The title pretty much summarizes this peek into part of the nightlife in 1927 Paris. La revue des revues is a survey of big dance numbers from some of the major night clubs. It feels a little like That’s Entertainment, but here there are performance numbers rather than clips from MGM movies.
And the dance numbers are often impressive. Revue offers a series of lavish performance pieces with elaborate costumes and a range of dance from cancan to ballet. One of the early numbers, Orgies, recalls the silent interest in ancient pageantry, but it also tells viewers right away that this is a pre-Code film. It has more than a little eroticism and even goes to limits that can make a modern viewer uncomfortable. Shortly afterwards, we’re watching bare-breasted performers changing costumes.
The outstanding tinting of the film adds to the effect of the dances, highlighting some costumes with one color and other costumes in the same number with another color. And vaudeville backgrounds some of the performances, too, with acrobats, juggling and Cossack dance. An unexpected pleasure, seeing Josephine Baker’s limber, rhythmic jiggles in the context of so much stiff choreography, helps explain why she was such a sensation.
Revue also provides context for Busby Berkley's best-know work, which starts some six years later. The camera here peeps up under lines of synchronized dancers’ legs and stares down from above at patterns of the dancers’ bodies. Drapery and parasols create flows of motion, and the stage is packed with sequins and performers. These are all elements that Berkley tightens into some of his best work.
But for all their historical interest and range of subjects, the shows in Revue ultimately make the movie seem long for a modern viewer. While the dance numbers may range from Babylon to Spain to 17th century France, the limited choreographic vocabulary here eventually begins to seem monotonous. And technical restrictions of the 1927 camera limit what a director can do, though cutting the dancers’ feet out of the frame would seem a preventable technical error. The music of the Lange restoration that I watched is another problem with this film. Taranta-Babu’s score operates in a narrow tonal range, and the performance never seems to dedicate itself totally to the music. One could imagine that occasions of intense strings, horn or percussion might have livened up the original music.
The frame story of the film doesn’t contribute much interest to Revue either. It’s a story with typical elements of a silent film, melodrama like Gaby’s spending her last money on a theater ticket and the sentimentality of a contrived happy ending. But like the music, this story lacks the intensity it needs in order to engage us. This story is similar to the dialogues in That’s Entertainment that stitch together the routines but it don't add to the film.
Revue des revues gives us a good, documentary-like glimpse of period musical performances. It’s not good cinema, but it’s interesting to see this aspect of performance art at the close of the silent era.
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