Anchors Aweigh (1945).

It's known as the Golden Age of Hollywood.  It used to be one of those time periods that others used to point to as a high watermark in the history of American cinema.  It's also an open question if anyone out there, especially among the younger generations, can remember that it ever existed, even if its celluloid remains are still lying everywhere about the place, just waiting to be picked up.  For better of worse, this was the era of film history that I got exposed to as a newborn.  I was a child of the 80s.  That's an era which has begun to take on all the tropes and characteristics the used to typify how people once viewed the Classic Era of Old Tinseltown.  My childhood now seems to have attained its own level of mythic status.  To be fair, it's kind of easy to see why this is the case once you look at a lot of the films and TV shows that were on when I was just a kid.  When movies like Return of the Jedi and Back to the Future make up part of the wallpaper of your first experiences, then it's difficult not to look back with a certain sense of satisfaction and think, yeah, man!  That was my time and place.  Recognize!  The punchline in my case is that while I had the same exposure to films like this, just as any other self-respecting 80s kid, there was also this other component which gives my experience a whole different atmosphere from that of my peers.  This is all thanks to the film's my family would let me watch.

Like a lot of impressionable young 80s toddlers, I know what it was like to be blessed with an era of awesome movies, a lot of fun Saturday Morning TV Shows, and a parental household that hadn't discovered the glories of helicopter child rearing.  It means unlike a lot of you suckers today, I was basically allowed to be a free-range boy growing up.  So that means I got to enjoy works like Amadeus alongside Garfield and Friends, I shit you not.  That latter day classical drama and Mark Evanier's incarnation of Jim Davis's comic strip creation are two of the strongest memories I have from my well-spent youth.  It's just that there's such an easy cognitive dissonance to the way we live our lives today, that it wouldn't surprise me if most folks would need a hell of a lot of time before we could ever find room in our heads to fit these two diametrically opposed entities up on the same mental shelf space together.  I never seem to have had that problem, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I got exposed to both high and popular culture at the same time at a very impressionable age.  The result was a process of psychological molding where I'm able to hold the mental atmosphere's of Milos Foreman's urbane sophistication in easy balance and concord with Jim Davis's couch potato sensibilities.  This is the quirky kind of kaleidoscopic experiences I had as a child of the 1980s.

It's something I'm able to look back on with a great deal of fondness, yet the passage of time has also made me aware of just how sui generis most of it was, compared to the lives of my fellows 80s brats.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the fact that my parents and grandparents thought that it would be a good idea to see if I might like to watch the kind of films they used to grow up on back during the 40s and 50s, and even further back into the 1930s.  It's the best explanation I've got for how I managed to grow up knowing about a giant ape named King Kong, or how I one day found myself laughing my five year old ass off as I watched three guys named Larry, Moe, and Curly beat the ever-loving shit out of each other in the most comedic fashion possible.  The same thing happened yet again when I recall seeing what looked for all the world like a triad of circus clowns without the make-up tear about all over the screen as they tore apart an express train in a totally whacked-out effort to keep a locomotive engine running.  That was the first time I ever saw the Marx Brothers, as it turns out.  Not long after I learned about an old special effects wizard by the name of Ray Harryhausen, when I saw his pioneering efforts of stop motion in the film Mighty Joe Young.  It was during this same time period that I learned of a taciturn tough guy who prowled through the shadows and took on the mean streets all by himself.

That's how I found out about the career of Humphrey Bogart.  These serve as just a handful of the most familiar careers that belong to the Golden Age of Hollywood, and I was introduced to all of them as a boy.  In doing so, my parents and grand-folks more or less managed to get me acquainted with the Glory Years of American Cinema.  I seem to be one of the few 80s kids out there with as much of a solid grounding in Classic Hollywood as Nickelodeon's Double Dare, or Inspector Gadget and the TMMT franchise.  It probably never hurt my chances that Nickelodeon also specialized in the airing of nostalgic programming as part of its cable TV lineup.  This means I got my first glimpse of the artistry of Alfred Hitchcock at a young age, and Nick at Nite back then would sometimes even air the same kind of films that remain a staple of  Turner Classic Movies.  It seems, then, that I was given a rare sort of upbringing.  I appear to be one of the few 80s kids out there who was sort of allowed to grow into a fan of classic movies.  That's a category term which encompasses everything from the early days of black and white cinema up to the early years of filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, with a side interest in Silent Films thrown in for good measure.  It's through this early introduction that I was given an accidental education by my family in the the artistry of the earlier days of cinema long since past.

A good way to say it is that guys like Tom, Jerry, Bugs, and Daffy led my down a road that sooner or later led me the doorsteps of actors like Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn, James Cagney, and Elisha Cook Jr., or directors like Robert Wise and Jacque Tourneur.  I've even managed to familiarize myself with the like of Federico Fellini and Francois Truffaut.  All of it makes me into something of a subset of the 80s pop culture experience, one that fits the label of off the beaten path.  If this is the case, then so be it.  The old adage of, If you get to them when they're young, then they're shaped for life, is applicable to me when it comes to the Golden Age of Hollywood.  I've long since become a devotee of classic cinema.  Though it should be pointed out that none of this comes with a more than logical bit of criticism, on occasion.  There are some old films out there that are, lets say, less than progressive in their moral and social outlooks.  This is glaringly obvious in the case of how some filmmakers handled the portrayal of other races and ethnicities in their films.  The good news is that it doesn't happen as often as it could, yet when it does, the results always remain cringe as hell.  Thankfully, that's not an issue with the film I'm here to look at today.  Instead, Anchors Aweigh presents a more technical sort of cinematic conundrum.

Conclusion: A Poor Excuse for a Film, and a Marvel of Wasted Talent.

I've decided to skip the regular plot outline for this one.  The reason for that is pretty simple.  There comes a point somewhere about midway to a third of this picture where you soon realize that for all the talent involved, anything like an actual engaging story is the least of this movie's considerations.  That's because it soon hits you that what you're looking at is less of what we now think of as a regular film, and more a long defunct type of motion picture.  It's one that used to be a staple of Hollywood's Golden Age, and yet it's also one that faded into obscurity soon enough as the War Years transitioned into the Eisenhower Era, and a new crop of screenwriters, playwrights, and even novelists began to occupy a lot more space in Tinseltown's once thriving studio backlots.  Which means that regular stories proper began to phase out spectacle films like this as the 50s wore on.  The kind of film we've got on our hands here today isn't meant to tell any sort of narrative, in the conventional sense.  It's got the barest thread of a plot holding all the scenes together, if that counts.  What little there is of it revolves around a group of naval soldiers.  There's Clarence "Brooklyn" Dolittle, played by Frank Sinatra, and Joseph "Joe" Brady, performed by Gene Kelly.  As the film opens, they're both granted a four day shore leave.  The opening action implies that this is meant as something of a reward for acts of valor in the War's Pacific Theater.

Joe has the scope of his time off all mapped out.  He's going to locate this girl he knows in San Diego, and then pretty much use his time off to disappear between the sheets with her.  Two things stand in Joe's way.  The first is that his buddy Clarence turns out to be too shy to have much of a social life, and so he wonders if Joe could find some way to set him up with a girl of his own.  The second issue is that they both get followed by a little boy named Donald Martin (played by Quantum Leap's Dean Stockwell, of all people, at an impossibly young looking age).  He's tagging along with the two sailor's because, as he explains, his father joined the Navy and become one of the many who never came back from World War II.  His mother is dead, and so he lives with his sister now.  Somehow this makes the idea of running away to join the Navy sound like the most intelligent thought the lad has ever had.  So now he wants to follow Joe and Brooklyn so they can help a kid of somewhere less than nine years old enlist in the military.  If you're reading all this with a look of strained boredom mixed with disbelief, then fair warning.  What happens next isn't much better.  The troopers take Donnie home to his sister, Susan (Kathryn Grayson), and from there the plot spins out into one of those convoluted love triangle type deals, where Gene Kelly has to see if he can set Ol' Blue Eyes up with Sue while also slowly falling for her.  It's the lightest bit of plotting I've ever seen in my life, like the movie didn't care.

In a way, that's a more accurate assessment than you might believe.  This is because as things go on, it soon becomes clear to the attentive viewer that what we've got on our hands is so much of a departure from our current idea of what a modern day filmgoing experience is supposed to be, that it requires a great deal of explanation.  The whole trick with a picture like this is that it's specifically designed to function less like what we know to be a movie, and instead is meant to be treated a lot more like a TV variety show.  The reason it's so easy to arrive at this conclusion is because after a while, you begin to realize that this is a case where the entire threadbare speck of plot exists for the sake of the film's two main leads, and not the other way around.  In other words, this is a film that's meant to showcase the singing and dancing talents of Kelly and Sinatra, and not really much in the way of anything else.  What little plot development there is serves to either introduce the film's next musical number, or else to hurry things along so that we can get to a Fantasy sequence in which Kelly plays this dashing Don Juan figure, and he then proceeds to perform a kind of hybrid Big Band version of a ballet dance with Kathy Grayson.  When a modern viewer reaches that point, some might be thinking, "Wait, haven't I spent the last hour watching a lightweight Romantic Comedy?  Where'd all this bit of business come from"?

That's a very understandable logic for the modern viewer to have.  The trick is that it's also the wrong sort of logic needed to understand a film like this.  Again, you can't approach this as a regular plot based film.  Instead, this really is the sort of picture that needs to be viewed as a variety stage show featuring Sinatra and Kelly as the main attraction.  The plot itself is nothing but an excuse to get to the next set piece, where either Gene will dance, Frank will sing, or else the two of them will double-team it together.  So when things take a left turn into a fantasy sequence with Gene riding on horseback to court a fair maiden, while it counts as nothing that really exists anymore in Hollywood, it does form part of a particular showbiz staple that still had enough legs to have its own spotlight in Hollywood's Golden Age.  At the same time, a show of this type also serves to highlight one of the other ways in just how different the cinema world of America's past is from (whatever little is left of) the one we have now.  It's a film that owes a lot more to the traditions of the Theater Stage, rather than to the typical studio lot.  In fact, the nature of this particular setup is so much of an artifact, that in order to give the reader a full understanding of this movie, I'm going to have to take a detour in order to talk about this Stage Tradition.  It's the only way to understand where a film like Anchors Aweigh is coming from.

In order to understand the the basic concept that a film like this is drawing upon, we'll have to make use of a now obscure critical text by an equally forgotten author.  In a study of The Winter's Tale, an overlooked scholar and critic by the name of Samuel Leslie Bethell explains a neglected aspect of both how stories are written, and even how they are perceived and hence received on the part of the audience.  "In my book Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition I tried to show that the plays of Shakespeare are compounded in varying proportions of the elements of conventionalism and naturalism and that the Elizabethan audience must have reacted to them in a much more complex way than is required of the audience at a modern ‘serious’ play written on the principles of photographic realism. The popular audience in a contemporary cinema or music-hall, unconcerned with theories of dramatic art, finds no difficulty in accepting the most ‘impossible’ conventions: unseen orchestras strike up and characters break suddenly into song; pure farce may mingle with domestic tragedy; a stage show occurring in a film may develop into a performance that no real theatre could possibly contain.

"If this is true of the popular audience after a century in which the tendency to naturalism or realism has been persistent, in philosophy, in painting, in the novel and in the drama itself (for the reactions of impressionism, expressionism and so forth have been limited to ‘highbrow’ circles), we may well expect that in Elizabethan times the ready acceptance of conventions and the complexity of response which that acceptance entails would be natural to all who attended the theatre. Even apart from the drama, the Elizabethans seem to have enjoyed the exercise of keeping diverse aspects of a situation in mind at the same time;  hence their love of the ‘conceit’, in which heterogeneous objects are brought into an intellectual union, and of allegory, in which an outer and an inner meaning must be simultaneously perceived (9)".  This is an idea that finds an echo in the words of playwright Thornton Wilder.  In his essay, Some Thoughts on Playwriting, the author of Our Town is at pains to highlight how all true drama is based not upon any realism of presentation, but rather its exact opposite.  "The Theatre is a World of Pretense (891)", Wilder maintains, "and its very nature calls out a multiplication of pretenses (886)".  This notion of a good story being one that calls forth a multiple awareness of the various levels of pretense, or artifice that goes into any form of storytelling is echoed by Bethell.

In Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition, the critic's entire premise is based upon just that theory.  Bethell explains it like this: "To sum up, I believe I am justified in asserting that there is a popular dramatic tradition, and that its dominant characteristic is the audience’s ability to respond spontaneously and unconsciously on more than one plane of attention at the same time. I shall call this the principle of multi-consciousness. Already, with the aid of some recent critics, we have discovered traces of the a operation of this principle in the plays of Shakespeare, and we have found the same principle to hold of the popular theatre and cinema of to-day (29)".  Bethell posits this idea as a not just an artistic, but also a psychological principle that modern day audiences still have in common with their Elizabethan forebears (30), and the rest of his book is an attempt to show how the plays of Shakespeare illustrate the presence of this Popular Dramatic Tradition.  The way it works in practice is that it all rests on what might almost be described as a shared folkway between artist and audience.  One that allowed for a different way taking in a story as a mere spectator.  In distinction to our current practice of being passive observers of the drama unfolding on either the screen, stage, or the page, the Medieval, Elizabethan, and perhaps even Classical audiences operated under a different psychological dynamic.

This Multi-Conscious Dramatic Tradition was one that rested on a very simple premise.  It knew that all storytelling amounts to just so much artifice, and yet it doesn't hold that as a bad thing.  It's an aesthetic outlook that doesn't chide the writer or the actor for not being able to present a one-hundred percent immersive imaginative experience.  Instead, the mindset that Bethell talks about is quite content to rest easy in a setting of deliberate artifice.  To give an good illustration of how this might have worked, let's take the contents of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and imagine what it might have been like if Tolkien had somehow conceived and written the whole darn thing back in the time of the Bard of Avon, who then was impressed and kind enough to try and successfully put it all up on the Renaissance Theater stage.  The first thing that would strike a modern viewer is that while all the characters and situations might be in place, just like you remember them, what can't escape notice is just how threadbare the entire production is in comparison to everything Peter Jackson was able to put on the screen.  For instance, whoever they get to play Gollum might be perceived as functioning at a disadvantage compared to Andy Serkis.  The playhouse might not even be able to craft a convincing looking mask for the poor guy to where.  Instead, all you'd probably get is just this lone actor dressed up in shabby looking rags.

And that would be it, this is how your Smeagol would look not just for the evening, but for a whole series of multi-part performances.  Also, in case anyone else didn't notice, all of the main four cast members are normal human size.  Some would say this is a bit of a problem, when all of the Hobbits are supposed to be just above waste height.  Instead, we've got full sized adults playing little characters.  And while children were allowed parts on the stage during Shakespeare's time, few of them would ever be tasked with such a complex and demanding role as that of the Ring Bearer.  The bottom line is that while it might have been possible to dramatize the Epic of Middle Earth back then, none of it would be recognizable on the visual level of production values that we've grown used to from the Jackson films.  Now here's the kicker.  It's very possible to make a case that a regular audience of the Bard's time wouldn't have minded this threadbare production value in the slightest.  Instead, they would have been busy applauding the literary quality of Tolkien's Inspiration, and praising the actors for being able to successfully dramatize such a complex feat of storytelling in what amounted to little more than a blank space.  They wouldn't have minded having to visualize what Mordor or Rivendell looked like in their heads.  In fact, the lack of scenery or proper stage lighting would have left room for their own Imaginings.  We're talking about a different form of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief, here now.

It's one that doesn't rest on principles of photographic realism, and instead seems to value Wilder's Theory of Pretense as the highest achievement of storytelling.  Bethell claims that this Popular Dramatic Tradition of  writing and audience reception is one that allowed for a multi-conscious level of awareness between what he called differing planes of reality.  "The inability of the Elizabethan theatre to produce an illusion of actuality", Bethell writes, "was wholly to the good, as modern experimental theatres have shown...In the Elizabethan, or the modern experimental theatre, there is no illusion of actual life; but the audience are vividly aware of acting in progress, and the communication, through their co- operative goodwill, of a work of dramatic art. If the one type of production is more realistic, the other is essentially more real (32)".  Now, it might be held that it's unfair to compare the stage conditions of Shakespeare's time (such as any could be said to exist in that era) to the level of preparation and setup of a movie like The Avengers, or even single set dramas such as The Breakfast Club.  Both of these pictures count as high level production numbers that Shakespeare could only dream about.

The funny thing is that Bethell sort of has a reply to this sort of charge ready at hand.  He may not have been able to conceive of the cinema of John Hughes, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, yet his response seems to be just as fitting, regardless of which technological age you apply it to.  "Shakespeare, despite an occasional grumble at the inadequacy of his ‘wooden O’...wisely accepted the situation as it was, and turned it to good. Perhaps he would have welcomed the resources" at Hughes or Disney's "command, but fortunately he was safe from temptation. I do not suggest that he had any conscious insight into the advantages of his own position; indeed, its strength lay partly in the unconscious acceptance, by both playwright and audience, of conditions as they found them. But Shakespeare did not merely acquiesce in those limitations which the physical conditions of his theatre placed upon dramatic illusion; he actually exploited them, so that conventions in production are integrally related to conventions in the treatment of history, in the presentation of character, and in the verse (ibid)".  Also, the good news about this Tradition is that it means the Bard's dramatic technique isn't totally unrecognizable to modern audiences.  If that were the case, he wouldn't be the literary colossus that he's still known as, even by those who've never seen or read a single line he ever wrote.

The one aspect of the Renaissance Dramatic Artistry that still resonates the most with modern audiences might be its inherently self-aware quality.  "Moreover, (Shakespeare, sic) even draws attention to the play as play, overtly, in the dialogue itself, emphasizing verbally what the manner of production already implied: the co-existence of play-world and real world in the minds of his audience. Perhaps when characters within a play referred to plays and players, or noted that ‘All the world’s a stage’..., a certain piquancy in the situation may have been all that forced itself into conscious attention. As they had never experienced naturalistic drama, the Elizabethans would not appreciate, as we do to-day, the nature of their own drama in distinction from it; just as it is impossible to appreciate a state of physical well-being, until suffering has supplied us with a standard of comparison. But this double consciousness of play- world and real world has the solid advantage of ‘distancing’ a play, so that the words and deeds of which it consists may be critically weighed in the course of its performance. An Ibsen drama, attended to passively, is discussed afterwards in abstract terms; but in a Shakespearean play, criticism is an integral part of apprehension, and apprehension thereby becomes an activity of the whole mind (32-3)".

It's this essentially Shakespearean "insisting on the essential artificiality of the play-world, and thus holding play-world and real world before the mind simultaneously yet without confusion (33)", that seems to be the most fascinating idea that Bethell puts forward for a modern audience.  It suggests the presence of an old, unused room in our minds.  One that we've allowed to be ignored and sometimes even fall into a state of mental atrophy from regular lack of use.  Yet the fascinating thing is how this unused room is still there, waiting to be recognized and perhaps even utilized again in the service of a more dimensional appreciation of the Art we consume, and what it just might have to say about us as human beings.  That's the sort of promise that seems to be lying in wait with a kind of vibrant expectation, looking forward to a day when audiences begin to realize their full potential not just as consumers, but as active participants in the Art and Stories that we love.  With that said, no matter how fascinating all of the above sounds, it still raises one valid question.  What the hell does some old Shakespearean practice have to do with a forgotten 1940s musical starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly?  Well, the answer is that what we've got on our hands with Anchors Aweigh is what I'd call a textbook sample of the kind of Popular Dramatic Entertainment Bethell was actually talking about.

Recall how he said that the multi-leveled, double awareness approach to both writing and appreciating a theatrical story and performance was something that was still present even in the current day cinema of his times.  What helps to date that statement is to realize that Bethell wrote those statements down way back in 1944, just one year before Ol' Blue Eyes tapped danced alongside Gene on a now long defunct MGM soundstage.  The basic gist of Bethell's words imply that while Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Stage were long since gone, even back then, the sort of Participatory Artistic Tradition that he both worked in and innovated upon was still in some kind of functioning use during Hollywood's Golden Age.  Showbiz back then was still emerging from its roots in both legitimate theater and the stage revues of the Vaudeville/Burlesque circuits.  Indeed, one of the major factors about the birth of the film industry that tends to get overlooked is that it was all the wild gamble on the part of a bunch bored theater kids who were looking to see what could be done to innovate their craft.  When they were able to prove to others, as much to themselves, that this new reel camera operated technology was just he gadget they needed to pioneer various new storytelling frontiers, it's as if they began to be ashamed of where they come from, for reasons that I'll swear make no sense.  Especially since a movie is just a filmed stage production at the end of the day, even with all the technical advances made since then.

It also probably didn't help that once it became clear that motion pictures were starting to take off in a serious way, rather than maybe considering whether it would have been a good idea to see if they could team up with their fellow filmmaking thespians in an effort at mutual protection that assure a greater degree of prestige a prominence for both entities, the theater world instead decided to turn its back on the then new medium as an "impure" form of Art.  The net result of that bright idea is one most theater kids are still having to struggle with.  Entertain conjecture of a time when Broadway wasn't just this niche home for struggling drama students, and was instead the premier hub of dramatic entertainment in America; the closest thing this Country ever had to an entertainment mecca in a time before the advent of Tinseltown.  During the 1940s, however, when critics like S.L. Bethell were highlighting the connections that existed between cinema and the stage, those ties hadn't yet completely broken, nor were they left behind.  Instead, enough of the Popular Story Tradition remained for Bethell to shine a spotlight on things.  He lays out this relationship between stage and screen as a kind of principle.

"To sum up, I believe I am justified in asserting that there is a popular dramatic tradition, and that its dominant characteristic is the audience’s ability to respond spontaneously and unconsciously on more than one plane of attention at the same time. I shall call this the principle of multi-consciousness. Already, with the aid of some recent critics, we have discovered traces of the a operation of this principle in the plays of Shakespeare, and we have found the same principle to hold of the popular theatre and cinema of to-day (29)".  Bearing in mind that the cinema of his day is still and solely in reference to Hollywood's Golden Age, what Bethell has to say next can prove very helpful in trying to figure out what Sinatra and Kelly are up to with their little overlooked musical venture.  There is one passage in particular which serves a technical examination of the story mechanics for the type of film that Gene and Frank are starring in here.  So It's worth quoting from a some considerable length.

In terms of the multi-conscious response to certain types of storytelling, "The modern cinema-goer has a similar adaptability. It is not unusual for characters in an apparently ‘straight’ film to break ‘ into song, although the circumstances, considered naturalistically, would practically forbid such behavior. A pair of lovers steal away from the company, discover a convenient garden-seat, and, after some preliminary conversation, break into a love-duet, to the accompaniment of an unseen orchestra. Even those little conversant with the etiquette of high society must be aware that this is an unusual method of proposing marriage. As the film setting is naturalistic, the strain upon credulity is correspondingly great, but I have noticed few traces of my own uneasiness in other members of the audience. It is not stupidity, but absence of technical sophistication, which can so rapidly accept a situation as conventional.

"In this instance, story is accepted as story, and song as song, simultaneously yet without confusion; and none of the awkward questions are asked which would result from a monistic attitude to dramatic illusion. The co-presence of song and story is the commonest example of an audience's ability to sustain two aspects of a situation at once: in opera, it is called for continuously, and Shakespeare’s comedies are nearer in this respect to modern musical comedy than to the plays, say, of Galsworthy or Barrie. In the average Hollywood film, conventionalism and naturalism are deeply interwoven. Setting and presentation are usually naturalistic, but characters conform to well-known types, stories follow a recognized pattern, and startlingly unrealistic incidents may be introduced; indeed, criticism is usually levelled at ‘slapstick’ in serious films, much as neo- classical criticism objects to the mixture of comedy and tragedy in Shakespeare. Even in the cinema there are quite complicated instances of an audience’s ability to attend simultaneously to various aspects of a situation (27-28)".  Bethell then provides the modern reader with two very helpful examples from the glory days of movies to help make his point.

"In one of Mr. Harold Lloyd's comedies, a number of years ago, the comedian performed a series of hair-raising evolutions on the front and very near the top of a formidable skyscraper. The audience must have had several concurrent reactions: (a) they would admire the performance of a brilliant ‘equilibrist’; (b) they would be amused at his (recognisedly feigned) clumsiness; and (c) they would be concerned for the hero’s safety, in sympathy with the heroine watching anxiously from below. The same incident demands attention from three different points of view simultaneously: as equilibristic performance, as farce, and as romance. This is the core of my present thesis: that a popular audience, uncontaminated by abstract and tendentious dramatic theory, will attend to several diverse aspects of a situation, simultaneously yet without confusion (28)".  The second example that Bethell illustrates for us is even more helpful, as it functions as a variation of the kind of film that Anchors Aweigh is supposed to be.  It also doesn't hurt that the critic can employ the help of some comedy legends to get his point across.

"Deliberate emphasis upon the unreality of the play-world is uncommon nowadays. It is still, however, an habitual device of the to a Marx brothers, those excellent Hollywood comedians, who combine the wildest nonsense with a delicate satirical probing of the defective values in our modern civilization. Their methods are purely conventional, and they require above everything an alert audience, ready to grasp at every word and each significant gesture. It would be fatal for their purpose, if the audience were to become emotionally involved in the thin line of romantic story which holds their performance together. In their best film, Animal Crackers, which appeared some years ago, there are two direct reminders of the film as film. Groucho forgets the name of the character he represents, and turning to the audience, demands a programme: this is complicated by the reference back from film to ‘legitimate’ stage, since programmes are not provided in the cinema, At another point in the film, he reminds us after a feeble pun, that ‘You can’t expect all the jokes to be good’. I do not know whether the Marx brothers are consciously aware, any more than Shakespeare is likely to have been, that this type of joke has an important effect upon the relationship of actors and audience.

"They have continued to employ it in more recent films with remarkable consistency, and this indicates at least a strong instinctive sense of its usefulness. In The Marx Brothers' Go West we were told as (I think) the engine-driver was being gagged. ‘This is the best gag in the picture, and in The Big Store, when the villain is finally unmasked, Groucho exclaims, echoing the average comment from the stalls: ‘I could have, told you in the first reel he was a crook.' The effect is the same as in Shakespeare: it reinforces the double consciousness of play-world and real world and at the same time it distances the play as play, and produces intimacy with the audience for the actor as actor rather than as character (38)".  It's in unpacking the mechanics of a typical Bros. Marx vehicle that Bethell does us the biggest favor in providing the modern audience with the proper lens from which view what Sinatra and Kelly are up to with the Anchors picture.  Much in the same Groucho and his siblings aren't featuring in any straightforward, naturalistic drama, so Gene and Frank aren't here to be cast in a typical  Hollywood Romance.  Instead, what we're dealing with here is best described as was said above.  What MGM has given its audience here amounts to little more than a musical stage review in the form of a movie.

It just so happens to feature War Time America's most top rated singer and dancer as the headlining stars.  Nor is this all that out of character for Kelly or Blue Eyes once you recall that both men earned their names and reputation by performing in venues very much like this one.  The only difference was that these earlier efforts were all classic examples of Bethell's Popular Dramatic Stage Tradition.  Looked at from this angle, what they're doing in this movie isn't all that different from the kind of material that each of them had since mastered long before.  So with this in mind, now that we have a good idea of the type of obscure film these two music legends are starring in, how does it hold up as an entertainment in its own right?  In all honesty, I wish I had good news to report.  It all goes back to what I said at the beginning.  This isn't really a film with any kind of story to it.  Now it might sound strange, after spending so many digital words on the theories of a critic like Bethell, who at one point says its possible to have a situation where any proper sense of narrative doesn't matter.  Well, to answer such a criticism two things need to be kept in mind.  The first is that Bethell never said the Popular Dramatic Tradition didn't apply to a scenario in which the story was paramount.  The very fact that the plays of Shakespeare are his prime example of this Early Modern form of metafictional audience participation should be enough to prove that this theory of multi-consciousness goes just as well with actual plots.

In other the kind of examples Bethell mentions, such as the films of Harold Lloyd and the Marx Brothers, even if the story is more of a launching pad for fourth wall breaking jokes rather than the main focus, what separates a film like A Night at the Opera from this picture is that at least the Marxes knew it was helpful to rely on at least some form of narrative thread, however slender that may be, to help pull all the gags and musical numbers into a clear, coherent focus.  You can come away from a Marx comedy with the impression that you've just had a full and enlivening experience when the Brothers are at their best.  It's because they knew that even the best gags still rely on that subtle connective thread.  The one that helps the logic of the jokes stand out all the better.  Now if this seems like a needless form of nitpicking, then perhaps it'll help to remember that this is the same strategy that the writers behind the Animaniacs depended on to make their own TV show into the pop culture icon it's become today.  What makes that bit of entertainment work is that they were attentive students to the Popular Dramatic Tradition as it was employed by comedians like the Marx Brothers.  With Anchors Aweigh, we're given a straightforward dramatic riff on this same Stage Show formula.  Only its a version of the Popular Tradition with all the life blood sucked out of it.  It has a plot thread, yet it's one the film can't be bothered with.  It's clear the writers weren't as careful with their material like the Marxes were.

To them, the whole setup is treated as little more than the merest afterthought in their eagerness to get Frank singing or Gene dancing again.  Instead of giving us an engaging throughline, such as a biting satire on the snobbish and elite culture of the one percent class that uses the Opera as an excuse to rub their wealth in other people's faces, like the Marx Brothers did, we're treated to an interminable round of scenes where Gene and Frank mope around about how unlucky they are with falling in love.  This will then segue to them singing about the same issue in the next musical number.  It's pretty much all the film has to offer in terms of both setup and basic plot formula.  This is the sort of film where you enter into with open-minded high hopes, and then slowly see it all drawn away as you realize we aren't looking at either characters or situations, but rather the dullest sort of mechanical props with human faces as they are put through their paces.  The whole result becomes like watching a bunch of department store mannequins operating on some invisible wind-up machinery.  There's none of the wit or Inspiration to be found in the work of the Marxes or others like them with this one.  It's all just a lifeless love scene, followed by a musical number, then another pointless love scene, followed by another production piece.  You soon begin to realize just how aimless the whole affair truly is.

The first major clue for the audience that there's really nothing holding things together comes from a moment when the film decides to pause everything so that MGM can showcase its production value by splicing Kelly into a cartoon world ala Roger Rabbit.  When this happens, we're then given the admittedly entertaining sight of Gene putting his fancy footwork to good use alongside Jerry Mouse, of Tom and Jerry fame.  If I have to give this movie any sort of praise, then this is perhaps the one, singular moment when it's earned.  That single animated segment more or less acts as the one moment when the picture starts to come alive.  Like it's managed to stumble upon an honest to goodness bit of Inspiration to help liven things up.  The sad part is that this is just one dance segment that comes somewhere in the middle of things.  Once that's over, it's back to the tedium of the love story formula the film has established.  There's one other Fantasy segment, yet this is live action, featuring a bit of make-believe in which Gene gets to pretend he's this Don Juan style hero.  To be fair, this is the kind of role the dancing legend was often best at during his glory years working for MGM.  The problem is here we're treated to an example of the usual Kelly formula were there's nothing about the setup to hold our interest.  It's clear the whole thing was just thrown together because, hey, this is the sort of thing Gene does.  So let's let the viewers rest content with that.  It's the laziest way to treat a talented actor.

Indeed, it's this lingering note of laziness that defines the whole affair.  Like the filmmakers behind the camera just couldn't be bothered after a point.  I've heard that this film was made as part of America's War Efforts during the Big One.  That it was manufactured and slapped together as a morale booster for the troops.  If that's the case then allow me to give you some history to put the whole thing in context.  My paternal grandfather was a Merchant Marine in WWII.  His brother, my grand-uncle, was an Army Medic in the European Theater.  Through either miracle or luck, they both came home intact mentally as well as physically.  In fact, the proudest moment of my grandfather's life was when he stalked up and down the streets of Great Britain in search of the Army Hospital where my grand-uncle was convalescing, all for the soul purpose of brining him home safe and sound.  They may very well have had to stare death right in the face at more than one point, and one of them was never even permitted a gun just defend himself.  The idea that a mindless piece of fluff like this would have been a balm for whatever hells they had to endure out there on the battlefield just comes off as one of the worst insults you could ever hurl at soldiers and war heroes like my grand folks.  I do not blame either Kelly or Sinatra for such a fiasco.  Based on their own words and actions off camera, they knew they owed the men and women who were fighting for their lives their very hearts and souls, even as entertainers.

Sinatra in particular always knew that men like my grandfather would always be the better man than him.  For that I can be grateful.  I'm just sorry either of the had have their good names dragged through the mud of whatever the fresh piece of filth this turned out to be.  This is a film that really didn't need to be made, in retrospect.  Both the crooner and shuffler would have been better off doing something else.  In fact, the one bright spot in this otherwise forgettable dreck is the aforementioned Tom and Jerry sequence.  In retrospect, taking that one segment, and making or finding some way of spinning it into an entire film of its own would have been a better option.  It would have perhaps made better sense, in other words, to forego the whole aimless musical revue, and instead focus on a live-action/animation hybrid film.  Something that could have beaten Roger Rabbit to the punch several decades ahead of schedule.  I mean think about it.  What sounds more awesome, having the musical and dancing talents of two of the most influential entertainers of all time squandered on two literal hours and twenty minutes that you'll never get back, and all of it in the service of mindless romantic filler.  Or having Sinatra and Kelly play the leads in a half-animated, feature length cartoon starring alongside Tom and Jerry?  Seriously, what would you think?  Speaking for myself, I wish that's the film we could have.

Like it could all revolve around Kelly and Sinatra getting mixed up with the dueling cat and mouse as they have to go on some sort of madcap, slapstick adventure punctuated by Gene's dancing and Frank's gift for song.  No offense, it's just there's so many places you can go with a concept like that.  Instead of something potentially awesome, groundbreaking, and somewhat timeless, what we're stuck with is something that would have made my Grandfather cringe and ask, with good reason, "What the fuck is this shit"?  We could have had one of those groundbreaking classic films that parents could let their kids rediscover for generations to come.  Something that would also serve as a gateway flick to the Classic Hollywood of Gene Kelly, and the iconic musical style of Ol' Blue Eyes.  There's just so many potential fandoms that such a proposed animated/live-action hybrid could have spun off.  I think the fact it's possible to have more fun speculating on what might have been is proof enough that this is one of those films that had perhaps one sliver of promise to it, and yet it was all ignored for easy money and the tastes of the moment.  This is a film of the bottom line, rather than any inherent artistic merit.

What's most galling for me is the fact that it does such a poor service to the notion of the Popular Dramatic Tradition.  The reason I'm able to say that with a fair degree of confidence is because S.L. Bethell's theory is one that proves surprisingly easy to demonstrate in terms of proof of concept.  The chief reason why that's the case is because of the time period in which his criminally neglected work of Shakespearean criticism was written.  In the 1940s, the production conditions of the Golden of Age of Hollywood were such that there was more than plenty of ideal specimens in the movie palaces of the time to prove that Bethell wasn't inventing anything out of whole cloth.  There really were any number of films out there that could prove the theory of multi-conscious storytelling and audience reception.   A good sample of titles that could demonstrate the level of sophistication Bethell talks about is interesting.  In part because some of them are so familiar to us that our first inclination is wonder if either the theory or the proof offered for it perhaps operates under some fatal flaw.  The good news is that there are less familiar movies out there that go a long way toward sustaining Bethell's thesis.  We're talking about films which are so obscure that bringing them back into the spotlight now, after so many years, means that the past has been granted its own peculiar sense of novelty.  While some of the proofs are familiar.  For others, it really is like delving into the forgotten treasures of an undiscovered country.

When it comes which specific examples from Classic Hollywood might prove what Bethell is talking about, start out simple by going back and looking at your favorite Looney Tunes shorts.  Stop and notice the nature of the cartoons you're watching.  Pay attention to what Bugs, Daffy and Company all do with the concepts of linear narrative and structure.  Pay attention to how the characters tend to address their jokes and sight gags directly to you, the viewer.  A good summation is that they're letting you in on the joke.  This is true enough, yet according to Bethell, the full impact passes right by our attention these days.  What's important to note is that it's the Tunes ability to get away with talking to us, the audience, about the inherent ridiculous nature of not just their jokes, but of the inherent absurdity of their very existence which, rather than being an anomaly, has instead become known as one of the defining hallmarks of Warner Bros. animated pantheon.  In fact, a good way to gauge just how we've internalized this rule breaking quality of the Termite Terrace Gang is to go take a look at their behavior in a film where they are forced into different roles in the service of a more straightforward narrative.  

It's true that Bugs and Mickey Mouse make cameo appearances in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, yet how many of us have stopped to notice the nature of the way they act when they're on-screen?  A moment's thought will be enough to make us realize just how out of character their respective personalities are, despite seeming normal in other respects.  Yes, Bugs is still "a stinker" in his own words.  Yet beyond this moment, the way every figure in Robert Zemeckis's hybrid detective drama functions is at a 180 variance with their normal cartoon personalities.  Rather than acting as agents of animated anarchy who operate under a tacit agreement of permission to not just break, but also interrogate the boundaries of normal storytelling conventions, we here find them functioning under a level of servitude to the conventions of regular storytelling that becomes something of a glaring shock once you realize what you're looking at.  What we're being treated to is the sight of reckless free spirits being made to conform to the conventions of 1940s detective fiction.  It's a testament to the flexibility of the Tunes as characters, as much (if perhaps not more so) as the overall quality of the writing for that movie, that there's no real cognitive dissonance for the audience to have to absorb.  Apparently someone like Bugs Bunny is elastic enough to the point where he can carry either a 10 minute animated joke, or a feature length straightforward narrative.  What it points to is the inherent flexibility of narrative in and of itself.

There seems to be this whole unexplored area of the Imagination's storytelling capabilities, and of the capacity of us humans to bend our minds in sympathy with these off the beaten paths.  Works like Bethell's Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition are helpful guides in making us aware of this aspect of our own minds.  While forgotten gems like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's The Road to Morocco or A Day at the Races, Hellzapoppin' (an oft-cited source for Animaniacs), Fun and Fancy Free, and A Night in Casablanca all provide feature-length demonstrations of the nature of the Popular Dramatic Tradition in action.  The very ironic punchline is these are all top-notch works of fiction.  They're all able to juggle humor, storytelling, and metafictional methods of approach with equal and balanced ease, so that the audience never gets bored, and always remains entertained.  As a result, they all just serve to highlight the tragedy at the heart of the Kelly-Sinatra vehicle.  Where they were made with care and skill, the story of Joe and Brooklyn just feels thrown together at the last moment.  Where it's possible to tell that acts like the Marx Brothers and Termite Terrace are constructing their humor and stories out of care and passion for their Art, this forgotten piece of filler bares all the hallmarks of a rush job made to fill out a quota.  There's very little except one scene to recommend for Anchors Aweigh.