Ham and cheese

The Band Wagon

(1953)

My second metashow of the day, with genius director Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan), who talks the entertainment talk but walks the dreary pretense walk, pairing hoofer Tony Hunter (Fred Astaire) and ballerina Gabrielle Gerard (Cyd Charisse) despite the generational, artistic, and temperamental chasm between them. You'll never guess what happens!

Plenty of musical silliness and illogic (e.g., when the show supposedly reverts to to what the married Martons [Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray] originally wrote, what happens to the plot they describe early? why does it become a revue?), but enough brilliance ("That's Entertainment," "Triplets," every moment Astaire and Charisse dance together) to make logic moot.