I think I'll have a look on youtube. Some sad American git (oi! Ref! unfair!) is bound to put together a compilation of her dance scenes.
I love the old musicals of the 30s, 40s and early 50s - Top hat, Flying down to Rio, The gay divorcée, Shall we dance, the Broadway Melody films, 42nd Street, On the town, Singin' in the rain, Anchors aweigh, Yankee Doodle Dandy, - Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Ann Miller, and the only real male dancers, Fred n' Gene. The scmaltz isn't too bad, and the dancing is fabulous.
I love the musicals of the late 50s and 60s - Oklahoma, South Pacific, Carousel, West Side story - particularly West Side story - more for the music and the stories than for the dancing. Although the dancing in WSS was excellent, it was the ensemble show tune dances rather than the cheek-to-cheek dancing of the earlier musicals.
When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way from your first cigarette to your last dying day. When you're a Jet let them do what they can - you've got brothers around, you're a family man
Breeze it - buzz it - easy does it - Keep coolie cool boy. Gotta rocket in your pocket - just keep it cool boy. Go man go, but not like a yo-yo schoolboy - just play it cool boy, r-e-a-l cool...
Since then, two musical films, IMHO, eclipse all the others (though I have a soft spot for The boyfriend) Cabaret, and All that jazz. The first is Bob Fosse's searing and towering epic set against the rise of Nazi Germany which is without doubt one film you should see before you die. There may be 10 such films, there may be 100; but this is definitely one of them. The scene in the Biergarten where the Hitler Jugende sing 'Tomorrow belongs to me' is more chilling that the entire collection of Saw films.
All that jazz - Bob Fosse again - is highly underrated and is his own story of chainsmoking his way through simultaneously working on the film of Cabaret and a stage production of Chicago, which led to a heart attack. Roy Scheider (playing Fosse) got an Oscar nomination (but lost out to Dustin Hoffman in Kramer v Kramer - evidence supporting the claim that edgy films will always lose out to schmaltz in the Academy Awards). His performance is a tour de force, and the dancing of Ann Reinking is dazzling.
So, there ya go. Further impressions of Jonathan Ross will be avoided for 24 hours.
(Anyone who mentions Dirty dancing in this exalted company will be shot.)
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