Whistling Clarabella...

I'm in the middle of watching Easter Parade right now and I have some thoughts.

- I do adore Fred Astaire, but he looks too old in this particular film for this particular leading lady. Fred always had a face like a craggy rockface, but he just looks wrong for the eternally youthful Miss Garland. Which is weird, because he actually seems older in this 1948 movie than in The Band Wagon some years later. Also, it's true that one Mr G. Kelly of Pittsburgh, PA was intended for the lead role, but broke his ankle. Skiing if I recall. Had he played the lead, it would be a very different film. Not better necessarily, but different. And he would've looked as fabulous next to Judy as he did in For Me and My Gal or Summer Stock.

- Ann Miller annoys me. I don't know why. I don't know if it's that to my untrained eye all she seems to do is just tap very very fast. I don't know if it's the nasty remarks she made about Marilyn Monroe a few years back. Then again, I can't dance to save my life, so all I'll say is that she's not my cup of tea. I like Eleanor Powell.

- Peter Sodding Lawford. I really can't stand him at all. I just... you know how sometimes there are people who set all your nerves on edge, make your teeth itch, your fists clench and your throat growl involuntarily? He is that. Has there ever been anyone in Hollywood endowed with less talent than him? He's an even worse actor than Natalie Wood was and about as charming as a rabid pitbull terrier.

-I know I said Astaire looks too old for Garland, but the dancing is still just brilliant. While the effects in dances like 'Stepping Out With My Baby' are cool, it's not like the man needs them- he had my attention anyway. When he dances, he doesn't look old at all.

-WHY did they cut out 'Mr Monotony'? It's a clever little song, Judy did it marvellously and she looks fab (that famous Get Happy costume a year or two early). I swear, I just don't get MGM sometimes.

It's an OK film. It's nothing compared to The Band Wagon. I'm still a Kelly girl but Astaire is cool too. I'm always going to be a Kelly girl, but I'm more of an Astaire fan than I was this time last week.

Last thing: where did the idea that Judy Garland isn't beautiful ever come from? I don't get it. Girl's beautiful. If only someone had thought to tell her. Worth a million Lana Turners.

So, I watched The Phantom of the Opera again this morning. This is not especially surprising, although I've only watched it twice since getting the DVD at the beginning of the month.

Anyway, I've come to realise that there is a perfect moment in this particular picture. I mean perfect in the way that in just one moment, the entire film is crystallised and it is beautiful. In this case, it comes only eighteen or nineteen minutes into the whole shebang. What is this moment, I hear you cry, that has me so entranced and impressed? A hitherto unnoticed Phantom/bath/rubber duckie moment? I wish, I do wish. A hithero unnoticed Phantom/Raoul slashfest? Fortunately not.

No, this is much more beautiful than either of those two possibilities. Eighteen minutes into the film, Christine Daae is up on stage in all her finery, singing her pretty little heart out. 'Think Of Me', I believe it's called. She's making the very most of her 42nd Street Ruby Keeler moment, enchanting all around her in the opulent opera house. Then, the camera swoops down, through the many basement levels of the opera house until it reaches a dark, dank, mouldy old cellar. There stands a shadow of a man, listening intently. And man, doesn't it just sum the whole damn thing up? He creates it all (literally, if you go by the book- he built it all) and is forced to listen from afar, to admire from afar and to be forever in the shadows. Then we cut to a boring, cardboard cutout of a twelve year old brat intent on spoiling even this unsatisfactory arrangement.

But as cinematic moments go, it's pretty fantastic.