Reviews

This film is significant for one reason only: Lucille Ball met Desi Arnaz,they married,they created the most influential sitcom in TV history. They created the most influential television production company of the 20th century.

The film? Awful. Ann Miller? Awful.Lucy is pretty good in a trite role,Desi is the only one really worth watching. The plot? Oh,there was one?

Okay,seriously, I didn't find anything about this enjoyable, and I usually like big splashy 40s musicals,but this was frantic and pretty convoluted to say the least. Not my cup of tea.

Cyd Charisse is my favorite of all the Golden Age dancer/actresses.A couple of weeks ago when TCM was showing a full day of her films,I decided to spend a few hours watching. This film,The Unfinished Dance, was unfamiliar to me,so I decided to check it out. Oh boy.

Miss Charisse is of course,as beautiful as ever and her dancing is wonderful as usual,but there are enough plot holes and total implausibilities in this film to make it completely unbelievable.

First,we have a ballet school with the most untalented group of budding ballerinas with the worst attitudes ever. Our main ballerina to be is Meg Merlin played by child actress Margaret O' Brien. Miss O'Brien was to the 40s what Shirley Temple was to the 30s. She was actually talented,as evidenced by her performance in Meet Me in St. Louis, where she held her own and then some against Judy Garland. Here,she is an insufferable brat with a mean streak and a horrendous girl crush on Prima Ballerina Mlle. Bouchet,played by Cyd Charisse.Mlle.Bouchet is a wonderful dancer,but she's as shallow as a kiddie wading pool. We get to see her petulant side when she discovers that the ballet company is getting a new artist in residence,La Darina,played by Karin Booth. La Darina is supposedly European,but she speaks perfect English,with an American accent,no less. Okay. Anyway,Meg is so devoted to Mlle. Bouchet that she is willing to do anything to see that her crush becomes a huge star. This includes sabotaging La Darina's performance of Swan Lake which results in the dancer being hurt and possibly never being able to dance again. Meg's frenemy Josie(Elinore Donahue) knows what Meg did and begins blackmailing her to keep what she knows from becoming public knowledge. There's also another little brat that suspects something is up and she keeps pestering Josie to let her in on it. Yeah,these kids are great at backstabbing and blackmail. Dancing,not so much. The ballet students range in age from about 6 to 11. They are already dancing on their toes. No reputable dance school would put kids that young on their toes.

Then there is young Meg's home life. It appears she is an orphan that now lives with her aunt, a chorus girl, over the shop of Mr. Paneros. Mr. Paneros,played by Danny Thomas, specializes in selling and repairing watches and clocks. Some have criticized Thomas's performance here. To be fair,it was his first film role,also I'm sure he was directed to play the Paneros character as "ethnic" as possible. In the 40s there was no shading,if a character wasn't a WASP, that person was usually a caricature or stereotype.Check out Mlle. Bouchet's African American maid later in the film for an even more egregious stereotype. Anyway,Paneros is in love with the Auntie, who takes advantage of this when she goes away on tour and leaves little Meg with her "almost Uncle." Apparently,Paneros has no problem with Meg wandering all over town by herself, as she shows up in places unexpectedly such as the upscale department store where Bouchet and her fiancé are shopping(Meg gets a hat out of that trip) and La Darina's house. The film continues to pile up implausibilities until the very end when it comes out that Meg was responsible for Darina's injury and there is no,absolutely not one,comeuppance! Does she get thrown out of ballet school?No. Does she go to juvie? Nope.She continues to dance, but not before she also manages to break up Bouchet and her fiancé. Cyd Charisse later did much better films,so did Danny Thomas and he and Elinore Donahue became sitcom stars as well. Watch these actors in those things. Skip this.

I won't summarize the plot,as several others have done this already. Just two things: Yes,the ending seemed tacked on,like the writer couldn't think of a way to end the picture and just threw this together at the last minute. The other thing is that several posters are under the impression that Zachary Scott did Mildred Pierce first. No,this film came first,two years before Mildred Pierce,in fact. The Monty Berrigon character Scott played in that film is almost a carbon copy of the guy in this film,not the other way around. In fact,I wonder why Scott would agree to play the MP character since it was so close to this one. Maybe he wanted to work with Joan Crawford or maybe ,under the terms of his contract, he had to play anything they told him to. At any rate,he played these sleazy scoundrels well

First of all,this was hardly the "worst film of the year" as one reviewer on this site wrote. THAT film was called "All About Steve." This one was in some ways a standard rom-com and yes,there were similarities to other films from "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" to "Meet the Fockers." But I find that all rom-coms have elements in common,so what's the big deal? The big deal is that this film involves a mixed race couple where neither one is white,in fact the girl is Mexican-American and the boy is African-American,both college educated and from families that are not poor. In fact the prospective groom's father has quite a bit of money,and the bride to be comes from a family that ,if not rich,is at least solidly middle class. I see why the critics,both professional and non,didn't "get it." None of the main characters is involved in gangs,drugs, or lives in the ghetto or the barrio. There are no men dressed in drag pretending to be grandmothers either . And there are no main characters that are white. No "best friend" no work buddy,no obnoxious boss. The plot involves people of color having to bridge a cultural divide. Are there clichéd moments? Sure. Were the fathers sometimes over the top in their dealings with one another? You betcha! Have we seen this in other films that didn't get nearly the lashing this one did? Certainly. I enjoyed this film because ,in spite of the normal conventions of its genre,it showed people of color as normal families dealing with a situation they may not like,but having to find a way to come together for the ones they love.