One Paragraph Movie Review: Footlight Parade

One hundred and fifty-sixth film: Footlight Parade from 1933, the first film I’ve seen choreographed by Busby Berkeley, and the first time I’ve properly realised what a ‘pre-Code’ movie is. There was a short period between the widespread production of talking pictures and the widespread adoption of film censorship where things got very innuendo-ey indeed, and this movie is a borderline smutty delight as a result. I mean, right up until it gets unbelievably racist. Before that, there’s the line “I’ve met Miss Bi… Miss Rich”, a bunch of scantily-clad chorus girls, and musical numbers that make liberal and thinly disguised references to the sex work industry. The whole storyline — that of a musical theatre guy trying to make a buck in an increasingly cinema-centric world — is an excuse for the final three Berkeley extravaganzas — one set in a hotel where people are definitely doing sex, one set in a waterfall with some very famous overhead geometric dancer shots, and one called “Shanghai Lil” that has white people in ‘Asian-face’ singing with Asian accents and wearing conical hats that spoils everything. Right when I was marvelling at what the 1930s did for frocks and furniture, along comes what it did for xenophobia. Dammit. Three spurting human fountains out of five.