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Wed, 06 Feb 2019 14:17:02

Getting By: DANCE, GIRL, DANCE (’40) and NENETTE AND BONI (’96) By R. Emmet Sweeney

FilmStruck has rolled out a remarkable Spotlight collection of 24 films by women directors, including two striking portraits of young girls scrambling to survive on the fringes of society. DANCE, GIRL, DANCE (’40) is a raucous melodrama directed by Dorothy Arzner – a thrilling battle of burlesque dancers that pits a va-va-voom Lucille Ball against the ballet-trained Maureen O’Hara. Claire Denis’ elliptical NENETTE AND BONI depicts the fragile relationship between a working class brother and sister after the death of their mother. They barely speak to one another until the sister gets pregnant and has nowhere else to turn. Though in wildly different styles and registers, both films draw convincing portraits of life on the margins.

DANCE, GIRL, DANCE was made at RKO for producer Erich Pommer and was in danger of collapsing after director Roy Del Ruth quit after two weeks of shooting. After she was hired, Arzner focused the project on a high art versus low art angle: “I decided the theme should be ‘The Art Spirit’ versus the commercial ‘Go-Getter,’” she said in Judith Mayne’s Directed By Dorothy Arzner. The screenplay by Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis (from a story by Vicki Baum) tracks the diverging paths of burlesque queen Bubbles (Ball) and aspiring ballerina Judy O’Bren (O’Hara). Both were trained by former Russian ballerina Madame Basilova (Maria Ouspenskaya), whose school has hit hard times because her dancers don’t give off enough sex appeal. Bubbles hits the jackpot as a hoochie-coochie girl, while Judy struggles to pay the rent of her room share. Struck with a bout of conscience, Bubbles hires Judy to be her “stooge”, the comic relief who the crowd lustily boos until Bubbles returns to the stage. For Judy it’s humiliating, but it’s a living. The film sets up a central conflict between two women – who almost defiantly remain friends. They help each other up each rung of success despite being competitors.

The film sets up a central conflict between two women – who almost defiantly remain friends. They help each other up each rung of success despite being competitors. Their dynamic is casually established in the dynamite opener, in which both women flirt with a rich drunkard, Jimmy (Louis Hayward), after a gig. After their high kick routine, which Arzner closes in on in an elegant crane shot, Jimmy latches on to Judy for a twirl around the room before getting put off by her blue eyes (which remind him of his soon-to-be ex-wife). Bubbles picks up the pieces and flirts him into a bar. At the end of the night, Bubbles gives Judy a stuffed bull that Jimmy gave away, a sign of détente. They are in constant competition, but never at the expense of the other’s career. Jimmy is just a tool to further their game, and he doesn’t end up with either of them. One more unusual aspect of this proto-feminist film is that neither lead ends up with a man – only with promotions.

Where DANCE, GIRL, DANCE is brash and direct, NENETTE AND BONI is quiet and abstracted. Boni (Grégoire Colin) is a directionless young man who works at a pizza truck by day and fantasizes about the woman (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) at the local bakery shop at night. Denis directs intimately with his slovenly existence, shooting with her DP Agnès Godard with long lenses and frequent close-ups, lingering in his shirtless domain, one of eroticized indolence. Then his sister Nenette (Alice Houri) shows up pregnant at his doorstop, having run away from their befuddled father (Jacques Nolot). Boni’s first instinct, as with most things, is to evade responsibility, though Nenette refuses to disappear.

Although Boni comes off like a macho blowhard (Denis even depicts his violent sexual fantasies of the baker’s wife), when faced with the reality of women, he clams up. Denis told Filmmaker magazine, “I knew Gregoire Colin, the actor, and I thought he had that quality of age and face that he was still between childhood and adulthood. He has both inside him. I wanted him to be the king in his house, the king of his body, to have power in everything and yet still be very fragile.” It is this fragility that pervades the film, of Boni’s masculinity, Nenette’s girlhood and their father’s ghostly existence. Yann Dedet’s editing renders even the most basic details oblique, forcing the viewer to focus on atmosphere, texture and tone. By the end, each character remains an enigma but the spaces feel lived in and alive.

The nightclub in Akron that gets busted while Lucille Ball and Maureen O’Hara are dancing could be around the corner from the rusted-out pizza truck where Boni hawks his greasy wares. These are the corners where people eke out their living, and filmmakers Dorothy Arzner and Clare Denis depict this eking in drastically different styles – the lucidity of classical Hollywood filmmaking versus the oblique poetic strategies of the European art film. What sets these films apart is how they depart from the traditions they emerge out of, creating something bold and elusively new.