MOVIE OF LAST WEEK #4

I always felt MGM's 'On The Town' (1949) was trying a little too hard to please its audience and deviated too much from the original Bernstein Broadway musical to be wholly satisfactory.

Stanley Donen's 'It's Always Fair Weather' (1954) could be seen as the sequel bookend to not only 'On The Town' but also that golden era of MGM Astaire/Kelly/Garland musicals that represented in many ways the pinnacle of the cinematic musical art form though I might still make the case for George Cukor's 'My Fair Lady' (1964) and Robert Wise's 'The Sound Of Music' (1965) as being the final, final curtain of that greatly missed genre.

What makes 'It's Always Fair Weather' so unique amongst the other classic MGM musicals is the added ingredient of world-weary post-WW2 cynicism that could have almost been borrowed from William Wyler's 'The Best Years Of Our Lives' (1946).

Three soldiers (the magic number) agree to reunite ten years from the day they returned from the war to their favourite New York bar only to find the intervening years have turned them against each other, and so, rather than spend the day together, they each go their separate ways resulting in hilarious and occasionally tragic divergences.  

Actually, as a double bill along with the excessively exuberant 'On The Town', 'It's Always Fair Weather' makes a perfect bittersweet counterpoint and one that also includes Gene Kelly famously tap dancing with roller skates.