Son of SDMB Musicals - Chicago

Cafe Society
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The first movie up for discussion is Chicago. Based on the Broadway musical which is based on a play written by Maurine Dallas Watkins based on her experiences as a Chicago Tribune crime reporter, is a retelling of two real life murder trials in 1924. The play had been made into a movie twice, in 1927 and 1942, the latter starring Ginger Rogers in the title role of Roxie Hart.

Without dwelling further on the history behind the musical, it must be said that the casting of the major roles in this movie was…interesting. Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere were not known for their singing or dancing ability prior to this. Queen Latifah was mostly known as a hip-hop singer and, while she had acted in a number of TV shows and movies, had not done any musical theater since high school. Yet Chicago won six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress (Zeta-Jones) and had seven other nominations, including Best Director (Rob Marshall), Best Actress (Zellweger), Best Supporting Actor (John C Reilly), and Best Supporting Actress (Queen Latifah).

I watched the movie this afternoon, and was amazed at how many things about it I had forgotten. All of the musical numbers were shot as a blend of fantasy and “reality”, cutting seamlessly back and forth between the illusion projected by the song and the events of the main story. Just a few examples: “When You’re Good to Momma” has Queen Latifah doing a raucus, suggestive burlesque show with lines like “So boost me up my ladder, kid And I’ll boost you up yours” while Roxie is being introduced to the realities of prison life. And then there’s Billy Flynn as Ringmaster surrounded by acrobats interspersed with the courtroom scenes during “Razzle Dazzle”.

And of course, we can’t forget the Cell Block Tango, can we, Eleanor of Aquitaine? :wink:

I’m sure everybody has their favorite scenes to discuss. And possibly even a few things that you think didn’t quite work. So let’s hear from you.

BTW, I have the two-disk “Razzle Dazzle” edition of the DVD, and when I get a chance later I’ll be checking out some of the extras. If I find anything interesting in them, I’ll let you know.

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Haven’t rescreened yet for this thread–will do so tonight–but wanted to add:

Ginger Rogers’s Roxie Hart is a hoot; a very cynical dark comedy that seems decades ahead of its time. It was directed by one of the Hollywood greats, William A Wellman. Wellman also directed such masterpieces as *Track of the Cat, The Story of G.I. Joe, The Oxbow Incident, Nothing Sacred, A Star Is Born, Female, Night Nurse, Public Enemy, *and Oscar’s first Best Picture, Wings. Even outside the context of this thread, I recommend it highly.

It should also be noted that the look and style of the *Chicago *under discussion is largely a tribute (though uncredited, IIRC) to the greatest Broadway choreographer of the 20th century, Bob Fosse. Fosse co-created, directed, and choreographed the 1975 musical *Chicago, * upon which the film is based.

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ETA: lissener snuck in his post while I was writing mine – apologies for any redundancies.
Yeah, I was also struck by the casting this time around. I hate hate hate Renee Zellwegger, but thought she was well cast in this – and though I like Richard Gere and thought he did a pretty good job, I did spend some time thinking about who might have been a better choice. (Jerry Ohrbach had the role in the original B’way production.)

As you say, none of the stars were previously known as song-and-dance types – and none will be moving forward, I don’t think. Musicals for me are all about the dancing, so I was disappointed by the fact that they had choreographed this production to get around the fact that most of their stars couldn’t dance, with the notable exception of Catherine Zeta-Jones (though I think both of her cartwheels were dubbed).

The third thing I was thinking about a lot while watching was the amount of distance/irony in the portrayal of the '20s. Visually I think they were pretty well on-target, but unlike some of the movies we’ll be watching later on, it was clearly a take on the period that maintained a fair amount of psychic distance from the period. (Unlike, say, “Meet Me in St. Louis,” which tried to be faithful to its period, or even “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” which presented a style of dance that was anachronistic, but that didn’t have the same level of … I’m not sure what to call it. “Irony” isn’t quite right.)

And the last thing I was thinking about was, how much was the story as story changed/added to/subtracted from as compared to earlier (non-musical) versions? Does anyone know?

A couple of interesting points from the “getting from B’way to screen” feature on the one-disk DVD I watched:

Bob Fosse, who (as we all know) was the main artistic visionary behind the original show, deliberately structured it as a “musical vaudeville,” with different numbers reflecting acts that would have been presented in actual vaudeville – including a ventriloquist act.

(Fosse also had an obsession with strippers, but we already knew that also.)

After seeing “Strictly Ballroom,” they approached Baz Luhrman about making the film – he’d just signed a three-picture deal with Fox, though, and had to turn them down. One of his three pictures, of course, was Moulin Rouge!, which came out at roughly the same time as Chicago and which played with many of the same themes and anachronisms.

They completly rechoreographed the show for the movie, retaining (IMHO) only an homage to Fosse in the opening number. It was rather odd choreographing it for so many non-dancers, as suggested above, esp. since the original cast had Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera – both amazing dancers – in the two lead roles. I never saw the stage version – did anyone else?

My favorite number: “Cellblock Tango.” I loved the stuff with the red scarves, which I hadn’t really noticed as much the other times I’ve seen this. I loved the cutting back and forth between the solos and the ensemble dancing – I loved how it had a flavor of Fosse to it (esp. in the dominatrix-lingerie costumes) but had its own vibe as well.

I originally saw this on the big screen, and it, I think, works best on the big screen – but I enjoyed watching it again.

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I’d never seen any of the movies made prior to the NYC Broadway production, so I’ve never seen any other telling of the story. And I’ve never seen the Broadway production, but I did have a passing familiarity with several of the numbers, including a barbershop arrangement of Razzle Dazzle.

At the time the film was released, my chorus was working on a barbershop arrangement of “All That Jazz” and the director recommended we all see the film. As I often do when watching a musical, I watched with an eye for which part would I have played had I stuck with my high school dream of making it as a stage Diva. The answer here? Mama Morton.

I thought it was brilliant casting because the surprise was in how well these Hollywood stars performed as singers and dancers. Richard Gere knocked me out of my seat with “All I Care About is Love” John C Reilly stole the film with “Mr Cellophane”
And did you notice? Just before Roxie meets Mama Morton? The broad next to her on the bench? Chita Rivera.

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I’ve never seen the play or the movie (although I’m going to see if Netflix has Roxie Hart now), but I did see the stage musical when one of the touring companies had been in Chicago about ten years ago. Unfortunately, I’m drawing a complete blank as to who was in the production I saw, but I remember being very impressed by it.

twickster, does your DVD include the one song that they filmed for the movie but reluctantly cut, “Class”? It was a duet for Mama and Velma, sung during the scene when they were listening to the trial on the radio. A very nice song, and well done, but I do agree with the commentary for it (which I also listened to); as it was filmed it breaks up the flow of the story a bit, and unlike most of the other songs does not have Bob Fosse’s vaudeville feeling that you referred to in your post.

And I can’t believe that I had never noticed the use of the red scarves during “Cell Block Tango” before today’s viewing.

And on preview:

anyrose, I loved the way they did “All I Care About is Love” in the movie, too. And I can’t believe I missed Chita Rivera - I guess now I have another excuse to watch it again.

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I believe the main reason for cuttng “Class” from the movie was in the lyrics. There is an extremely offensive female epithet in the song.

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I saw Chicago on Broadway eleven and a half years ago, with my parents. We enjoyed it, but I think it was a little more sultry than any of us had expected. Joel Grey played Mr. Cellophane–which reminded my mother in particular of what a good dancer he was in his youth (Cabaret–which I saw sometime after Chicago on Broadway, probably 3-4 years after). If any other roles were played by people of significance, I don’t recall.

I remember being a little confused by the musical, and the movie made more sense to me, but that’s because of my greater familiarity with the material and not a better structured performance.

The biggest thing I recall about what I saw on Broadway was that the costume designer’s theme was “How many different ways can I dress people in see-through black fabric?” In that respect, I felt the costuming for the movie was more believable/more representative of the time period. (Although not neccessarily less revealing).

I was a little dissappointed in both Chicago and Smokey Joe’s Cafe (the other musical we saw that week) because neither struck me as being Big Broadway Spectacle, the way “real musicals” are. Some of it was the music, a lot was the staging and the general absense of a big dancing chorusline.

Uncharacteristically, I saw Chicago the movie in the movie theater at the time of its release. I enjoyed it, mostly, although the need to frame all the musical numbers as fantasy irritated me–not least because it made it harder to tell what was going on. I have not re-viewed it lately, and probably won’t, but that’s due to life issues, not due to hatred of the movie.

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I enjoyed the movie a lot, especially Catherine Zeta Jones and John C. Reilly. The opening scene, with CZJs shoes hurrying into the theater and then beckoning the spotlight to focus on her were pure magic. I also had a few complaints, mostly about the direction.

As twickster mentioned, a lot of the joy of musicals is in the dance. Zellwegger was so bad at moving it was painful for me to watch. She couldn’t even keep time. Her singing was nothing to write home about, but Kander and Ebb scripted Roxie to be a second-rate performer (like Sally Bowles) so that didn’t bother me as much.

“When You’re Good to Mama,” is chock full of gleeful girl-on-girl inuendo, which was thoroughly stomped out of the movie scene.

“Cell Block Tango” was milked so hard for sexy and dangerous, that they completely missed how damn funny the number is. “And then he ran into my knife! He ran into my knife TEN TIMES!”

The thing that people love and hate about K&E shows is that K&E totally didn’t buy into the premise of musicals. They knew that audiences loved song, dance, and scantily clad women, but also knew that in real life those were hard to come by. So they carefully constructed their premises to make the song, dance, and skimpy clothing plausible. The “reveal” in Chicago is that we, the audience, are watching a revue version of the story staged by the protagonists. The revue setting excuses the unrealism AND makes us, the audience, uncomfortably complicit in the action.

This was totally tossed out of the movie. Instead, the excuse for the huge production numbers was that Roxie had an overactive imagination. Why not use the new medium and make it a movie retelling, a la Hamlet? I thought that was kind of lame. YMMV.

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Yes. I was pretty “meh” about it, and agreed with the decision to cut it.

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After reading this I pulled out the DVD and listened again to the deleted scene with and without the commentary by Rob Marshall and Bill Condon (who wrote the screenplay) and they said that the only reason the scene was cut was because it was the only song that didn’t have the vaudeville feel of the rest of the songs. The only mention in their commentary to the offensive female epithet (which was in the song as filmed) was to say that in the original 1975 show the line was changed because it was deemed too offensive (according to the Wikipedia article it was Fosse that made the change).

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I hadn’t noticed before that Hunyak (the “Uh-uh” woman) pulled a white scarf, because she was the only one who was innocent.

According to IMDB trivia, here’s what she’s saying, in Hungarian, during her dance number: “What am I doing here? They say my famous tenant held down my husband and I chopped his head off. But it’s not true. I am innocent. I don’t know why Uncle Sam says I did it. I tried to explain at the police station but they didn’t understand.”

I didn’t realize that the show was based on real murder trials - I wonder if her case is real, too? The applause at the end of her hanging/disappearing act was disturbing. I guess that’s the point of the movie, that innocent but boring people like Amos and Hunyak are disregarded while guilty but flashy people get all of the attention. Hunyak only became worthy of attention, briefly, when they hung her.

When he was singing “All I Care About is Love”, I thought Richard Gere sounded kind of like Jeremy Northam singing in Gosford Park. The DVD extras had a clip of Jerry Orbach singing it, which was fun because I’ve never seen him in anything except Law & Order.

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Totally missed that – cool.

And missed the Chita Rivera cameo also. :smack:

Unfortunately, I’ve returned the disk to Netflix already, so I can’t rerun it to check these two points …

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I can check it when I get home, but the title of the show has a sub-title on the script along the lines of “Chicago: A Broadway Vaudeville.”

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Oops. You’re right, I’m wrong. Sorry.

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You were wrong about . . . what? :slight_smile: I was agreeing, and pointing out that the script to the stage show even states it explicitly (though from an audience perspective you don’t ever see that subtitle).

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I quoted it as “musical vaudeville” instead of “B’way vaudeville.”

What, you weren’t trying to split hairs with me? Oh, right, we’re not in GD.

Never mind.

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Hmm, I wonder if I would have appreciated it more if I’d known that at the time I saw it . . .

Actually, I suspect the answer is no, but I would appreciate the musical more if I saw it now because I’ve got a lot more knowledge of and appreciation for stuff like vaudeville than I did a decade a go.

And it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, it’s just there’s a part of me which will always be sad I didn’t argue harder for going to see Les Mis, even if I had seen it on Broadway before.

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Kander and Ebb’s (mild?) disdain of the traditional musical is very apparent in the score of Curtains.

Eureka - I enjoy non traditional formats as much as the big budget Bernstein or Rodgers/Hart, Rodgers/Hammerstein ones, maybe more.

Eleanor of Aquitaine - I have the original Off Broadway cast recording of The Fantastiks from the early 60s in which Orbach played El Gallo (The Cat) a combination narrator/villian. He also starred in Promises, Promises (based on the Lemmon/Maclaine movie The Apartment) in 1966. He was a song and dance man for many years before Angela Lansbury gave him a recurring role in Murder She Wrote.

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Nitpick: Gallo = rooster. Gato = cat.

We just saw The Fantasticks last weekend, I thoroughly enjoyed it :slight_smile:

Oh, and my Chicago input - my sister and I went to see it once in London, mostly to see what Van Outen (Van Outen, Van Outen! She’s a Nether-regioner! Sorry, channeling my inner Dawn French…) could do with the role - she was only known as a newsreader at the time. We got the understudy! Boo! Fun show, though, and a good production. Enjoyed the movie too.

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Thank you for the correction. I actually knew what the Spanish word for cat is, but when Dad told me (when I was 6) that El Gallo was The Cat, I believed him. He was right about so many other things after all… :rolleyes: :smiley: