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. 

The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca ( 1958 )

Walt Disney produced a number of great television serials during the 1950s and 1960s for his show The Wonderful World of Color. The most popular were The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh and The Swamp Fox. One of the earlier serials, however, also ranks as one of the best - The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca - released in 1958. This was years before the average family owned a color television set, but Disney was shrewd enough to realize that the program may be re-aired in the near future and so he had the entire series filmed in color.

"And the legend was that, like el gato "the cat", nine lives had Elfego Baca"

This ten-part miniseries, set in the 1880s, starred a young Robert Loggia as Elfego Baca, the legendary gunman who took on the badge of deputy sheriff and vowed to rid New Mexico of the reckless cowboys who caused havoc in small towns. Baca was a man of peace but he wanted “outlaws to hear my steps a block away.” They not only heard him, but after he survived unscathed an incident where eighty cowboys ganged up on Baca and barraged over 4,000 shots into the house where he was holed up in for nearly 33 hours, he was nicknamed "el gato" the cat, and many believed that he truly had nine lives. Since this serial had ten parts, each episode featured a different incident that endangered one of those nine lives of Elfego Baca. 

The Italian-American Loggia makes a convincing Latino, oozing charisma as this noble hero. He's courageous and bold, considerate of the poor people in the village, and studious, too. He spends every free hour studying law so that he could become a lawyer and better serve the people. Each one of Baca's encounters with those around him are interesting, whether he's tracking down a wanted criminal ( even beyond state boundaries ), trying to prove the innocence of another, or engaging in a gunfight on the street.  

Almost all of Disney's television shows featured a little romance so Liza Montell was brought in to play the character Anita Chavez, a young widow who first encounters Baca when he uses her adobe house as a hideout. She's a fitting beauty for this good-hearted young man. Also in the cast are James Dunn, as a fellow lawyer; Robert F. Simon, as his deputy sheriff; and Leonard Strong as one of the villains.

One of the highlights of The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca is the introductions that Walt personally delivers to each episode. Dressed in western regalia, he narrates a brief history behind the man known as Baca and is then followed by a group of fiddling cowboys who perform the catchy opening theme song. Great entertainment!

From the Archives : Ralph Forbes in Beau Ideal ( 1931 )

The handsome Ralph Forbes posing in desert regalia for a publicity photo from "Beau Ideal" ( 1931 ).

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

The Valley of Gwangi ( 1969 )

In the late 1960s, adventure and sci-fi films weren't all too popular in the theaters. The younger generation preferred films that portrayed gritty realism; films that dealt with problems they could relate to. The older generation were wondering what became of the musicals and noirs they loved and preferred to stay at home watching their favorite old-time actors on the late-late movie on television. 

Hence, a fantasy-western like The Valley of Gwangi - even with the name of Ray Harryhausen behind it - was destined for instant obscurity. Today, it is still buried under the stop-motion maestro's other works. 

The Valley of Gwangi features an imaginative story line and - naturally - some great special effects, but it doesn't come off as particularly entertaining fare, partly owing to the bland performances of the two main leads, James Franciscus and Gila Golan ( which sounds like a Harryhausen creature itself ).

The story begins in the desert of Mexico where a gypsy steals a small creature known as "El Diablo" from the Forbidden Valley. This turns out to be the miniature prehistoric ancestor to the modern horse. T.J Breckenridge ( Golan ) gets a hold of this creature and hopes to feature it in an upcoming act for her travelling circus. When paleontologist Horace Bromley ( Laurence Naismith ) hears about this find, he convinces a band of gypsies to steal it and return it to the Forbidden Valley so he can discover if more of these creatures exist. Tuck Kirby ( Franciscus ) follows these gypsies into the valley attempting to re-capture El Diablo for Breckenridge.....but instead discovers a litany of living dinosaurs! Along with other members of the circus, Kirby and Professor Bromley try to capture Gwangi, a belligerent Allosaurus, to make the starring attraction of the circus instead. 

Ultimately, what rescues The Valley of Gwangi from becoming a quick drive-in picture is the exciting theme music ( by Jerome Moross ), and the visual style of the film....scenes of the professor in the desert hunting for dinosaur bones, close-ups of the old gypsy woman uttering curses, and Gwangi struggling to free himself from the metal cage at the circus. Harryhausen's animation during the final sequence within the church is especially good, too. 

After the release of Gwangi, Harryhausen and producer Charles Schneer began work on The Golden Voyage of Sinbad ( 1973 ), a film that took several years to produce but which proved to be a much bigger success at the box-office.

The Impossibly Difficult Name that Movie Game

Pile up! Pile up! This fellow is heading right into a mob of bicyclists that aren't looking down at the road like they should be. If you are a fan of one of the actors in this film, you'll recognize this scene right away.... otherwise it might be impossibly difficult to remember just what film you saw this pile up in! 

As always, if you are not familiar with the rules to the Impossibly Difficult Name that Movie game or the prize, click here!

GAME OVER. 

Phyl has impressed us with correctly guessing "Paris Holiday", the 1958 comedy starring Bob Hope. That's Hope in this scene, hanging from the helicopter ladder ( well, it's probably his stunt-double, but you get the point ). He was having a fun time crashing into a brigade of policiers sur les bicyclettes! 

Scaramouche ( 1952 )

"He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad"

Within the last century, Raphael Sabatini's classic 1921 novel "Scaramouche" was made into three film adaptations, including a 1956 television series, but hands down this Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer version starring the engaging English actor Stewart Granger tops them all. The film accomplished that rare feat of improving upon the novel it was based on. Scaramouche ranks as one of the best swashbuckling films of the 1950s, and even boasts the longest and most intricate fencing duel in Hollywood's history. 

Stewart Granger stars as dashing hero Andre-Louis Moreau, a young lawyer who dedicates years of his life to avenge the death of his best friend (Richard Anderson) who was killed in a duel by the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr (Mel Ferrer), a master swordsman. He joins a traveling theatre group where he dons the mask of Scaramouche, the star comedian, in order to hide from the Marquis' soldiers who have ordered Andre arrested as a revolutionary. Even with his dogged determination to pin down the Marquis, Andre takes time off from his fencing lessons to woo Lenore (Eleanor Parker), a flaming red-headed actress and Aline de Gavrillac (Janet Leigh), the pretty young ward of the Marquis. 

"But who is Scaramouche? And why does he hide his face behind a mask?"

Scaramouche plunges the audience right into the action from the on-start, packing a lot of story in its 115-minute run time. It features a marvelous cast, excellent cinematography, stunning costumes by Giles Steele, beautiful Cedric Gibbons sets, and a lovely Victor Young score (the end music is especially apropos). In short, it's a rousing good swashbuckler! 

Veteran director George Sidney, who was especially adept at filming musicals (Anchors Aweigh, The Harvey Girls, Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me Kate), took the helm of this classic, staging all of the sword-fighting sequences as though they were dance numbers. These fencing "ballets" are a highlight of this colorful film and the climatic eight-minute duel sequence between Granger and Ferrer is justly famous for it took these actors eight weeks of training to get their fencing movements precise. 

"Scaramouche, you have just given your last performance!"

European fencing champion Jean Heremans provided Stewart Granger with fencing lessons and he delighted in doing all of his own stunts. Granger was ideally cast as the rakish lad born with the gift of laughter. He brought a playful exuberance to the character which was a key element in bringing Sabatini's novel to life. 

Granger had seen the original 1923 silent version (starring Ramon Navarro and Lewis Stone) as a child and when he was offered a contract by MGM, he signed it on the condition that Scaramouche would be developed as a project for him. 

The studio had toyed with remaking the film for years, first in 1938 with Fernand Gravet, and then as a possible musical version with Gene Kelly or Fernando Lamas in the starring role, so when Granger suggested the book as a vehicle for himself it was swiftly put into production. Since MGM studios always treated novel-based films with reverence, Scaramouche went to the top of their release schedule as an A-picture. 

Elizabeth Taylor was originally slated to play the part of Aline de Gavrillac, but had to turn down the role because she was already signed for another picture. Ava Gardner was also to have been in the film, in Eleanor Parker's role. However, this was a fortunate swap for Eleanor Parker is excellent as the feisty Lenore. 

Rounding out the cast is Henry Wilcoxon, Nina Foch (as Marie Antoinette), Lewis Stone, Robert Coote, and Elisabeth Risdon. 


This post is our contribution to The Swashathon being hosted by Movies Silently. Be sure to head on over to Movies Silently site to check out other great reviews of classic swashbuckling films. 

Yellow Jack ( 1938 )

For hundreds of years people on the island of Cuba - and throughout other parts south of the equator - were dying of yellow fever, a disease that many doctors believed was unpreventable and, if not caught in time, incurable. What baffled these men of medicine the most was the fact that they were unable to determine what triggered yellow fever. Was it caused by germs in the air? Bad food? Sweat from dirty clothing? Was the disease something that spread from person to person? 

According to MGM's Yellow Jack, all these questions were answered in 1898 when, at a United States Marine camp in Cuba, three doctors ( Lewis Stone, Henry Hull, Stanley Ridges ), along with the aid of five brave guinea pigs....ahem, volunteer soldiers....tested out the theory of Dr. Finlay, a Scotsman who believed that yellow fever came from the bite of an infected mosquito. Other scientists felt this was the likely cause, too, but with over 700 species of mosquitoes on the island, they didn't even know where to begin their investigations as to which species was the culprit. Thankfully, Dr. Finlay ( Charles Coburn ) made the study of those bugs his life's work and had solved that mystery years prior. Now, with five plucky soldiers on hand ( Robert Montgomery, Alan Curtis, Sam Levene, Buddy Ebsen, and William Henry ) he was given the opportunity to put his theories into action. 

Yellow Jack was based upon the 1934 Sidney Howard-Paul de Kruif play of the same name, which starred James Stewart in the lead role as the Irish sergeant John O'Hara. It was his performance in this play that led to him coming out to Hollywood and signing an MGM contract. He could have done an excellent job with this part, but Robert Montgomery was given the lead instead and unknowing film audiences didn't mind the change for Yellow Jack did fairly well at the box-office. Robert Montgomery and Henry Hull ( certainly an underrated actor ) both give good performances and George B. Seitz directs the action with a steady hand. Both Seitz and Louis Stone were probably enjoying this trek in the jungle as a change of pace from the Andy Hardy films. 

Pretty Virginia Bruce, the only female lead in the film, portrays the nurse whom Robert Montgomery's heart thumps for. He's not as concerned about finding a cure for yellow fever, as much as finding a cure for the love-bug. He fails to realize that the interest she pays to him is merely out of her itching desire to find a soldier willing to stake his life for the cause of science and humankind. But ultimately, she falls for the winsome ways of the sergeant and comes to admire his selflessness as much as the audience does. 

For a decade after the release of The Story of Louis Pasteur in 1935, "medical discovery" pictures were a popular genre. These films usually featured stellar casts, engrossing scripts, and a touch of romance. Yellow Jack embraces all these aspects, too, with an added bit o' Irish humor. It is well worth watching on a hot and sticky day....just be sure to have your mosquito netting handy.