Plantiana
Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.
Bob
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
JohnHowardReid
For his next photoplay, after "The Desperadoes", Charles Vidor requested Cover Girl (1944), primarily to show off his versatility, and having no idea at the time that it would eventually lead to his being typed (and principally thought of) as a director of musicals. Actually Charles Vidor much preferred his horror films, Gothic romances and westerns. But with the exception of his masterpiece, Gilda (1946), these were now all behind him. (Thunder in the East, The Joker Is Wild, and even A Song to Remember and The Loves of Carmen, have Gothic overtones, but I think they may be excluded here). Entrancingly designed and inventively choreographed, Cover Girl was a hit from its smash opening sequence to its rousing finale. The only conventional thing about the movie was its screenplay -- a story in which Gene Kelly, Otto Kruger and Lee Bowman vied for the affections of Rita Hayworth. (You have just one single guess as to which of these three contenders won through in the end?)
James Hitchcock
Will success spoil Rusty Parker? Rusty, a chorus girl working at a nightclub run by her boyfriend Danny McGuire, gets a chance to go for the big time after being chosen as the cover girl for a prestigious magazine. Rusty becomes a Broadway star, but success threatens to spoil her romance with Danny when she is pursued by the magazine's editor John Coudair and by her Broadway producer Noel Wheaton. As, however, Coudair is old enough to be Rusty's grandfather- indeed, forty years earlier he was a suitor for her grandmother's hand- and Wheaton is the coldest of cold fish, we all know how the story will end. And that's about it as far as plot is concerned, although a couple of flashbacks tell us something of John's romance with Rusty's grandmother Maribelle. (Although these scenes are ostensibly set forty years previously in the Edwardian era, there is little attempt at period accuracy and some of the costumes are those of the 1940s).Despite the scanty plot, "Cover Girl" was one of the most popular musicals of the war years. Indeed, plot was often regarded as relatively unimportant in musicals from this period. Even a film as highly regarded as that other Gene Kelly vehicle "An American in Paris" is really about little more than a boy, a girl and a happy ending. What mattered were sentiment, spectacle, songs, dance numbers and an overall feel-good factor. This was particularly important during the war. Despite the film's happy-go-lucky atmosphere, we are not allowed to forget that it is 1944 and there is a war to be won. Phil Silvers as the nightclub's resident comedian Genius includes plenty of jokes about the war in his act, and we learn that Danny is a former soldier invalided out of the Army after being wounded. This is one of those wartime movies which try to help the war effort, not by pushing a heavy-handed propagandist message but by keeping up civilian morale. Most of the musical routines are relentlessly cheerful with a message of "better times are just around the corner".The film is said to be the film which made a star of Gene Kelly, although at the time it was primarily intended as a vehicle for the talents of Rita Hayworth, a rising young star at the time, showcasing not just her looks but also her skills as a dancer. She has a double role, playing both Rusty and Maribelle. Her talents did not, it would seem, extend to singing, as her voice was dubbed. This was not an uncommon phenomenon at this period; Hayworth's younger contemporary Cyd Charisse danced her way throughout numerous musicals without singing a note in any of them. During this phase of Hayworth's career she was normally offered "sweet girl next door" type parts like Rusty here. Later in the decade she would be given the opportunity to play sultry femmes fatales, as in "Gilda" and "The Girl from Shanghai", before moving on in the fifties to "sexy older woman" roles. "Gilda", incidentally, had the same director, Charles Vidor, as "Cover Girl", but the two films are very different from one another.Trying to evaluate a film like this one is a difficult task seventy years on. It belongs to a tradition of lavish Hollywood musicals which is no longer really part of our culture, having come to an end in the seventies soon after those two late, great examples "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Cabaret". Sporadic attempts to revive this tradition have not always met with success. Moreover, the musicals of the thirties and forties can often seem stylised and unrealistic, even by the standards of their successors from the fifties and sixties. Yet we have to bear in mind that this film was a great success in its day, and it is worth trying to understand why.The songs are tuneful, although none of them except perhaps "Long Ago and Far Away" has really become a classic. The dance numbers are well produced and the two leading stars are attractive and charismatic. Kelly's contribution, moreover, went well beyond just acting and dancing; he was also responsible for a lot of the choreography. The elaborate costumes also contributed a lot to the film's success. (This was, remember, an age of austerity).Seen through modern eyes, "Cover Girl" looks horribly dated, but if we make the effort to see it through the eyes of our grandparents, it still has a lot to recommend it. 7/10
loveballet12
Date: 11 October, 2012 -First Time Watch- Rusty (Rita Hayworth) is a showgirl at a small nightclub that is owned by her boyfriend Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly). She has an average life, spending her nights looking for pearls in oysters with Danny and mutual friend Genius (Phil Silvers) until another showgirl shows her a job position at a local magazine looking for their next cover girl. Naturally she applies and gets the position, which leads to fame but tearing her away from Danny and Genius. Rita Hayworth was just beginning her climb to ultimate super stardom when the movie was released and was basically centered around her. Yet, I found her performance average and unmoving. She basically acted like a woman with a lot of drama in her life. Phil Silvers' performance was also average. It was really Gene Kelly who gets the praise. He had only done a few movies before 'Cover Girl' and this movie ultimate shot him into fame. I see why and his performance is really the greatest thing about the movie, especially when he dances with his conscience, that's really neat to see. It's overall a good movie with a predictable ending however I still enjoyed it, but it's not a favorite.8/10
secondtake
Cover Girl (1944)The war is on, and this musical covered two fronts--escapist entertainment, and good old leggy girls for the guys in uniform (those who got to see it). Betty Grable may have been the unofficial pin up actress in wartime, but Rita Hayworth was one of the real hotties of the 1940s, and another G.I. staple, and she is the visible star of this very colorful musical.The other star, secondary except in name, is Gene Kelly, who is actually a relief in his scenes, adding some stability to a sometimes frivolous and girly musical. Hayworth is great as a presence, too, for sure, and she does do her own dancing, but her singing voice is dubbed by another vocalist. Third in importance is Eve Arden (for me) playing her usual world-weary wit, in this case in the center of the cover girl search. An interesting if minor trick to the plot early on is the way they create two plots in two time periods, the present (1944) and forty years earlier. So the musical numbers (and lavish costumes) vary from one period to the other, with Hayworth providing the link. Most of the time, thought, it's the early 1940s with the usual competing romances, and a striving for glory takes off. This was Hayworth's biggest success to date, and she was married to Orson Welles at the time. The movie was a hit, both with audiences and with critics. It even won an Oscar (for the music).How does it compare to other musicals? Well, for one thing it has totally vivid color, I mean vivid, true three-strip Technicolor (the ultimate), and it helps. The dance numbers are on obvious sets, carefully and beautifully designed. Kelly was instrumental in making the dance numbers work, even dominating the director (Charles Vidor) on this score. You might even see hints of his later more famous musicals (a street scene has echoes of "Singing in the Rain" in set design, without the rain--a cop even ends the scene in both cases). The dancing is something of an evolution from the 1930s Astaire-Rogers dancing which was heavily tap and ballroom kinds of couple numbers. Here we see more choreographed integration with the plot and the scenes. The story, as the title suggests, has a great theme. Rita's character, Rusty Parker (she has reddish hair, which is common in these Technicolor affairs) is trying to be a cover girl for a magazine contest. Of course, so is everyone else in the country. And they bring it to an amazing climax by presenting "covers" designed for all the major magazines, the real thing from Cosmopolitan to Look. The actual magazines around the country got on board with the movie while it was being made and had their own contests for their covers. One dance number features each of the winning covers, seen through a giant camera lens, and each of the winning girls--so the cover models got a small dose of Hollywood stardom, too. It's fun, and clever, and it sold the film big time.There is an odd mistake in the movie--when the original Variety cover with Rusty Parker on it is pinned up by her dance friends and rivals, it shows a picture of her looking at the camera. When the camera pulls back for a wider view, it shows a different cover! Parker is looking to one side. Pretty ridiculous boo-boo.I can't over emphasize how much the production values of the film support it. The color, the photography, the set design, and the editing are all really fabulous. There are two photographers listed, and one is Rudolph Mate who has a number of great Hollywood films to his name (as well as a true legend, the German/Danish "Vampyr" from 1932). Technicolor consultant Natalie Kalmus is in top form (she insisted on certain colors and color pairings that worked best with the film stock). Kelly was loaned from MGM (to Columbia) for the movie, and he was given liberties in production, making his career jump two notches. The choreography is his, and MGM began to pay attention to him at this point. The great number where he plays against his ghost on the streets is inventive and fun. The production is high here, with true Technicolor, but it lacks the high standards of MGM (see "Singin' in the Rain" for some better echoes).
There are lots Broadway based visuals, with sets and contrivances. It only goes so far, and it's so infected by the "cover girl" mentality it drives any normal person not to boredom but to disappointment. I know if I say it's sexist many people think I'm just not getting it, or I'm applying a 21st Century filter to a normal situation back then. But it's an objectifying movie with all the worst stereotyping clichés you can write into a script. And the fact remains that neither Kelly nor Hayworth are what you would call great actors. Likable (and pretty) but limited in their range.
It's a musical, yes, and it gets around to real music eventually, and it's no less than Kern and Gershwin. The great song is a quiet number between them, Long Ago and Far Away. Some of the other songs are formula stuff, and you have to hang in there. In fact, you start to realize you are being patient a lot, waiting for the movie to rise up.
