![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
movie review
Nov. 23rd, 2008 11:23 pmYes, even I sometimes watch old movies. The Big Broadcast of 1938, from the year with the same number. Bob Hope plays a radio broadcaster named Buzz, with three ex-wives and a fiancee, all of whom follow him on board a luxury liner, the ex-wives because they're looking for alimony. (I wouldn't have expected a 1938 film to be this blunt on the subject of divorce.) Buzz is looking to pay by winning a huge bet if his ship beats another luxury liner in a transatlantic race.
The two ships are named the Gigantic and the Colossal. (I guess "Titanic" was already taken.) When the Gigantic turns on its turbo engine, the bath toy playing the part of the ship actually lifts its prow out of the water as it speeds ahead of its rival. This would be so ludicrous on a full-sized liner that it provided the biggest laugh of the movie.
Much smaller laughs were provided by W.C. Fields, who ad-libs his way through the part of a goofball intent on sabotaging one ship's chances in the race, but who accidentally gets aboard the wrong ship. He's late arriving because he stopped to wreck a gas station and play a tediously prolonged game of golf.
Martha Raye plays Fields' daughter. In the film's strangest scene, young Martha sings a song addressed to her mother as she is repeatedly hurled through the air by an athletic ballet corps of sailors and gradually divested of most of her clothes.
Bob Hope hosts a radio broadcast from the ship's ballroom. This provides the opportunity for huge production numbers full of stereotypes. One is a Mexican band, all wearing sombreros. That's how you know they're Mexican. Another number is an elaborate history of the waltz and its victory over competing dances (polka, Charleston, etc.), featuring a very brief but unbelievably crass shot of 1910 darkies on the plantation.
More elevatingly on board is Kirsten Flagstad, the prototype of America's image of the stereotypical Wagnerian soprano. In a scene obviously filmed in a different studio, she sings Brünnhilde's part from "The Ride of the Valkyries" in full costume, horned helmet and all. She waves her spear around as if she has no idea what to do with it. Also, it is painfully apparent that 1938 had not yet developed film sound recording techniques capable of dealing with a Wagnerian soprano and full orchestra.
Between numbers, Buzz (that's Bob Hope's character) and one of his ex-wives sit around in the bar, exchanging reminiscences of their time together in the form of a wistful song called "Thanks for the Memory." Catchy one, that: it might have a future. At the end of the film, they decide to reunite, delighting Buzz's now ex-fiancee, who is therefore free to court the ship's engineering officer she's been mooning over, who had been spending most of the film tinkering with the turbo engine without getting his dress whites dirty.
The two ships are named the Gigantic and the Colossal. (I guess "Titanic" was already taken.) When the Gigantic turns on its turbo engine, the bath toy playing the part of the ship actually lifts its prow out of the water as it speeds ahead of its rival. This would be so ludicrous on a full-sized liner that it provided the biggest laugh of the movie.
Much smaller laughs were provided by W.C. Fields, who ad-libs his way through the part of a goofball intent on sabotaging one ship's chances in the race, but who accidentally gets aboard the wrong ship. He's late arriving because he stopped to wreck a gas station and play a tediously prolonged game of golf.
Martha Raye plays Fields' daughter. In the film's strangest scene, young Martha sings a song addressed to her mother as she is repeatedly hurled through the air by an athletic ballet corps of sailors and gradually divested of most of her clothes.
Bob Hope hosts a radio broadcast from the ship's ballroom. This provides the opportunity for huge production numbers full of stereotypes. One is a Mexican band, all wearing sombreros. That's how you know they're Mexican. Another number is an elaborate history of the waltz and its victory over competing dances (polka, Charleston, etc.), featuring a very brief but unbelievably crass shot of 1910 darkies on the plantation.
More elevatingly on board is Kirsten Flagstad, the prototype of America's image of the stereotypical Wagnerian soprano. In a scene obviously filmed in a different studio, she sings Brünnhilde's part from "The Ride of the Valkyries" in full costume, horned helmet and all. She waves her spear around as if she has no idea what to do with it. Also, it is painfully apparent that 1938 had not yet developed film sound recording techniques capable of dealing with a Wagnerian soprano and full orchestra.
Between numbers, Buzz (that's Bob Hope's character) and one of his ex-wives sit around in the bar, exchanging reminiscences of their time together in the form of a wistful song called "Thanks for the Memory." Catchy one, that: it might have a future. At the end of the film, they decide to reunite, delighting Buzz's now ex-fiancee, who is therefore free to court the ship's engineering officer she's been mooning over, who had been spending most of the film tinkering with the turbo engine without getting his dress whites dirty.
