leads straight into the heart of the wild north, where an avalanche, marauding wolf pack, and below freezing temperatures await them both. 

The Wild North is a brawny adventure film that deftly blends drama with action into a frosty macho milkshake. It is a tale straight out of "Man's Life" magazine - only it's better because it is filmed in glorious Ansco Color! The movie boasts some stunning location scenery with the mountainous landscapes of Wyoming and Idaho admirably filling in for Northwest Canada. Frank Fenton penned the story for the screen, basing his tale upon an incident that befell an NWMP officer named Albert Pedley in 1904. During a particularly harsh winter in Canada, Pedley bore months of loneliness, cruel weather, and "white madness" to bring his prisoner to justice. 

Andrew Morton, who had co-directed Granger in MGM's King Solomon's Mines two years earlier, does a great job at helming the action, not leaving any room in the film for boredom to brew. The wolf attack is particularly harrowing and brutally realistic. 

The character of Jules is a bit of an anomaly for Stewart Granger, who is often given the role of the white-armored hero. Jules' nature, like most humans, isn't clearly defined as good or evil. He is a kind-hearted man who leads the simple and lonely life of a backwoods trapper but in a situation where his life is in jeopardy, he is prepared to murder....and, as Ellen Creed so aptly put it in Ladies in Retirement ( 1941 ) "Once you sell your soul to the Devil, it is easy to kill again." The thought of murdering Pedley on the journey back to McQuarrie becomes very tempting to Jules, until he recognizes the beast within him beginning to emerge. 

The normally wooden-faced Wendell Corey does a first-rate job of portraying the Dudley-Doright-like Mountie. "Man against Man - and Man Against Nature" was the tagline for The Wild North but Corey and Granger each made their characters so likable that you want to see both survive in their fight against the cruel elements in the "Wild North". 

Cyd Charisse is lovely as the Indian girl who falls in love with Jules, and rounding out the rather small cast is Morgan Farley, Howard Petrie, Ray Teal, and J.M. Kerrigan. 

This post is our contribution to the annual O Canada Blogathon being hosted by Speakeasy and Silver Screenings. Be sure to check out all the great entries profiling famous Canadians and films made in or about Canada. 

The Death of the Swan : The Unfinished Dance ( 1947 ) and Ballerina ( 1937 )

This weekend Christina Wehner is hosting the En Pointe Blogathon, a three-day event celebrating films that spotlight that beautiful and centuries old form of dance known as ballet. One of the most overlooked Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films of the 1940s - The Unfinished Dance - just so happens to revolve around ballet, and so I have chosen to call attention to this rarity as well as to Ballerina ( 1937 ) which is based on the same story. 

Both pictures are about a ballet student who accidentally cripples a famous ballerina when she throws the switch to the onstage trap door, plummeting the dancer to her career-ending doom. 

"Is she dead?"
"She broke her leg..... For a dancer, it is worse than death"

In The Unfinished Dance ( 1947 ), Margaret O'Brien stars as Meg Merlin, the passionate little dancer who quickly becomes wracked with guilt for the dreadful deed she committed in haste. This orphaned child loves ballet and, particularly one ballerina - Ariane Bouchet ( Cyd Charisse ) whom she worships as an idol. When La Darina ( Karin Moore ), a guest ballerina, arrives to perform the lead in "Swan Lake" in place of Bouchet, Meg plans to humiliate the prima ballerina by turning off the lights during the performance, leaving Darina to grope in the dark. Instead, she - oops! - pulls the wrong switch causing Darina to literally perform her swan song. Meg, then, struggles with her conscience and attempts to muster the courage to confess her crime to La Darina, the woman she once hated but is quickly coming to love...especially when she discovers that Bouchet isn't the grand idol she thought she was. 

The Unfinished Dance was based on a novella by Paul Morand entitled "La Mort du Cygne" ( "The Death of the Swan" ). This intriguing story was first filmed in 1937 as La Mort du Cygne aka Ballerina, a French production directed by Jean Benoit-Levy and Marie Epstein. It was a box-office sensation in Europe, won the Grand Prix du Cinèma francais award, and earned equal critical acclaim in America. Over the years, a legendary aura has been cast around it, primarily because it was considered a lost classic; it was only in 2000 that a surviving print was discovered. 

While The Unfinished Dance bears some resemblance to the original film, it cannot - and should not - be compared to Ballerina as a remake. They are two separate films with marked differences. One major contrast between them is the underlying theme of the pictures. In Ballerina, it is all about the dance. To dance is to live; to dance is to breathe.

"The Dance is greater than all our personal troubles," remarks Karine in one scene. 

In The Unfinished Dance, Meg's guilt takes center stage. Ballet becomes Meg's redemption. Director Henry Koster did a wonderful job of creating a disquieting atmosphere of tension in all of the scenes featuring O'Brien. Meg is a hapless victim of a foolish and childish prank that she herself conceived and her guilt causes her to see the jail bars closing in on her. Every whisper is a personal threat to her safety. Every policeman an agent of Justice out to capture her. Margaret O'Brien plays out the psychological tension that Meg feels with great skill, especially considering she was only nine-years-old at the time of filming, while Koster treats these sequences as though it were Robert Mitchum on the screen, running from another thoughtless crime he committed in haste. 

However, audiences didn't appreciate this peek into the mind of a child criminal, and the film lost nearly $1,800,000 upon its release. It was the only Joe Pasternak production to ever lose money. This may have been due to false marketing. Posters displayed happy images of O'Brien and Charisse performing grand jetés while the subtitles heralded "Romance! Spectacle! Music!" Audiences were undoubtedly expecting a saccharine MGM musical featuring the always adorable Margaret O'Brien and, in the opening sequences, this is what they were treated to....but then, the real story of The Unfinished Dance begins to unfold and the film becomes a unique blend of a Technicolor family drama and a Columbia Pictures film noir. It was a mixture too heady for youngsters, and too juvenile for adult audiences. 

Ballerina, on the other hand, was marketed as a haunting melodrama, which indeed it was. Ballerina evokes, through long shadows and striking camera angles, the atmosphere of the Opera de Paris as the dancers saw it. It was not the glittering Parisian palace that came alive only at night, but a working studio where the dust of wood shavings and talcum powder filled the air. Blanche-Levy had the cast and crew live at the Palais Garnier for weeks prior to filming so that they could feel that majestic atmosphere that the ballerinas felt and convey it to the screen. The result is an engrossing peek at the all-consuming world of ballet. 

Throughout the film, we are given scenes of the backstage life: "flies" in their perches, crewmen setting a stage, and ballerinas in class and in their dressing rooms stretching, leaping, flexing their feet, and adjusting their shoes and tutus. In one scene we witness prima ballerina Yvonne Chauviré placing padding on her toes and then slowing tying her pointe shoes. 

Ballerina also contrasts against The Unfinished Dance by portraying the children as unsentimental little savages - which they are. In the tradition of the Opera de Paris, young student ballerinas are referred to as "rats", and Meg Merlin is here cleverly named Rose Souris ( souris meaning mouse in French ).

Rose is no mere child who accidentally moves a wrong lever. She is a twelve-year old girl who deliberately sets to put an end to the career of Karine ( the character of La Darina in The Unfinished Dance ), slowly moving the heavy wooden supports that keep the trap-door closed and then waiting to hear the music of the swan as Karine approaches the trap. After her deed is done she feels occasional pangs of guilt ( this is eerily conveyed to the audience through the sound of a violin-solo playing the Swan theme ), but she has no desire to confess her crime to her victim. It is only when Karine discovers what she did via an anonymous letter that Rose asks for her forgiveness. Seeing the grand ballerina hobble on her cane every day is her punishment. 

Perhaps in order to satisfy the Hayes Code, MGM made the lead character much younger and dampened her act of viciousness by making it an accident. The screenwriters also attempted to give reason to Meg's consuming adulation of Mademoiselle Bouchet by making her a motherless child. In the French film, Rose lives with her mother. Meg's only relation is her flighty aunt whom we glimpse just twice. To atone for this lack of parental guidance there is "Uncle" Paneros ( Danny Thomas in his screen debut ), a kindly Greek who operates a watch shop below Meg's apartment. He becomes a father figure for Meg while we are to assume that Mlle. Bouchet - and, later, La Darina - is the mother that Meg wishes she had. 

"In you, I'm going to dance again. You're not going to fail me, are you?" - La Darina

"I'd die first." - Meg

Danny Kaye was originally cast in the role of Mr. Paneros and indeed would have been ideal because he would have lent some comedy to the film, which it sorely needed. The dramatics are too heavy in certain scenes. In spite of the noir tone of the original Ballerina, that film's drama was interspersed with bits of typical French humor. Instead, Danny Thomas was given the opportunity to perform and he quickly steals every scene he is in, adding warmth to the picture if not comedy. He also boasts a fine singing voice. 

Most of the dancing in The Unfinished Dance focuses on O'Brien ( a merely adequate dancer ) and Cyd Charisse, a true ballerina turned actress. She displays her spectacular terpsichorean talent in six production numbers, including a performance of David Rose's "Holiday for Strings". Charisse's best dance is to the music of Bedrich Smetana's "The Bartered Bride", where, among a gold-and-purple corps de ballet, she makes a grand entrance in a gold costume pirouetting into the camera. 

Karin Booth was not a dancer and so, in her two ballet sequences, a professional dancer took her place for the long shots. La Darina's highlight performance is "Swan Lake" which was a pastiche of the second and fourth "white" acts of Tchaikovsky's classic staged to create an ethereally beautiful effect with a bevy of Cygnus-like ballerinas dancing atop a mirrored floor. David Lichine was the choreographer for all of the ballets in The Unfinished Dance. 

In Ballerina, the dance sequences are exceptional, which is not surprising considering all three principal characters were portrayed by celebrated ballerinas. Janine Charrat ( Rose ) was a child prodigy, choreographing her first ballet at age 14. She had a long career as a dancer and choreographer. Charrat was only 13 when Ballerina was made. 

Yvette Chauviré ( Mlle. Beaupre ) was a famed étoile of the Paris Opéra Ballet and still considered by many to be France's greatest classical ballerina. Mia Slavenska ( Karine ) was an international star and a renowned ballerina from the 1930s-1960s, after which time she became a much sought-after ballet instructor here in the States. In 2014, PBS aired Mia: A Dancer's Journey, a fascinating documentary by her daughter Maria Ramas, which is well worth viewing. 

Considering that these dancers had no formal acting training they are quite good in their roles in Ballerina. However, Benoit-Levy should have filmed them in a more natural continuous style of filming. Instead - like most pictures of the 1930s - he uses close-ups excessively. In many scenes, it is obvious that these close-ups were filmed separately from the medium-shots. These abrupt edits block the fluidity of the film. And, unfortunately, an additional twenty minutes was cut from the original print for the US release, so connecting elements of the story are missing. 

Nevertheless, Ballerina is a classic in its genre, noted for being one of the best ballet films of the 1930s. Ballet enthusiasts today are grateful to be able to see performances from Slavenska and Chauviré captured for posterity on camera. 

Both The Unfinished Dance and Ballerina showcase the art of ballet in a wonderful manner and hopefully have inspired audiences then and today to embrace this beautiful form of dance. Personally speaking, these two titles alone have elevated my appreciation of ballet to new heights and introduced me to dancers I was previously unaware of. 

Ready to explore more ballet films? Check out all the great posts at the headquarters of the En Pointe Blogathon being hosted by Christina Wehner. Also, take some time to watch the two films you just read about: The Unfinished Dance ( also available on DVD through Warner Archives ) and Ballerina aka La Mort du Cygne.