It's Always Fair Weather
by Gene Kelly, Joseph Barbera, Michael Lah, Stanley Donen, Tex Avery
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bill Thompson, Cyd Charisse, Dan Dailey, Dolores Gray, Gene KellyDirector: Gene Kelly, Joseph Barbera, Michael Lah, Stanley Donen, Tex Avery
Brand: Warner Brothers
Writer: Adolph Green
Writer: Betty Comden
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 67860
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of It's Always Fair Weather
Movie Review: Looking forward to seeing what was cut out
Summary: 5 Stars
When the new DVD gets released I'll be first in line to view a copy, and I'll head for the deleted scenes, for IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER has always puzzled moviegoers, especially those who like the work of the Freed Unit, for its generally sour tone and seemingly slapdash narrative line. Dance lovers have always wondered why Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse never get to dance together (for example), for certainly it seems like a classic definition of a missed opportunity. Was there some original, longer version of the movie in which they shared a dance number? Such are the dreams of a disappointed cinephile, and now, thanks to the DVD revolution we find out, yes, there was, and now perhaps we will get to see it.
The plot puzzles in other ways too. It's set up so that, after a brief prologue set in 1945, the whole action of the movie is crowded into a 16 hour period--approximately. The three veterans meet at Ted's Bar at noon, it takes them about an hour to get thoroughly disenchanted with each other, and then they meet again late at night for the broadcast of "Midnight with Madeline." We know how Gene Kelly spends the intervening hours (canoodling with Cyd Charisse and discovering his pug is planning to throw the big fight, then running from the Mob), and we also know what Dan Dailey has been doing (getting drunk and insulting everyone at the advertising agency); but when Michael Kidd shows his face at the broadcast it's almost like we don't even recognize him, he's been absent from the movie for so long. We know from surrounding dialogue that Dolores Gray has kept him busy all day and all evening, but it's not the same as show not tell. Well, now we find out there's a deleted scene with Michael Kidd in it . . . Hope it answers all my questions!
Is the movie too sour? It was a brave move, to suggest that the realities of US 1950s had clouded the sunny optimism of 1945, and you can almost feel the filmmakers congratulating themselves for their chic pessimism; the movie has the weary glamor of Sartre and De Beuavoir sitting around Les Deux Magots wearing berets and bemoaning the atom bomb and Algerian affairs. Is Dolores Gray too camp? It seems to me she represents something of the horror with which American men viewed women in the media--phony, sexed-up, willing to sell their souls for a bit of evanescent popularity. Even the runs and trills in Gray's voice, from high octave squeaks to low rumbles as of a pokey steam engine, seem totally artificial, designed to allure, to vamp, to deceive. The movie is all about deceit--Dan Dailey deceiving himself that not going to Europe and becoming an ad man was a smart thing to do; Michael Kidd giving up his dreams of Cordon Bleu haute cuisine and opening up a burger joint (pathetically enough, called the "Cordon Bleu") in Schnectady, New York, a "comical" name milked in the movie so that every time it's pronounced the audience is expected to hoot.
Summary of It's Always Fair Weather
IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER - DVD Movie